Poetry

My mother died in 2001 and I realize now that there is so much I don’t know about her life and can no longer ask. This is something mirrored by many of my friends. As older relatives die history dies with them, especially when written letters and diaries are replaced by emails and social media. It is easy for people to forget what happened yesterday let alone twenty years ago. A news story can be huge one minute and disappear from the front pages the next.

I have written this chronicle of my life expressed in poetry in order to give my grandchildren and their peers some insights into the life I and my generation have lived. We Baby Boomers have certainly experienced massive social and technological change.

Perhaps there are people whose lives turn out exactly as expected, but I imagine they are few and far between. Certainly the twists and turns of my life have surprised me and I suspect many others born in the post-war era would echo my own experience. We may have lived through the Swinging Sixties but we were often remarkably naïve about life and its possibilities!  I hope these poems reflect some of this period.

My Poetry

Walking on Sunshine

On a lazy Sunday afternoona bloom of girlsmellow yellow on the warm green lawn,weave daisy chains of hopeblow dreams in the wind,as the boys preen

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Requiem in absentia

Won 2nd place in the Elmbridge Literary Festival 2021 Poetry Competition No Music There was no music at her funeralbut we could sense her thereas

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A Hat Well Chewed

The day Teal ate your hatyou weren’t best pleased.He chewed it well, that dear dog,his sloppy yellow jaw gnawing awayat the brown felt and trim.

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The Melody of Lockdown

I reach my hand up to the skyand touch a silencesoft as a silken spider’s web. The only sound, in blossom-laden trees,are songbirds,their twitter like

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The Covid Takeaway

I’ve learnt that I mustrealise there’s far lesson the menuso I shouldflip and not flapstop then maybe godo headstands or somersaultsto look at life differentlystretch

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Moondance

I would love to dance among the stars,sprinkle stardust over the earth,light up minds and be-glitter hairstyles.I would love to walk around the moonfeel its

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Covid Fatigue

I cry for the world that waswhere people flew from place to placewhere cities bustled with lifeshops chirupped to the sound of money in their

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Saturday at the public library

Entering the silence,a stillness of concentration,quiet shuffling of pages turning,a scrape of chair leg,the ‘tut’ or ‘sssh’of tetchy adultswaiting to be disturbed. Then the tiptoed

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