Poetry - Lynn White

  Earwigging Our neighbour was gardening. “Beware of earwigs,” she said. “They go in through your ear,   crawl round your brain   and tickle you to death” She showed me them on her dahlias, long feelers and a little forked tail, “like the devil, squash them!” she said. Some ran onto my hand. They tickled and I laughed. “Squash them!” she cried, “or I’ll tell your mum!” But I couldn’t. https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2026/05/13/earwigging-by-lynn-white-words-of-advice-poetry-prose-series/?fbclid=IwY2xjawRxoVdleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe0pE_zba2cTl4G4gwjTJiEwNKYQbMACchw0CHqhfTLITdbrKmaOff_MkzH7s_aem_mD1e20eSFcmSqVgMzocVUw

  My Sister Maud I had a sister once. Her name was Maud. I never knew her, never even knew of her. No one said. Not our father,  or his son, not my mother,  no one. No one spoke. All were mute for Maud. She never grew old, never even grew up. And her little life  became engulfed in silence. My father cried  when she died, I know it now more than eighty years later I know it. When there’s no one living  who knew her. When there is no one left to tell me her favourite games, her hopes, her dreams.  All are gone. I know it now. I even have a photograph so that I can see her, picture her as she was. And I won’t forget her, won’t forget that I had a sister once. Her name was Maud. https://hotelmasticadoreshouse.wordpress.com/2026/05/13/my-sister-maud-by-lynn-white/

  Come Together   Here I am above you. I’m the god of all I see as the sun rises in the sky and I’ll take you under my wing so all of you can play your part. And you’ll learn your lines according   to my script. My wings may give you shelter but I also have talons to pick you up and drop you down and a sharp beak to gauge your flesh if you stray from the lines as they are written. The die is cast. You are all in it together. https://skummel.net/come-together-1

  The Circus It was called ‘The Big Top’ so I expected size and glitz and glamour but it was small and tawdry inside. I expected glamorous girls riding bareback   not these surly unsmiling performers. It was not like the circus of my dreams where the unicorns were prancing, flashing their rainbowed hooves, pointing with their golden horns. With sequinned swimsuited riders they danced round and round the circle of the ring kicking up the gold dust ground   from their droppings into shimmering sawdust, not that dirty looking soil where no unicorn could find the gold to nurture and replenish their unique golden horns. https://www.strandbooks.com/capture-this-a-slice-of-life-anthology-9781998214082.html About "Tony" & "The Circus" What was your motivation for writing "Tony" & "The Circus”? Both are narrative poems telling stories from my remembered past. “The Circus” about an event that disappointed me as a child and “Tony” about an event in which...

Tony It was a Physics Society party. I’d been to many   and didn’t like them much. Physics students were creeps. Well, they were generally creeps, but Tony was different, he thought they were creeps as well, even though he was one of them. He was a miner’s son from North Yorkshire. He thought the rest were upper class, including me it seemed. ‘What did your father do?,’ he asked. It seemed weird to say ‘Tram Driver’ when the trams were so long gone and saying he was dead didn’t satisfy him, so, I opted for the marriage certificate occupation. ‘Garage Mechanic, that’s not bad’, he said. I didn’t share his experiences of class and entitlement, the students in my course were mainly working class Grammar School products, like Tony, like me, so I thought he had an unreasonable chip on his shoulder   and we had nothing in common. Now I understand him better and wish I’d talked longer   and known him more. I think we could have been friends. https://www.strandbooks.com/capture-t...

  Growing Up Sometimes I borrowed my mother’s clothes and her make-up, her high heels and handbags. Of course, they were too big for me. Same with daddy’s briefcase and the suitcases we took on holiday trips. When I saw the tiny red suitcase in the toyshop I bought it with my birthday money. It had thick shiny plastic and looked really swish. I took it everywhere.   When I grew older, I decided to become an artist but my childish drawings were only ideas. So I collected bits of coloured pictures, discarded by older children at school. Just the ones I liked best and hid them in my suitcase. No one got to look inside. They were my secrets, my special things for inspiration when I was grown up.   I had it all planned.   But by the time I was grown up my secrets were just bits of torn paper covered with scribbles and street dirt. They meant nothing to me anymore, and my tiny red suitcase was dull and worn.   Dreams cracked and broke and finally faded away. https://p...