Category Archives: poetry

Cold Comfort

She limps, her walking stick tap-tapping

struggling to remember why

she is wearing her favourite floral dress

she glances at her sister-in-law,

overwhelmed


they were young teens

snatched from their homes,

dragged along dusty roads

imprisoned in a blood-red house

raped repeatedly

comfort women,

now in their twilight years

tap-tapping into rooms with sticks

trying to forget what can’t be forgotten

Bark to the Future

Crusty casing – buffering the ravages of time

a skeletal trunk bravely bending into the wind

with fortitude and grace


Coarse but staunch

extraordinarily ordinary,

a-peeling, papery thin arms thrusting upwards


towards languid finespun catkins

auspiciously alluring and ambitious

alpha and omega of the whole


crepuscular dappled branches

knotted, knobby ripples teeming and

budding with blossoming display

Go hug a tree

Published by Green Ink Poetry 2023

The Whipping Forecast

Always

Gale’s marriage was stormy, gusty, her visibility poor

a blight

hidden by chador, and bruises – gradually easing later

with ice.

His fist, imminent – never moderate

veering, cyclonic

A hoar!

Losing identity, rather quickly she moved out

rough, very rough – then phenomenal

occasionally falling, steadily rising

Gutsy now,

frost between them is predicted

forever

Published by SpillWords 2023