The Poetry Marathon

I don’t know what I am (redacted word)

some comic (redacted word) this is

Playing with words for some (redacted word)

Unbidden, unseen, unknown.

I am (redacted word).

I am a mid-life sandwich

You can see me coming.

A weighed-down superhuman,

worn out at the edges.

I’d like to call myself a pensioner,

with freedoms whilst still healthy,

to live more riotously,

to explore

but duty pulls me.

My wide portfolio profession of different roles.

My unshakeable responsibility.

It’s not funny.

To get my head straight

in the right place

to think

I am closeted away

in a cool dark bedroom,

wrapped in embroidered sheets.

I write each thought

deliberate,

my pretty distractions

placed firmly in the wardrobe.

It’s August still

and yet the field edges are

unseasonably alight.

Great stands of hawthorn hedges,

the most ancient in all of Cheshire,

loaded so heavily with scarlet fruit

bend over you,

into the wet wildflower meadows

created in the crook of the River Mersey,

the boundary river.

Author: ©️Jane Eckford

2nd September 2023

What is love?

What is love if not the adoring gaze  of a Swiss cow gazing at you across mountain meadows.

An elk is the loudest of all deer,

Glass lightbulbs contain gas and are fragile.

Buckets are biblically old in design and sometimes leaky,

Carports offer protection from the weather.

Elbows facilitate surreptitious nudging.

All carry characteristics of grannies.

Author: ©️Jane Eckford

2nd September 2023

Acoustic guitar stings and taps

leading into louder dance

A light female voice, breathless,

the words indecipherable

though I listen closely

only half understanding

snatches of song.

‘doesn’t take a job in the night

return to me

all my friends are

half-gone birds, keeping time,

are words, are magnets’.

Who will sing for me?

What is my song?

Who will sing the sense of my life?

Do you see me in spirit?

I have loved and have been loved.

They await me.

The empty swing

invites all-comers

to sit awhile

to dangle, legs and dreams.

I stand and gently rock

the empty swing

warmed by the end of summer

in fields of afterglow.

Sunflowers with heavy heads of seed

turn their upward gaze towards

the empty swing

which twists with every breeze.

Love has moved me

on beyond the flaming golden field

A hand in hand departure; farewell

the empty swing.

author: ©️Jane Eckford

2nd September 2023

The earth was flat when he last looked

sitting at the kitchen table,

concentrating hard,

with wooden pieces strewn haphazardly

across a red checked tablecloth.

Europe had disintegrated into pieces

with eastern wars erupting;

troubles breaking worlds apart

flood and famine

tornadoes, hurricanes, disease,

Omnivorous firestorms displacing everyone

And all living things

running now to the very edge

of this earthly plain

to find the oceans cascading,

in great floods escaping,

down the table legs.

Victims wash up against the shore

from upturned boats

making summer passage

on quieter tides.

The dead are blamed,

perpetrators of their own demise,

whilst the reasons for their leaving

lie unquestioned, uninvestigated.

Who would leave their home and family?

No-one’s asking.

Author: Jane Eckford

2nd September 2023