Night-watchman

Eyes dropped on a thousand threads of gold across the cerulean waste

watch, silent, fluttering moths caught in moonbeams, guardians of the human race.

As morning seeps softly over earth's eastern rim the night eyes linger, still ajar,

then close, yielding father-love to the warm embrace of daylight's star.

© Sheila Rogers
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A lucky child?

On trains across wind-swept plains.  Boys herded, hungry, afraid.  And David’s Star

dealt death in that land; fractured families and the forsaken Bar Mitzvah.

Yet there was a lucky child: Thomas Buergenthal, who shunned the waste

Of lives short lived and through love and luck escaped the chambers others faced.

© Helen McIntosh
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The Boarding School Survivors Group

Eyes burning while he told his story
Disabled with anger by memories
Suspended for ever in their web of hurt
Triggered by the arrival of autumn
Taking him back

Warmth and understanding from the others
Palpable through common threads of pain
A rare moment of shared experience
Haunting them
Holding them back
from moving on with their lives

The boarding school survivors group hugged each other and left.

© Liz Redfern
All rights reserved

Three Kings 2013

Their famous presents wrapped in Christmas paper bought from the bazaar

Three camels strode with kings on their backs religiously following the star

They could not foresee how the story would unfold and tragically end in waste

A life full of potential and inspiration causing jealousy, suspicion and fatally defaced

© Liz Redfern 
All rights reserved

Quatrain: Outpatients’ Clinic, RD&E

In the waiting room anxious hands are interlaced;

the clock ticks, doors open: time goes to waste

on dated magazines reviewing makes of cars.

Finally called - Good News - thank your lucky stars!

© Tim Scott
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Outside Me a Star

When I look outside myself, instead of God, I see a star,

How can I hinge my unworthy poem to an object so far.

It is alone, incomprehensible and will seem such a waste,

Yet I fear I could easily choose wrong words in my haste.

© Valerie Taylor

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The Hours

Once, on another shore, I had eternity to waste.
Shed moments, careless as the wind-blown cherry blossom, bridal white, which 
     laced

the lawns in spring.  When did I cross the line where time, a shooting star,
burned fierce?  Was gone.  I yearn to grasp - but have let slip my hour.

© Gill Dunstan
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Moonlight

Moonlight deceives, paints

Sooty shadows, silvers, shifts
Perceptions, unnerves.

In the park, lovers
Sit entwined, believe, for now,
Eternity’s theirs.

Fluffy goslings sleep
Unaware the fox is close
Needing to feed cubs.

Only the ocean
Forever restless, remains
Unmoved by moonlight.

Close the curtains, dear
I prefer creeping darkness
To the moon’s pretence.

© Gill Dunstan

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A streak of Light

Sometimes what we see is just surplus to the gods’ requirements - waste;

mere cosmic rubbish.   But this debris – hurled hard - reflects Mars’ 

     profound distaste

for Venus’s tasteless new underwear (her neon stockings, suspenders and 

     bra).

Over the heavens it goes; momentarily recycled and become a new 

     shooting star.

© Sophia Roberts

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