Poetry - Lynn White

Aftermath How can it be that someone I don't see, only think about sometimes, but never contact, or try to, leaves such a gap, in their final leaving. My life has not been changed. All is the same. So why the difference now that you're really in the past, when you were already part of my past and not of my future. Nothing has changed for me, not really, not in reality. So why do you occupy my thoughts in a different way. Why does my future feel different now you cannot be part of it, even though you never would be and I knew it. Perhaps because I can no longer dream you there. But why not when you could never be there and I knew it the same then, as I know now. Why is it different, now even to dream? https://godoggocafe.com/2019/09/21/aftermath-lynn-white-guest-barista/?fbclid=IwAR3aXe34rrv7JoEHviYqDN83JAYkb9dl3Ks1u_zmLoyHDCX1DEgTOAocLLw

Fox It’s a rare thing to see, a fox in a field of pink, a fox in a field   of foxgloves. He looks up and sniffs them. He could put his nose right inside if he chose. But he doesn’t. He could slip each paw in turn inside the pink glove, but he doesn’t choose to. Why would he, unless he knew the connection, the link, the identification. But he doesn’t know it. So   he just sniffs the air and moves on. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1795856327/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_awdo_t1_0P-FDbP7XWCW7?fbclid=IwAR2mP1qYUzptYGLx8o_mWnSpVHBYIVcoZC_ye86VVS4CapweP5yOno_gOA8

Shall I Go Gently? I’ve always been indecisive and I’m still undecided but soon I will have to choose whether to build my ship, and furnish it comfortably and sail with you gently into the dark into oblivion gently or to rage and fight scratch and bite kick and scream so that you have to drag me to where I will not follow gently into oblivion into the darkness the inevitability of the end whichever way I choose. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y4MW43H…

The Future’s Past I feel no nostalgia no longing to go back to be part of my past I don’t look behind me. I feel no fear either no concern that one day it will catch me up. I know that it’s already here part of my present with me waiting for the future. https://blognostics.net/…/20/the-futures-past-by-lynn-white/

Rejection It’s not that I’m not tempted, she said and I don’t want to offend you. She took my hand briefly, to show no offence was intended, then let it go. I held on to hers as she explained. Then we walked in silence for quite a long way enveloped in the dark night. Hand in hand. Quiet footsteps that didn’t break the silence. She looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back. Or was I the first to smile and she smiled back? I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter, but we still don’t remember. https://godoggocafe.com/2019/09/21/rejection-lynn-white-guest-barista/

Reclusive He was a hermit, a recluse living in a cave with his cats. He had a long strong thread made of cat gut and he sat all day every day playing cat’s cradle and all that jazz on his home made guitar. And then one day the cats decided enough was enough they were all jazzed out. So they ate him up and played rock ’n’ roll. https://hereticsloversmadmen.com/…/09/18/reclusive-lynn-wh…/

How To Float They told me a stone would never float. I didn’t believe them so I threw it carefully on to the water. It stayed there on the surface, a miracle! So I threw another carefully to land on top and then another and another. Now a stack of stones was floating   on the water. They told me a stone would never hang in the air. I didn’t believe them so I threw it carefully upwards. It stayed there in the air, a miracle!   So I threw another to land underneath and then another and another. Now a stack of stones was hanging in the air casting its shadow on the water. Believe in the miracles you can make. Don’t believe what they tell you. Cast a long shadow. https://issuu.com/…/do…/scrittura_magazine_issue_16_summer_…

A Blue Whale Look at them all swimming round me taunting me waving their legs at me tickling me pinching me and swimming away constantly taunting me. No wonder I’m depressed. What a wheeze to make me the largest creature on the planet need to eat one of the smallest. Well Joker, I’m not laughing. Forty million krill a day I need to eat according to Wiki. Yes, I keep up. I’m well informed but it doesn’t help me doesn’t make me feel better. To add to the insult I was given a tiny mouth, too small for the job. See, I’m hardly a basking shark swimming round all day with my mouth open so they can swim straight in. No, it’s open and close open and close till my jaw aches. No wonder I’m blue. https://blognostics.net/…/2019/09/13/a-blue-whale-by-lynn-…/ https://blognostics.net/blognostics-an-innovative-experience-in-literature-poetry-and-art/2019/09/13/a-blue-whale-by-lynn-white/

