The Poetry Marathon

Conjoined twinning is perilous

oxygen and blood,

fo ever and ever,

hoping for shared viewpoints

heartbeats heard

hopes supported.

Society expects this bargain to be made

of loss in service to the other

who carries on as normal,

considers the rest as baggage

to be excised at the end.

Author: Jane Eckford

2nd September 2023

The earth is a sleeping pig,

stinking,

boiling,

blunted,

blinking,

sourly computing every sound

in the blinding quiet.

The earth is a precious child.

We must attend to every sigh.

Rien de plus …

There is nothing more or else or other.

No other life space.

I corn’t spayk

I stand amazed.

April said she’d chum me

to a safer space,

side-eyeing all poisoned water,

and wholesale greenwashing.

Data is the root of all evil here.

‘Hauld yer wheesht, hen’

’We will replant sea grass

in Scotland’s coastal verges

but blindly dredge untouched ocean floors

for lithium,

sustaining daily prattle’.

’Scanny, she’s one for overthinking,

rendered inactive, without a clue,

Doollally tap’.

‘We must reap what we must sow’.

The great forest murmers

a global whisper

embracing in loose-limbed connection

across the piggery.

Author: ©️Jane Eckford

2nd September 2023

Cut loose,

new freedoms spring

from explosive endings.

I’m blind to them

such is the chaos,

grieving loss,

shaken questioning of self,

the tumult of new beginnings.

Dark firs and spruces

fall in order down the hill

and drape the checkpoint

in mute darkness.

Mists roll desolate,

hanging,

within one’s touch

floodlit by a single beam,

which lights benighted borderlands,

tempting new beginnings

far from the calm comforts of the past.

Invitation or reprimand?

Author: Jane Eckford

2nd September 2023

Hello everyone.  I am a poet and author based in the North West of England, UK, at the start of my creative writing career. I’ve had some success in a couple of anthologies. My themes are around place and personal agency, nature, experience and connection.  I’m hoping the marathon will help build in me the resilience to write on the hour every hour.