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 ha...
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In Memoriam She thought her large hands and feet were due to her hard labour one summer vacation on an archaeological dig in Germany. It was there she met Max, an Art student, a Sculptor who also had trouble finding shoes large enough for his big feet. Afterwards he cycled to Florence to view ‘David’ in all his marbled flesh and later on his return he slept on the sofa in our shared student house. In return he carved a large number ’14’ in our sandstone gatepost with a rusty spike and a half brick that he found lying around. Where are they now? I don’t know but still the gatepost stands in memoriam a small footfall to their passing by that way and still there is no gate. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1081919604/ref=sr_1_1… Poetry, Short Stories, Interviews, Art, Photography with interweaving moods of humor, anxiety, happiness, love, sadness, mental health awareness, hope, faith. Many creative poets, artists, photographers, lyricists in each issue. Issue 2 include...
Smile It was the purr she heard first, so loud it was almost a growl. But a dog up a tree? No, she knew that would be mad! So she wasn’t surprised to see a cat when she looked up and wasn’t surprised to see it smiling. She expected it to be happy with so loud a purr. You must be pleased to see me, she thought, watching it stretch and sleepily curl. She felt sleepy too so she curled like the cat. And together they dreamed smiley dreams until she heard a crash as the branches broke and the cat landed heavily in her lap. Then she woke to find the cat had disappeared. Only the smile remained. And that weighed nothing at all. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anthology-Askew-007-T…/…/B08273FPKH
On Our Watch If it had been on his watch, he would have seen, he would have given the alarm, would have been heard and catastrophe would have been avoided. She also was alert, but it was not her watch and no one heard her warnings. On their watch we would have heard the warnings. But it happened on our watch and we were sleeping. https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/12/on-our-watch/ If it had been on his watch, he would have seen, he would have given the alarm, would have been heard and catastrophe would have been avoided. She also was
The Spirit Of Christmas To Come The ghost slid down the rabbit hole on a dark wintery night. He expected to arrive in Wonderland if such a place exists and he believed it did, just as he believed in ghosts and Santa Claus. It was as he expected. There was a full glass on a table. He looked for a label saying: “Drink Me”. But there was no label. So he drank it anyway. It left a nice warm feeling inside him, “spirit for the spirit”, he laughed aloud. There was a plate of pastries. He looked for a label saying: “Eat Me”, but there was no label. So he ate them anyway, all of them every last crumb, every succulent morsel of mincemeat. He lay back contentedly then smiled somewhat sheepishly at the old man dressed in red carrying a large sack who must have followed him down the rabbit hole. He was looking none too pleased at the scene. “Well”, said the ghost, “Anyone can mistake a chimney for a rabbit hole and we need a new Christmas story.” https://oddballmagazine.com/poem-by-lynn-wh...
Christmas Tree Trimming the tree was a Christmas Eve ritual in my family. Each year my cousin would come to help my mum. They would carefully take the glass baubles from the box that used to hold her big doll called Topsy. Then they would put them all in their special place in my family. “No the elephant doesn’t go there, that’s where the peacock should be and the Christmas pudding goes above.” Everything had it’s place on the Christmas tree in my family. There were shiny miniature crackers never to be pulled and curly, coloured candles never to be lit, for economy. No tinsel was allowed for that was cheating. Only baubles to cover the tree, hiding the green. The glass baubles had belonged to my cousin, so had the tree. And earlier, to her mother and granny, all in my family. The only family to fall out over trimming a tree, my cousin’s husband used to say with some truth, as every year the arguments as to which bauble should go where were replayed in my family. So much stres...
Help Me Over Help me. Help me over. Help me cross. I can see the sky framed by debris, by rocks, by wire, by dereliction. Framed by sharpness and impenetrable barriers. I want to see it clear, clear and unblemished creamy white and pink and blue. Help me see it. Help me over. Help me cross. I want want to see it framed by trees, I want to see the rocks become flowers again. Help me. Help me over. Help me cross to the place where the birds are singing breaking up the sky with flight. Does it still exist, this place? I must think so. Help me find it. Help me. Help me over. Help me cross https://pondersavant.com/2019/11/17/lynn-white-ltnc-series/
I Saw A Bird I saw a bird today, just one. I wasn’t alone, many people saw it, more came out to look dusting off their long unused binoculars. Facebook was buzzing like the insects used to buzz. And so many tweets trending for all those lost tweeters. It made the local headlines, then the national ones. It flew a long way that bird, then it was gone. https://totaleclipsepittsburgh.weebly.com/ Order a physical copy here:
Silver Baubles The little girl loved the glass baubles loved their shiny surfaces that could catch the light and shine it back loved the fragility that she was not allowed to touch. The oldest ones were especially fragile like old people, she thought, so easily broken. They had been bought by her grandmother, her old dead grandmother, so old she had never known her. Their colours had faded, it happens with time she was told. The glossy paint had cracked and peeled away, it happens with time, the heat and dryness does it like wrinkles and flaking skin even here where cold and damp prevails, yes, it happens with time, even here. But the baubles were still shiny gleaming silver underneath underneath their fading colours. The old people she knew weren’t glossy just wrinkled, dry and fragile. She wondered when they would become silver. She knew that just a touch could break a bauble shatter them so they no longer existed just like her grandmother and they other dead people. She wondere...