Committed writers dedicated to working together to produce excellent poems, short stories, drama, life writing, and creative non-fiction

Why not contact us for more details about our small, mutually supportive monthly meetings? Don't be shy. No need to be brave!

Sheila 01823 67 28 46 sheilarogers4322@yahoo.com

Valerie 01884 84 04 22 valtay@btinternet.com

Tuesday 31 January 2017

Regret

Neither Jealousy, hunched in a ditch,
Scrutinising that face,
Nor Envy in high branches,
Downwards-looking, quantifying that.
No one sets Regret clattering,

Yet, like a star, it burns more brightly,
The instant 'what might have been'
Is expelled from the sky.
Like Etruscan ancients we trawl the past
Mapping the flashes of our stars.

© Wendy Vacani
All rights reserved

"I'm so sorry, Mrs Pratt"

Brand new, you say?  Well, if Britney had hung her coat up on her peg as she's supposed to, it wouldn't have got mixed up with all the other garments brought in for the collage, would it?  Yes, I appreciate she's only five - but how were we to know? And it does add a lovely splash of colour up there on the wall..."

© Sheila Rogers
All rights reserved 

Woman in the Mirror

I see her post-war childhood
stilled in the freezing of her age,
lifting, melted up
to the surface of her skin,
as the passage 
of her years slips past.

Paths unexplored,
her eyes avert
lest the wound of
bitter regret
taints the stumbling
half sight of old age.

© Valerie Taylor
All rights reserved 

Regret

I don't regret
things I should have done,
poor decisions,
words best unsaid,
if I have made amends,
apologise,
learnt lessons from mistakes.

How different those
where ruthless time has driven on
and like a hit-and-run, left carnage
in his wake - but all's too late to change.

Then painful, futile guilt,
like a wild dog worrying a bone,
eats me - and nothing can be rectified.

© Gill Dunstan
All rights reserved 

Visitors

Regret is the man left standing
at her front door, locked.
Sadness, his cousin, slithers
across the threshold on dark days
to foment with Worry and Doubt.

Wide-armed is the greeting 
for Hope and Felicity,
the welcome as warm as
her freshly baked bread.

© Helen McIntosh
All rights reserved 

Regret

Terger - the other racehorse;
He didn't win.
10-1 odds
Not even a place
His brother, though,
Another matter:
Made history
Then disappeared.
Bred in the same stables - 
Had to be separated.
One kicked,
The other spat
Who named who?
Who had the last laugh?
Me or you?

© Isabel Hare
All rights reserved