Never Never Land My sister has gone to Never Never Land It’s where all the lost children go, those who don’t find their way home and those who fade away and die like the wild flowers I pick for the house. My mother says they stay children for ever and can play all day long. My sister was allowed to take her trike with her even though it was all smashed up. My mother says the magic people there will fix it. It sounds like fun there but my mother says she will never let me go, not even if I find a magic carpet to carry me up into the sky. Perhaps she thinks I’m getting too old go there. She says that the children there will grow wings and become angels, I think angels are a bit like fairies, and when my sister gets her wings she will fly back home so we can be together again. My mother says, no, never, but I don’t know. http://www.ekphrastic.net/…/ekphrastic-writing-responses-he…

A snippet from my poem "IT'S CLEAR" was used by Chris Jepperson a street photographer in in Columbia in this example of his work. https://www.chrisjeppersonarts.com/my-photo-gallery

Better Together We will always be together, said my little brother if he felt lonely or if we were sad. I would give him a hug to comfort us both we will, we will. We will always have each other always walk together even if broken into little pieces even if distorted by pain we will pick up the pieces somehow and put them back together even if they’re re-arranged even if not in the same places we will still be us together. But later we forgot and walked away from each other. https://ninemusespoetry.com/…/…/12/one-poem-by-lynn-white-3/

Mermaid It was the change in her hair she noticed first growing now like harsh thin weed but attached firmly attached and inedible. She tugged at it but the pain was too great to separate it from her head. And then her scales began to disappear her beautiful shiny scales washed away with her gills. Her brothers and sisters and the rest of the school swam around her still but she couldn’t hear them, couldn’t understand what they were saying. The art of communication had been lost washed away with her gills. What was she now? Neither fish nor fowl. Fowl, where did that come from? She ran her fingers over her skin, still smooth unfeathered up to now. She waited waited to see what would emerge. Then the next wave came and carried her to the beach so she crawled along the sharp sand uncomfortably on her swollen belly until she found a rock and clambered up then slithered down algaed slime into a recess a safe cave a haven with a shallow pool left by the tide, a birthing pool she though...

Secrets Do you have a secret life, with secret places explored only by yourself? Do you? Tell me about it, let me in. No you can’t, of course you can’t, it’s a secret. Only you can go there. So I must imagine your secret life for myself. May I? Perhaps a house with another family in it. Perhaps a box hidden under the floor containing old love letters or pornographic magazines Am I getting warm? Of course you won’t say. Well, you can’t say. For you are part of my secret life. My imaginings, my dreams and fantasies. And they are part of me. As real to me as the life I expose. but no one can go there. They’re my secrets. What about you? Do you have a secret life? Do you? https://www.scarletleafreview.com/poems…/category/lynn-white SCARLETLEAFREVIEW.COM Category: LYNN WHITE Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in explori...

Bits And Pieces I loved Auntie Mary’s bits and pieces drawer. Loved the metal box full of buttons I laid out carefully to admire the different colours, the different shapes and sizes. Some were very old cut from outfits long gone. I thought she should remember them but she would never say, only that she cut them from clothes discarded in case she needed to replace those lost, buttons were expensive back then. I found a silvery chain with a broken clasp that glistened and gleamed as I wrapped it round my fingers. She said she couldn’t remember where she wore it. I didn’t believe her, it was too beautiful to forget. Then there were the discarded ornaments that had once been on show, presents from seaside places, so they said, but it was the photographs I liked best. Pictures of family I’d never met, pictures of family I never would meet. Now, I only remember the one of three young women, my auntie and her sisters. They were sitting on a wall with the sea behind them, perhaps they ...

The Village of Twee I am just arrived in the village of Twee with its little front gardens carefully wild, with its thatch nicely polished, its flowers dust free. I wonder who tends them in the village of Twee. Who shampoos the pinks who waters the pots, who sweeps up the leaves and prunes all the phlox. There’s no humans to see in the village of Twee, just cars with their robots, red, white and pink. They wave as they drive through with shopping piled high singing ‘tra lah lah, welcome and fiddle di di. There’s a welcome for all in the village of Twee.’ They park right outside, with the pavements long gone to give wider roads for motoring robots. So how did it happen, this robotic coup. There must be a story or legend to tell to explain the strange culture I came across there. Well, pavements weren't needed with no humans to walk and that’s how it started if truth it be told. And it’s ‘tra lah lah, welcome and fiddle di di’ as the robots drive smiling through the village o...