Week 19 – photograph by Kevin Eagles
The urban sunset skyline attracted some evocative poems, any of which would make admirable companions to the photograph, however there can only be one winner and this week it is Carolyn O’Connell with Makeover. Congratulations to Carolyn.People voting for this said they did so because it was so unusual. I agree. An original and exciting poem. In second place was Unfinished Skyline by Sarah Miles. Well done to Sarah and a big thank you to everyone who entered and to Kevin for the photograph.
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Poem 1
Unfinished Skyline
Our horizon is woven with tapestry faults.
Intricate highs where thread ran bare,
Hidden lows, longing to be unpicked,
Undone, un-loved.
We exist unfinished,
Discarded on a taut frame.
Clipped greetings as we pass in the street,
Guarded glances of maybe;
Maybe we should talk
Maybe one day that Oxford skyline we dreamed of
Maybe there’s another silhouette to be made
Maybe.
Until then, we converse at needlepoint
Frayed edges match frayed tempers
Our story is flatlining
A Norfolk landscape of love unlived.
Sarah Miles
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Poem 2
The Apple Orchard in the Back Yard of Home
The apples forever spill
their spiced nectar across the backyard
of my barrel heart, the dust of the trees
there to cradle us through the passing storm.
This is how a person finds home.
The blossom branching shadows
across the light from the open back door.
And you.
In the last light.
Coming closer.
Harvesting the orchards,
shaking down the trees.
Stephanie Arsoska
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Poem 3
Sky tiger
sky tiger crouches
at dusk ready to spring on
a sleeping city
Diane Jackman
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Poem 4
Shadows
Neath an ordinary sky
peached by your clouds
watch by street light extinguished
a man dies
lying in his bed
heart calls the day
spring tide turns
soul swept
skyward
unnoticed and unobserved
by the evening
as the shadows draw in once more
church bell knells the hour.
Andy Scotson
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Poem 5
Rule of Thumb
I am reminded of my parents’ forecasting
red sky at night or red sky in the morning
hours are wing-carried
and I am a distance from home
Life’s map of gifts
small moments sketched
thrum on a stretch of whispering clouds
and I am a distance from home
Sky shifts, hearts beat, I know
there are more questions than answers.
Today I am a butterfly
and I am a distance from home.
Eileen Carney Hulme
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Poem 7
Makeover
The sky has been to the beauty shop:
she has hennaed her hair cadmium
streaked cinnabar over her cheeks
claret drips from her lips, her nails
garnet tipped scratch against the black
of her couture dress, the indigo bag
swinging from her shoulders as she
walks across town ready to chance
her luck before night secures her
within its sepulchre of stars.
Carolyn O’Connell
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Poem 8
Foam-covered
Hark, a herald of birds singing
Alluring me to the window,
The first light is not up yet
But I am. I wander to the window
Tiptoeing through the silence
To look for dawn, pulling at the curtain
Smelling cold, damp, through the darkness
I hear a clock ticking.
Finally, in the distance beyond the shadowy moon
Specks of orange and white outline grey clouds
Gradually coming nearer, looking
Frothy, fizzy, bubbly, sudsy, lathered-up
Magnificence in the sky.
Johanna Boal
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Poem 9
And dawn will come
and day will go.
The sky speaks of hope.
The strands of life
laid out
in the layers
of the evening tide.
The sunset
of a life
well lived,
and light coming
through the shadows
and that hope
waiting for the sunshine
of another day.
Angie Butler
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Poem 10
Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning..
Light from a small star
Touches water droplets in clouds,
Refracts different colours. They are,
Morning or night, whatever our moods,
Fully understood in a world of machines –
No need to ask what it all means.
Below the built environment flattens
Like a cut-out silhouette, lightless in every part.
In no world is this enough. We live by patterns
Above built things, looking to turn life into art,
To see flaming light, arcing red with a warning
Or a delight, where, like shepherds, we wait
To see what the day will bring
Flattened lives in silhouette,
(Fewer sheep, now, more machines)
To see what the sky means.
Michael Docker
