Winter Shepherd - Liz Waugh
Another place and time
As we dove for shell-fish
through the chill and kelp,
wove machair grass into rope
and reeds to a thatch,
as we cut the peat
and set it to the wind,
as we tilled and sowed
dug and hoped,
shouldered our burdens -
seaweed from the shore,
peat from the moor,
buckets from the well,
as we burned juniper
beneath the still,
offered heads and tails
to the hill,
as we anchored roofs with stone
and settled in for winter,
we did not imagine
the dark plans hatching
in the bustle of far places ripe
with greed and cruel intentions,
and we could not imagine
the turf uncut on the moor,
the kelp swaying
untouched in the depths.
Peter Kelly
Fever prompt
Casa Nostra - The Disease Mafia
By now, over the years
I have met a number of your extended family
Young cousins of the Ache family
Toddlers, grasping squeaky toy hammers in pudgy fists
Banging heads.
Older siblings who used my knees as bongos
Playing knock and run
Effecting the odd trip and fall
Tearing a muscl, for fun.
Your girl cousins have also visited
Greasy haired, sallow faced hooded eyed
The Sicknesses
Bacteria, Virus, Infection.
They sat coughing in corners
Wiping mucus onto my sleeve
Fingering the open fridge,
Licking chicken and fish
Introducing jars of flies into dark recesses.
This week I met Fever
Your dark brother to whom
Against him, I have only a soft ineffectual
Chemical cosh, some pointless flailing,
And arias of coloratura screaming.
It just seems to encourage him
Throaty chuckles slather the night air
As he watches my writhing
Hot, twisted, I finally
Hear him shuffling off,
Checking out other rooms,
Marking new victims
Fetid, moist, infected.
Carolyn Richardson
Woodland Walking : Leonie Ewing
The Imperishable
Buried deep
Like hidden thoughts
Your silence hints at
Stillness yet beneath
In the darkening earth's womb
The damp warmth encourages
Tentacles of still green limbs
To break out from the softening
Husk to find their rootedness
Before reaching up to break through
Announcing new life
Out of embedded life prints
Echoing what came before
Reflecting what will come next
From the garden centre
To the bedroom
From the wilderness to a lover's embrace
The energy of natures impulse
Is to renew to replicate
To declare its imperishability
As it dies to be reborn renewed
Echoing as it falls through autumn air
The twisting turns of of Sycamore
Once carved into love spoons
The living seed implanted
In the passionate embrace
The promiscuity of nature's
Desire to reimagine itself
Geoff Smith
The Mystery Of Creatures
Where was that butterfly bound
that fluttered across a mile of sand,
straight out to sea ?
At low water, at the sea’s frill,
where were the fish who left
their shapes, like plaster casts
in the soaking sand ?
Where did the herons fly, wing touching wave,
with beats slow as windmill blades ?
Vivien Jones
Enchantment prompt
Wet
As I pass through the
jaws of Dumfries.
Rain water cascades
off rooftops,
plummeting to the
streets below.
Splashing on gum
covered pavements,
seeping through
the crumbling and
cracked cobbles -
creating a new
home; making a bed.
As the Lore Burn
grows malevolently
under the town and the
cretins and creatures work
to the pitter-patter of
footsteps above them,
a place to call its own,
in the depths
of a forgotten tunnel
that's lost its way.
In a place near to nowhere,
Far south, far west, this town.
Daniel Gillespie
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