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

Monday 12 June 2017

Buttons

Monsoon lightning
Rips the dark sky like tin.
We quietly sort: Pearl, Diamante,
Jet as black as sin.
In the dry season -
Shops a hundred miles away
Buttons make playthings
As heat flies from the day.

Through twelve shady houses,
Twelve verandas and plots
Under a hibiscus tree
Mother pleats and smocks - 
Remembers make do and mend:
Blankets kilts, tea-towel tops,
Dresses of parachute silk.

Memory works Open/Shut, like a fan -
We saved that box of buttons
A touchstone in dementia sand.
Twelve Houses furnished and gone.
Now, a nurse tests for buttons
You know the 'thing' is round.
'With b?' you say, 'not a belt!'
The sugared silence is profound.

© Wendy Vacani
All rights reserved

Blanket Ban

Girls in pearls are, oh, so sure
They gather berries, heather.
Lay soft blankets on the moor -
My darling cannot share.

Stick glossy feathers in their hair
And climb the ragged rocks,
Find the bird's nests, oh, so rare,
Ignore 'her' like a pock.

Oh My Darling, Daughter of Mine,
I'll find you tendrils of vetch -
Skeins so fine, to sew your eyes,
So you'll no longer fret.

Clasp this stem of curling fern -
Lie along its measure,
'Til it uncoils and straightens you,
Gives you strength to treasure.

Take the sap of the bluebell flower
To still your wilder blood.
Listen for all its bells to ring,
When you walk from the mud.

Choose your dock leaves carefully,
And walk the land so fair.
Tell those girls on your wedding day:
'To my trousseau do not give.
I've won my wedding squares!'

© Wendy Vacani
All rights reserved

Paralysis

Evening after evening
she presses the hydraulics, turning the bed
in the shuttered room.

And each evening
in a Monet-style kitchen
salad leaves are chopped
in the proper way with a Moulis.
Honey added to the Dijon.
Guests note, climbing the stairs:
cut glass, pressed linen,
stencilled vine leaves.

Madame answers questions on:
the family's way of life - golf in the afternoon
and after three days
she speaks of her daughter,
who crashed her car coming home
bearing a trophy.
Paralysis in the other room.

Madame writes to the son in Australia:
we've had plenty of guests this summer.
The jasmine you planted is growing -
I think she catches its perfume under the window.
She still can't speak.
Your father, like a fool,
is building her a pool,
so, in the cool,
she'll glide
like a water-lily.

© Wendy Vacani
All rights reserved

Heather

Ram hands through sky - it's blue enough,
touch expansively purple Heather,
and snap the rooted undertow
that twists like leather. Larks explode
like fountains - picture sirens
shooting their sound. Unconcerned.

Rafaella gathers her mood board,
But watch, the clouds are blowing over
Dew shakes inside a tissue grain.
Can she hear the old refrain?
Always Leave Nature Untamed.

© Wendy Vacani
All rights reserved

Blanket Ban

Relic of a past time,
rough on
the delicate skin of a child,
edges distinctively stitched,
with its red symbols of utility,
in a world of pretend order,
fear of authority,
emotional life
concealed in deference
wrapped in
grey or khaki,
clamped tight into
the sides of the bed
to keep warm
when frost crystalised white
on interior windows.

Banned when we all let go,
into equality, for
soft feathery duvets
of variable tog,
freedom and chaos
we bathed in the
soft giving clouds;
weightless relaxation
of central hearing.

© Valerie Taylor
All rights reserved

Saturday 10 June 2017

Heather

Your furtive shrouded mysteries,
in a low growing woody tangle.
Unconscious evergreen life,
subject to periodic visions
of delicate purple bells,
whispering through bleak mists
of mirror lakes and mountains.
Left wild, your truth
never crushed by cultivation;
wind lifting your face to the wind,
cooled by rain.
I’ll leave you there.

© Valerie Taylor
All rights reserved