'Horizons' Poems
Selected poems from the new Wey Poets 'Horizons' anthology
Nothing to worry about
Last week was a good week he thought,
lying in bed for a few minutes
before getting up for work.
He wasn’t being made redundant,
his girlfriend wasn’t pregnant
and the pain he’d had in his chest
was just a muscle strain.
Things were going well.
‘Nothing to worry about, except death,’
he thought contentedly.
Stephen Bailey
A Wet Dog
Straight you come to where I sat,
fresh from a walk and sleek as a cat,
flat coat dripping –
what showing you’ve just been at –
seaside dipping.
Wet with surf from the morning tide,
tail tip up to wild eyes wide,
appearing somewhat wiser
of the elements you now confide,
waves were higher.
Master comes now to your aid
and at last you’ve stopped and stayed
pending his attention.
Towelling down he rubs you dry
from nose to tail, from ear to eye,
with action strong and bold,
though under such duress you try
to escape his hold.
But you’re sure it is no sweat
to fill the role of a loving pet,
for when we sense a whim
to bathe we hesitate, and yet
you plunge in for a swim.
Tim Bayston
LOSS
I’m Adam, a master crafter.
I sculptured you in alabaster,
and my dreams became unfurled,
to see you spring to life, emerging,
portraying the sort of person you are;
grinning, sparkling, laughing with the world.
Yet if only your model
could imitate your art
of bright affection.
Alas, no, this alabaster
is cool to the touch,
and I have lost you
to someone else,
yet loved you so much.
Julie Buckingham
FEBRUARY
with Pigeons
Sun stares through brown interstices.
The sycamore coppice has woven frames
for blue fragments of the February sky.
The pigeons come and go in silence
about their winter business. Mid-afternoon
they have assignations on the garden wall.
Beaks intertwine, sudden courtship
then flurry and flap away, leaving me
with camera irrelevantly pointed.
Blue becomes bruised grey
becomes black and weeps
icy showers.
The daffodils’ premature maturity
is not threatened by the weather.
They nod among themselves.
I watch for rainbows and hope
that summer will arrive
in March this year.
Janice Dempsey
TOUCHING SUMMER
the world is caught
in net curtains
summer struggles to free itself
she wants to touch
summer
for the last time
she sees herself as a child
with a big big grin
a hairy gooseberry
like a translucent marble
that the sun hides in
she asks herself
what they used to call them
“Goosegogs!” herself tells her
the goosegogs bursts
upon her tiny tongue
she both likes it and doesn’t
she winces as the cancer bites
the day falls
from her hands
she leaves summer behind
Donall Dempsey
Pale Envelope
Delivered daily to your door,
pale envelope of dawn.
It holds the promise of the day
in quantum concealment,
indefinite, unformed.
Don’t break the seal too soon,
but rather, let it lie serene:
the day as yet unstamped, unfranked,
panoramic and beautifully blank –
not yet written on.
Delivered daily to your door,
pale envelope of dawn.
Don’t break the seal too soon,
don’t rush with fuddled fingers
to rip and tear, to crush and crease,
but rather, let it lie in peace,
turn it gently in your hands,
enjoy its cool, clean lines, expand
into its open spaces,
reflect upon its innocent faces:
the day as yet unstamped, unfranked,
panoramic and beautifully blank –
not yet written on.
Delivered daily to your door,
pale envelope of dawn.
Don’t break the seal too soon.
It may have other things to tell you,
something else to say,
before you force it open
to unleash the restless day.
Jeremy Loynes
Dignity
“I’m fucked son,” my father said
as he sat on the edge of his bed
after throwing up again that day.
He didn’t blink once,
stared the doctor in the eye
when he spoke of the
cancer they’d found,
secondaries in his stomach.
“I’m fucked son,” he said again
when the doctor had gone,
then laughing said:
“They’ll be stoking the crem.”
He accepted the offer of hospital
though he knew his chances were slim.
A kidney infection
put the kibosh on surgery,
antibiotics failing,
body filling with fluid.
“Switch my lights out,”
he said when they told
him the mess he was in.
Waking from fitful sleep,
he watched us from his hospital bed,
a tired grin played in his eyes.
I thought about the years I’d hated him,
not caring if I saw him again.
I put my face close to his,
“I’ve always admired your courage”, I said.
The words came out
with a life of their own.
Owen Osler
OTHERWISE
And the technology goes on:
small bleeps from the pocket
and we leap to attention;
the drill bit outside with
repeated assaults on the road
harrying again misbehaviour
running more than mere surface deep
from gas or water, water or gas.
Yet not far away, within knowledge
of footfall, is birdsong, a river – there
too the reach of the otherwise:
the copse with its leisure, planting
its trees for family likeness –
fertilising, watering; a world
without in our hearing a breath
being taken. Truly inspiring.
Belinda Singleton
