by Geoffrey Spratt

Sometimes at night, when I retire to bed

Upon your pillow I see your dear head.

You lie defenceless, breathing soft and calm,

To me your image seems a sort of balm,

It fills my heart with love and sometimes sadness

If we have been at odds, in foolish madness.

Beneath the gentle lamplight's pearly glow

Your features lose their age and seem to grow

Back to the girl I wooed and finally married.

The one who shared my burdens and who carried

Our only child; our fortune's pawn and loving pride,

The one on whom our hopes and futures ride.

Despite the cares and pains that make it hard to cope

I still delight in loving you and hope

You love me too, with body and with soul,

Excusing faults that I cannot control.

So at this time when life's a helter-skelter

Within each other's arms let's always shelter.

Renewal

by Geoffrey Spratt

Phoenix-like from ashes I had thought long dead

Emotion kindles in my heart once more and flames to light.

Unbidden and unstoppable, the bitter-sweetness of unspoken love.

No wish have I to halt the onslaught of its tide,

I am just flotsam, quite engulfed within the wave,

Drowning in wonder, wanting none to save me from its might.

Shall I pursue the object of my heart's desire?

Can I still dream romantic dreams and yearn for wondrous nights?

Or should I seek to purge my mind of your sweet face and rise above

My nature's passionate and tender carnal side?

There still is one whose faithfulness and love may save

Me from my weakness and return me to the path of right.

Then reason's rebirth, cool and clear within my head

Shows me my way, denying self, and girding me for flight.

I must not stay within temptation's sphere, fly like a dove

And seek familiar cotes wherein to safely bide.

Yet still sweet memory overcomes and makes me crave

That which I shunned; the wonder of new love and such delight.

The Island

by Ann Usher

The island called to her.

She lived in a glass and concrete flat.

The island called to her.

She worked in a glass and concrete office.

She walked to work through grey, grim streets.

The traffic, the crowds, the noise, the smell.

The grey, grim streets, the grey, low clouds, her grey low mood.

She was alone and lonely in the midst of crowds.

She fled to the north.

She went by train and then by ferry, over the angry, noisy sea.

She walked the hills, the heath, the beach.

She saw the crowds of trees, of birds, of flowers, of clouds.

She wore the island like a coat.

She could see the world without an end.

She drank the rain.

She ate the air.

She took the silence into her hands, into her head, into her heart.

She had come home.

by Rita Angus 

I pass unnoticed as the fleeting cloud

Is blown unheeded through the skies

By London’s jostling, bustling crowd

Where traffic roars midst shouts and cries

Tall, black spreading trees in the London squares,

Loom, towering from their earthy beds

Whilst I alone, and folk in pairs

Pass quickly, talking, nodding heads.

Bright lights through many a mullioned window gleam

On to the cold and windy street

Upon the ever moving stream

Of a million moving feet.

Like rich autumnal snowflakes, curling brown

Leaves windswept, battered, blown from trees

Set whirling, scattering through the town

By the chill October breeze.

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