The Painting

Small houses huddle round about the quay,
Slipshod and shadowed by dusk’s charcoal veil.
The fishing fleet lies, hulk-like, in the gloom.
Dark figures work the decks and thick,
Blunt fingers knot and twist the dangling ropes and nets.
A single moonbeam cast upon the sea
Suggests a life lived hard, lived honestly.

© Gill Dunstan

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Slippers

I find you in a distressed gentlefolk’s
bungalow clad in a tartan dressing gown

wearing the soft, sad slippers of old age.
A shadow of the irascible man who only wore

shoes, as he trailed honest dirt and debris in
through back and front door, into the lounge.

My mother lives dangerously in her dotage:
she wears crimson high-heeled hostess mules,

replete with a tacky feather trim. We listen out for them:
clickety-clack, clickety-clack. It signals Scarlet O’ Hara

has made it down the stairs again: a perilous journey
from her bedroom to the relative safety of her hall.

They do not flatter her early morning attire:
a long sleeved, full length high-necked nightdress,

but the colour matches her hostess robe.
And her flaming aspirations are still red hot.

© Sophia Roberts
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Dissolution

This counterpane on our bed
isn't the one I made when we married,
but the tradition – white crochet cotton –
survived. Until today.

I don’t know if
I care to unravel
the hours of work
start over again.

All this time
there had been
a mistake,
near the beginning.

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

This is the House Sophia Built

I climb

the stairs of that house, fragile

with age and fear of dry burning ~ Carolyn Forché

As I climb the stairs of this house,

fragile with age and fear of dry burning,

I recognise a familiar ambience

I perceive the old aspirations –

what I thought I wanted

to come home to. 

How I anticipated, as I surveyed, measured,

weighed up and planned for our life together,

that I would love and caress every imagined inch. 

But I now know, as with questioning footsteps

I stumble through the gloaming, to climb

the stairs of this house, there was no faith in me.

For within months of taking possession

I’d be saying, “I’m so sorry; it’s hopeless. 

No matter your potential - how very lovely you could be –

you are beyond me.  I do not have the resources

(the time, the energy, the money, the aptitude)

to make you, sing.  I regret that history must repeat itself:

that I must give you up, not for another.”   Not yet.

This abandoned house is the measure

of all the works in progress I sabotaged,

thought my own deliberate fault. 

And I am a foolish virgin, fragile with age and dry burning,

praying not to be extinguished, before the door is locked.

But the attic still stands:

radiant rooms, connected by

low doorways and corridors. 

My glorious garret rooms,

naked of décor since 1974, now

hung again with faded ottoman silks,

cushioned with worn antique tapestries,

furnished with chaise longues

and my everlasting soirée guests.

I am home.

(Author’s note: ‘dry burning’ simply means to let the heater run dry of kerosene and extinguish itself).

© Sophia Roberts

All rights reserved

National Trust Volunteer

A woman sits upright in her chair,

her speech prepared.

She stares at the heavy,

wooden, filigreed sideboard,

architectural in its construction. 

Soles creek on the bending floorboards,

she smells the waxen lavender odours,

as she rehearses, lips moving.

But they walk past the open door,

overloaded with history.

© Valerie Taylor

all rights reserved

National Trust Volunteer

No-one knows I’m him

third portrait from the end

Hon. Marcy Maxwell Thynn

Done a little time

for a Stock Market thing

© William Botley

all rights reserved

National Trust Volunteer

The dead woman standing speaks

for when she wordlessly suggests we

don’t touch the Louis sixteenth ormolu clock

(whilst silently reminding that our children

are not permitted to test a rather fine example

of a Queen Anne bed)

we beat an arrogant retreat

to the sound of her muttering

“jobsworth”

© Sophia Roberts

all rights reserved

New Floor

Whenever I think

about my floor

I think it once again

an old floor

a good floor

I treated with disdain

I trod on it

I fell on it

covered it with chairs

I even used it pour amour

Such a lovely little floor!

But now they’ve carted

it away

I do not like me any more!

© William Botley

all rights reserved

May Progress

That first time I came

over the Cheshire plains

they were bedecked and swathed

in white lace blossom swags;

decorated as if for our nuptials.

© Sophia Roberts

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Circle of Light

What can I do, poised on

The periphery of this event?

Imagining, waiting,

Picturing them…

Mother, Father, Baby…

Perhaps I can conjure them

In a circle of light?

In a city of

A million psyches

Trapped in flats

And partitioned rooms

Under criss-crossing

Silvery planes,

There will be a moment

When the signal goes

And the baby begins her journey.

The breathless hours will propel her

In stops and starts, as

She is pushed up the warm canal

Into a strangely lit room with

Faces gazing down at her,

As she is pitched into

The shocked arms of her parents.

She will lie, skin on skin

On her mother, then her father,

Their tones and smells as familiar

As the dark room she lived in,

Where their voices

Echoed in her watery world.

She will feel the rhythms of

Their breath,

And burrow in the milky folds,

Rocking and murmuring

In her mother’s arms.

Always folded, wrapped tightly,

As eventually she

Begins to open her eyes

And distinguish the map

Of their faces, their smiles,

Sensed before,

Through the muted sounds she has

Heard in her safe, dark sleep.

Above us all in the frosty night sky,

Lies the illuminated stitching of Cassiopeia,

Anchored on veils of starry infinity,

The constellation, complicated and minute,

Registering this moment,

As I await my grand daughter.

© Valerie Taylor
all rights reserved