Poetry - Lynn White

  The Melon Market It was a small town, Pec, in Kosovo now, then in Yugoslavia. It was 1966, the year before watermelons became illegal   in Palestine. It was a small restaurant with no menu so communication wasn’t easy. But the guy on the next table spoke French opening up a channel of communication for us. John wanted to eat melon but there was no melon. Our French speaking friend, he was a friend by now, Had a late night solution. He took us to a large dry field, a melon market, he said. There were huge heaps of watermelons, dark green globes waiting in heaps. Each heap with its sleeping seller resting on a bed of melons. He shook one seller awake   and carefully chose a melon. We all went home with him, he called the neighbours in and there we had a melon party eating great juicy slices   off tin plates in a small house in Pec in 1966, the year before Israel banned watermelons in Palestine. https://fourfeatherspress.blogspot.com/2026/05/50-poets-and-artists-being...

  Where Are They Now In 1967 I hitch-hiked to Belgrade. My friend and I would take an over-night train to stay with our Albanian friends in what is now Kosovo. Until then we had some hours to kill. The local cafe culture called and we ate a modest meal, two great slabs   of the ubiquitous cheese puff pastry washed down with colas. We went to the counter to pay but the Server refused our money. He pointed to a table where some guys were enjoying a few beers. They had already paid, he said. We were mystified. They had made no contact with us and we tried to tell them we could not accept. They explained that they wished to thank us for the help Britain had given in WW2. Fast forward to 1999   when the right to self determination was all the rage. and NATO bombs were falling on Belgrade. I thought about them a lot back then. I think of them now   when territorial integrity is all the rage and the right to self determination a forgotten dream. Yes, I think of them now whe...

  A Dreaming Flight She used to day dream that she could fly wingless but up there with the stars and the butterflies and bright birds. My little sister, always dreaming! She’s left us now and dreams no more. She doesn’t need to,. She has wings now and can look down   and see all the butterflies,   the bright birds and the dreamers as angels always do. That’s what I’m dreaming. https://writingcafejournal.com/poem.php?slug=a-dreaming-flight

  Sins Of The Fathers It was 1966 in a quiet Skopje side street and the Germans parked in front were surveying the wreckage of their car. “They don’t like Germans here,” they said. And they knew it was because of the brutality   of the German occupation in Yugoslavia in World War 2. “But it wasn’t us!” they said. And of course they were right! They were paying   for the sins of the fathers, maybe not their fathers but the ones bound to them from a wider inheritance. And so it goes, the sins of the fathers. There are no barriers, no boundaries, no constant of time   or place they are forever bound and they play out over and over again. https://fourfeatherspress.blogspot.com/2026/05/50-poets-and-artists-being-published-in.html

  I’m So Old I’m so old that I remember a time when people with mental illnesses were treated appropriately   in Psychiatric Hospitals. I’m so old that I remember a time when people with mental illnesses were not discharged inappropriately from Psychiatric Hospitals. I’m so old that I remember a time when prisons housed criminals not people with mental illnesses. I’m so old   soon I may not remember them. https://therecusant.org.uk/poetry-w/#lynn-white

Freire And Illich Are Dead No more need for free-schooling,   deschooling,   conviviality or purpose, Freire and Illich are dead. No need for anti-bullying   strategies, family therapy, strategies against exclusions voluntary or enforced. No need for Play Therapy or Adolescent Therapeutic Centres, they are as dead as Freire and Illich. The solution is as sharp and clear as the banning of blades for sale. No knives, no stabbings. And almost cost free, free as words are free. Just stay out of the kitchen. https://therecusant.org.uk/poetry-w/#lynn-white