NO MONEY IN POETRY

Anyone who writes and is at all self-critical will probably be able to relate to the sentiments contained in this poem.

SMALL CHANGE      

                                                       

When words are called for, verse or poetry,

I rummage in my pocket for small change

and promptly offer up a handful: See,

here are my words, these sundry coins. 

It’s strange 

to see them there, so lacklustre and dead,

those dull ten-pees, those drab pathetic twos,

that shone so very brightly in my head.

My hard-earned verses, rhymes, opinions, views, 

have not much sterling value, so it seems,

while other, bolder people’s money screams.

LOST LOVES

I'm very proud to find myself not only sharing a booklet but also sharing a page with one of my favourite poets, Wendy Cope, in a recent Sampson Low publication, Lost Loves. 

You can purchase a copy by clicking on this link:- https://www.waterstones.com/book/lost-love/wendy-cope/david-whippman/9781912960965

 

LOVE STORY

‘Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds’ 

W. SHAKESPEARE. Sonnet 116

I thought myself in love. I lay awake  

imagining your hair spread out like gold 

and whilst asleep your hair shone as I dreamed: 

such lustrous tresses, how I loved to touch.

All changed the day you had your hair restyled ...

you came home shorn and while I wept you smiled.

I yearned for love but that was my mistake:  

I never guessed love could turn quickly cold. 

Love was a fantasy or so it seemed:

I loved you little, loved your hair too much.

I thought myself in love but I was wrong. 

I loved you only when your hair was long. 

THE JOY OF NOW

The poem, Joy, part of the Murchen Quartet which appears in my 2017 Stone Witness collection, may be read as a stand-alone piece.

 

JOY

Awakened,

past erased, future

nonexistent,

their world begins afresh.

Only the extraordinary now,

a collision of senses,

exists.

 

Music.

Blackbird’s flute, 

grasshopper’s fiddle,

drumbeat scuttle of field-mice,

accordion-wind in high meadows. 

Silence.

In crystalline pools 

trout glide like ghosts.

Owls, tombed in dead trees,

imitate death.

Dreamlike,

in the magical moment,

hares dance.

ON THE BUSES

Like the proverbial buses, poem acceptances often arrive in multiples, rather than singly. No less than five of mine appear today in the Lothlorien Poetry Journal.

You can read them here: https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2022/07/five-poems-by-richard-fleming.html