Poems of the Month, Poems by FSP members published elsewhere, Prizewinners…
POEM OF THE MONTH, July 2015.
selected from the June FSP readings by 2015 Anthology editors, Margaret Clark and Murray Alfredson.
MOVING ON NOW by AVALANCHE
People, they’re easy, but families ?
Families are hard.
Nothing ever stays the same
It’s all changing, all moving
Just at different rates.
The wind howls the trees
They dance –
And your heartache
Is hardly an excuse
A drop in the ocean a sigh in a storm
Same as salvation
Same as paying the next
Bill or two
Same thing really, like astrology.
People, they’re easy, but families ?
Families don’t want change
Families don’t like change
Even if it’s all around them
Ploughing the same old
Furrow and beating
Out the same sword
Chasing the same bird…
Metal is unforgiving
But not as sharp as words
Love is easy, but forgiveness ?
Forgiveness is made to be hard
It is a bird in a storm
It is a sword in the tree
It should be easy, but then,
Forgiveness is change.
POEM OF THE MONTH, June 2015.
selected from the June FSP readings by 2015 Anthology editors, Margaret Clark and Murray Alfredson.
LAST NIGHT by KRISTIN MARTIN
Last night
I hugged my mum.
She hugged me back,
tight.
I breathed her scent
of washing powder
and knew that I was safe
and loved.
I whispered
in her soft grey hair
I’m so glad you didn’t die
and then I woke.
POEM OF THE MONTH, May 2015.
selected from the May FSP readings by 2015 Anthology editors, Margaret Clark and Murray Alfredson.
VILLANELLE FOR A MURDERER by VALERIE VOLK
He views the glinting knife with keen delight.
He’s kept it close to him for many years.
It gives him power to bring eternal night.
Along the polished blade there flickers light;
he’s buffed it well; cleaned off the rusted smears.
He views the glinting knife with keen delight.
Once more it shines with potency so bright
he wonders why he’d fallen prey to fears.
It gives him power to bring eternal night.
He relishes in secrecy this sight
that makes him master over all his peers.
He views the glinting knife with keen delight.
That moment when with sure unerring bite
through yielding flesh his famished blade he steers –
it gives him power to bring eternal night.
He contemplates once more the cherished rite
although he knows that retribution nears.
He views the glinting knife with keen delight.
It gives him power to bring eternal night.
POEMS OF THE MONTH, February 2015.
by Elaine Barker, Valerie Volk and Martin Christmas,
selected from the February FSP readings by 2015 Anthology editors, Margaret Clark and Murray Alfredson.
Copyright for the poems belongs to the respective authors.
A BRIGHT RED APPLE by ELAINE BARKER
with one bite taken out
has been tossed into the gutter.
It’s a reminder of Eve,
her turning away and her weeping,
or Snow White growing drowsy
then held fast in a glass casket, sleeping.
In the Greek legend
Aphrodite won the apple of discord,
symbol of conflict, anguish and envy.
Yet this fruit represents good as well as evil.
Think of Mary and the Christ-child
portrayed with an apple,
the mystery of love and salvation embodied
in the scarlet orb.
Consider the Celtic king Curoi
whose soul was hidden within the fruit.
When cut in half by Cuchulain
and his lover, the murderous Queen Blathnat,
the apple’s seeds revealed
the five-point star of immortality
and so the king survived the blow.
Such stories lift this object from the gutter.
Abandoned here, smiling at the sky,
it retains a robust complacency,
takes on a life in our imagination.
Despite the missing portion, snap-shot bright,
the apple becomes an illustration
in a child’s first picture book.
GATHERING ROSES by VALERIE VOLK
My mother was insistent,
picking roses.
Family vases, gifts for others –
didn’t matter.
“You must take off the thorns.”
Old habits linger longer
than the ones who bred them.
These days I stand, as taught,
and snap the thorns from where
they cling protectively to stems.
Remove their guardianship,
absolve them from their duty.
Yet thorns themselves are beautiful.
The sharp-etched curve that tapers
to a wicked point, the subtle shade
of colour grading from the stem,
the tough resilience resisting
all our puny efforts.
So as I stand, and break off thorns,
my sense of satisfaction
in removal of impediments,
my savage joy in their obliteration,
is tempered by reluctant admiration –
and, almost, regret.
Somehow those scarred bare stems
are more reproachful than
the vicious claws I’ve thrown away.
But then I hear my mother’s voice:
“You must take off the thorns.”
THE SPANNING YEARS by MARTIN CHRISTMAS
January 10th 1938
Mum (not mum then)
writes to dad (her boyfriend).
Palestine Police Force,
Terrorist dossier compiler,
official photographer . . .
a bitter sweet letter:
Love me or leave me,
ending with:
“I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
Did the trick. They married in December 1939.
Never an easy marriage.
When she wrote the letter, she . . . not quite 25.
When he received it by the first steamer . . . not quite 28.
January 20th 2015
77 years later,
I am reading page 59 of Yeats’
collected poetry. The poem: He wishes for the cloths of Heaven.
Final line:
“I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
I sit here, in this chair,
in dad and mum’s old house,
where I now live.
Thrown back in time,
to 1938.
2004, mum died at 91.
Just before she died, mum whispered: “Son,
he was the only man I ever loved.”
Now, in 2015, I’m glad she was once
so young and innocent.
When did life’s harsh reality set in?
And he? As young and innocent as she.