Patric Cunnane
THE AMERICA THAT DIDN'T NEED MAKING GREAT AGAIN
This is the
America that didn't need making great again
With its open
spaces, hungry hearts ,bracing optimism
This is the America
that welcomed the world
That fuelled art
and poetry, music and expression
This is the
America that accepted its past
Knew that good
guys don't need white hats
This is the America of Ginsberg and Kerouac, Martin and Angela, Plath and Dylan, Aretha and Berry
This is the
America of the Sioux, Cheyenne and Cherokee nations
This is the America
I loved
Boarding a
Greyhound in Miami, disembarking in San Francisco
Eggs &
potatoes in New York, chilling with jazzers in Preservation Hall
This is the
America that didn't need making great again
Out on the road
where moonlight shines on endless highways
And the ghosts of
buffaloes roam the plains
Inspired by David
Hockney's painting, Pacific Coast Highway
and Santa Monica 1990.
Barry Coidan
Bruegel’s “Icarus”
North Cornwall, mid-October,
the coast road into Bude.
On a bend
a sloping ploughed field
framed by sea, cliffs,
a cloudless sky.
Beyond the field,
the crumbling rocks,
out of the cloudless sky
a young man plunges into
the sea. The moment’s gone.
We drive on.
By Alan the Poet Therapeutic
21 November 2020
© 2020 by Alan Raymond Wheatley
Everybody's Got
Talent
This poem is toward introducing the
poem 'The Arts Manager' as one of my open mic contributions
for Amnesty International Worcester Group's Human Rights Day Poetry presentation,
a Zoom event for the evening of Thursday, 10 December 2020.
Everybody’s Got Talent
While Zen Buddhists pose the question:
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
I propose an image for you to imagine:
“Imagine a scene that I have witnessed,
Of a spoon-fed woman’s joyousness
Upon being given a musical shaker
Toward her fuller participation.”
Some adjustments are more delightful
Than ‘reasonable,’ and no-one
Is truly ‘ineducable’.
John Sephton
Please find a very
short but topical poem below:
The Carbuncle
Washed up and wasted,
the carbuncle clings to the wreckage.
Luigi Marchini
Closing the Gate
Not in a garden, nor
a house,
I shift worlds in the
dig for home.
April, the cruellest
month.
A dog barks, a baby
cries
a dustbin clatters,
all against the dawn
and then the rain
falls.
My fickle conscience
riots against
the burden of ego. It
is the dog, the baby,
and the dustbin that
matter.
Another night and the
displaced take shelter,
unravelling, with
stern faces, in the dent
of concrete. This is
new to me.
Somewhere else my
country awakens
at this hour to a sky
of mottled blue tiles
and donkeys will
bray.
John Hurley
THE BASKET MAKER
With old skills dying and
craftsmen gone
Old ben had pride and still
clung on
He cut willow rods down by
the lakes
Knowing bog sally bends but
never breaks
Those plants that thrive in
boggy lands
Became works of art in his
strong hands
On his belt a sheath with one
sharp “scian”
At fairs and fetes old ben
was seen
With “skibs “ to be used as
potato dishes
And square peat containers he
called “kishes”
On his donkeys back,, as he
had no wheels
Wicker panniers balanced
known as “creels”
When demand for baskets got
so few
He must have wondered what to
do
Fish no longer sold in
“crans”
As plastic containers won
over fans
Cheap imports were now the
lure
Ben made celtic crosses for
the poor
Alan Gleave
The Old Man in his Garden
At last his
garden is supremely here, if misty
As colours pulse,
forms flex, in meditation.
Against a
lawn as plush a green as once
The parkland
of the big house, stand his trees,
Their
branches figuring the ideal grace
Of gestures which
are neither giving nor taking,
But fill the
air with swish and twitterings
Beyond
desire and meaning, as he is.
But to drift
among flowerbeds is the pain
Of
rediscovered darlings pushing back
From earth.
Returning as soft ponderables:
Those garish,
jagged outbursts of his youth
Pure flower
now, there for fruit not symbol ,
The weakening fingers crush to faintest scent.
Joseph Healy
The Owl and the Christmas
Tree
A
wide eyed owl sat in his tree in a forest of spruce trees in upstate New York
This
was Rip Van Winkle country where owls and old men had slept among the forests
for centuries seeing the world pass from a vantage point among the thick branches.
The
roaring shrieks of chainsaws woke him from his reverie as his tree was torn up
and fell among its fellows with a sound like thunder
Branches
twigs and leaves fell in all directions but the owl hung on
It
was his tree and his world and he would not depart it now
The
tree was hauled to the banks of the wide flowing Hudson River
The
owl still clinging to his branch found himself on a huge river barge
Wending
its way through the bluffs and passing pretty painted villages and
Holiday
homes set high above the river with their white clapperboard walls
Reflecting
the November sun which fell across the shimmering river waters
The
great metropolis of New York was reached and the tree hauled yet again from the
barge
And
placed upon a truck with great dexterity its extra passenger still puzzled as to
their final destination.
Outside
the gigantic Rockerfeller Centre the tree was hauled upright and stood again as
it had once stood in the snow covered forests of the uplands
It
was the Christmas Tree for the plague year of 2020
its
lights would help dispel the demon of the virus and create again a winter oasis
of gemutlichkeit
The
owl flew from a branch to catch a juicy insect drawn by the lights and
Alerted
the tree’s guardians who full of amazement took him down and placed him for
safety in a nearby animal protection centre
Could
not this wild owl have stayed in that tree and looked down each night at the foolish
humans who worshipped at its lights and drank in its beauty?
He had made his pilgrimage to bring his wisdom to the skyscaper dwellers and would not return.
Migrating Children
By Yan Li
Age? Eight, five, and one.
They float on English Channel.
In waves their boat sank.
Max Fishel
a falling out
