Rescue Dog - Tony Gardner

There’s no need to flinch when I lift my hand
No need to cower each time I stand
No need to run when I come near
No need to tremble, I see your fear.
You can sleep with both eyes shut,
Don’t need to jump when you wake up
Your food is yours to eat in peace
No need to fight to keep your feast.
No need to lie on the cold, hard floor
The beds and the sofas are yours to explore
Don’t need to sit out in the rain
The house is your shelter, your new domain.
I cannot erase the memories and fears
Cannot compensate for those awful years
But all that we have and all that you see
Is yours, ….you’re now part of our family.

Tony Gardner


Image : Pixabay - Alexas_Fotos

Rough Beast - Richard Fleming

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
W B Yeats
 
Beware. Down in the woods today
the Teddy Bears have gone away
and, in their place, a monstrous beast,
by some foul chance, has been released,
perhaps the beast Yeats wrote about.
It has great antlers and a snout
but walks upright, with slouching gait,
and fiery eyes brimful of hate.
Yeats’ famous poem got it right:
it’s written there in black and white.
Life’s started imitating art.
The centre’s gone.
Things fall apart.

Richard Fleming

Image : "The Thing What Whispers" by Kat Philbin (@stupidanimals)

Beyond the Sea and Sky - Ian Duquemin

I walked the rugged cliff paths from the high land to the sea
With only Mother Nature as my welcomed company
Beneath my feet the fallen leaves lay naked on the ground
I sat and breathed the life of air and relished what I'd found
The only sound is silence, I have found some peace at last
It takes away the troubles of a most pathetic past
I think that I will stay awhile and sing with seagulls high
And wonder what's beyond the joining of the sea and the sky

Ian Duquemin

Image : Pixabay - diego_torres

Summer Magic - Leslie Pinckney Hill (1880-1960)

So many cares to vex the day,
    So many fears to haunt the night,
My heart was all but weaned away
    From every lure of old delight.
Then summer came, announced by June,
    With beauty, miracle and mirth.
She hung aloft the rounding moon,
    She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
    She set the crimson rose afire.
She stirred again my sullen blood,
    And waked in me a new desire.
Before my cottage door she spread
    The softest carpet nature weaves,
And deftly arched above my head
    A canopy of shady leaves.
Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies,
    Her days were bowers rife with song,
And many a scheme did she devise
    To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong.
For on the hill or in the dell,
    Or where the brook went leaping by
Or where the fields would surge and swell
    With golden wheat or bearded rye,
I felt her heart against my own,
    I breathed the sweetness of her breath,
Till all the cark of time had flown,
    And I was lord of life and death.

Leslie Pinckney Hill


Image : Pixabay - Fotorech

Model Behaviour - Joan Etoile

I’m at ease with nudity
I was an artist’s model in’53!
I’d disrobe without a care
And disport myself upon a chair

In creativity’s name I would undress
I felt no shame at my naked flesh
When I was rendered into paint
It often made the young boys faint

Now I’m old and a bit wrinkly
I’ve been posing for the College of FE
Just like the old days they sketched in awe
Warts and all, just what they saw

So it came as a bit of a surprise
When the thought police arrived
Invoked some archaic obscenity laws
And hid me down a corridor

Joan Etoile


Image : Guernsey Press