Category Archives: Life

Light on water

March 26, 2020Life, love, poem, Poetrycorona virus, Life, light, lockdown, love, pandemic, poem, poetry challenge, waterThe Cheesesellers Wife

Drifting away down
under a dread
uncertain future
drowning
you are the light
at the top
of the water

For all those helping us through lockdown

Green

March 24, 2020Life, poem, Poetry, Wild lifeenvironment, Environmental, green, nature, photosynthesis, poem, poetry, published poem, wildlifeThe Cheesesellers Wife

Green rumbles rambles rolls and ripples
in all its shades and hues
rustles murmurs sways and drifts
floats on and under the waters of both
chill chalk stream and ocean
surfaces the land
spawns and augments tall trees
defines jungles, swamps, farmland
cools and shades, feeds and shelters
sparkled with daisies
strewn with buttercups
cut red with poppy wounds

Green is waste light reflected back from leaves
by the quantum machine of photosynthesis
that powers all life

‘Green’ was first published in the Environs issue of Snakeskin: http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk/

Music

March 19, 2020Life, poem, PoetryCorona, Earthweal, pandemic, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

The music just died
Here within our game
As we come to realise
Things may never be the same

Also for Earthweal

Land lines

March 4, 2020Life, poem, Poetrypoem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Threaded through our lives
Land lines
Road to nowhere
Or to home
Ancient drove tracks, Roman roads
Three lane highway
Pylons marching across hills
The copper buried in your street
Land lines

Bleeding my words

February 22, 2020Life, love, poem, PoetryGrief, Life, love, Marriage, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

When grief and loss slowed my dance
you were there
not to dance for me
but to sooth the chill
to kiss my soul better
so that once more
I danced
could find words and warmth
live again

Friday Poem: Beauty and Charm

February 14, 2020beauty, Friday Poem, Life, love, poem, Poetryancient poem, beauty, Capito, Friday Poem, Life, love, poem, poetry, Valentines DayThe Cheesesellers Wife

Beauty sans charm may captivate
But does not last, for look
It’s merely like the fishing boat
That floats without the hook

By Capito (around 600BC)

This poem is from the Dover edition: Great Short Poems (Ed Dorothy Belle Pollack)

Friday Poem: Fire and Ice

February 7, 2020Friday Poem, Life, poem, PoetryFire, Friday Poem, ice, poem, poetry, Robert FrostThe Cheesesellers Wife

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

By Robert Frost

Light from the shadows

February 6, 2020Life, nature, poem, PoetryClimate crisis, Earthweal, environment, Life, poem, poetry, renewalThe Cheesesellers Wife

Green shoots spring up in fire scorched land
deep roots are not reached by fire or frost
life on our blue globe lurks far and wide
in caves and at ocean bottom
in chemical pools
in basalt rock
life stirs
grows

Written in reponse to Earthweals challenge ‘Renewal’ at

https://earthweal.com/2020/02/03/weekly-challenge-renewal/

Please go and see what else is there!

It’s all geek to you

February 5, 2020children, Life, love, parenting, poem, Poetrychildren, family, geek, Life, mathematics, poem, poetry, scienceThe Cheesesellers Wife

Sixty six thousand miles an hour she spins us around her
yet a layer of grey moistness
stops the Sun’s nuclear furnace from warming my bones
as I lie here on the garden deck
wrapped old lady like in fleece blanket
and suburban birdsong

Five hundred thousand miles an hour we all turn around
the black maw at galactic central
that swallows worlds and never enough
lunching on stellar archipelagoes
leading me to think of Schwartzchild radii
and equations I once manipulated.

Faster than both, you fall through the front door
laughing over the factorisation error you made
in today’s school test.
Functionally innumerate, mathematically gifted,
golden, green eyed geek son of mine.

For my youngest son, 19 today, still a geek, soon to be an aerospace engineer.

This poem was written when he was still at school.