Click on the title to read the full poem.

IT HURTS TO SAY GOODBYE EVEN IF IT IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD by Mick Armstrong

It hurts but not as much as you hurt me, to say goodbye

I need to find myself

You filled me with so much promise, I remember the tingling in my body when we met

The excitement I felt that day and to realise I still feel that way about you

To feel the need to give you one more chance to risk it again

But I know I can't risk it just one more time even though I love you still

TIMELESS DICHOTOMY by Sara Innes

No breath of wind

nor fleck nor flaw

to catch the eye,

crisp and cloudless,

the afternoon sky

holds you,

misplaced moon.

 

I WANT TO STEP BACKWARDS, NOT FORWARDS, by Anita John

I don't want the white-paint

splash of a single snowdrop,

or the green finger-nails

of daffodil probing the air.

Not this year.

 

MY MOTHER'S BUTTON BOX by Georgina Phillips

Buttons lie jumbled in the blue and white tin,

cascade through my fingers as I pour them onto the old wooden tray.

They ping, bounce, scatter like mercury beads,

awakening memory.

 

PEASE PUDDING by Yvonne Crossley

 

When we were children we all knew the rhyme,

humming it under our breath

as a stream of dried yellow peas poured into muslin cloth.

Mother gathered the lop-eared corners together, tugged them tight,

dropped the bundle, in its white china bowl,

into boiling water.

 

 

THE SINGING SANDS OF LUNAN BAY by Yvonne Crossley

We walked the sands of Lunan Bay
To learn if they could sing,
Our boots marked nothing of our stay.

PRAYER FLAGS by Sara Innes

Wrapped round school railings,
colourful girls, arms waving –
ripped silk in the wind.

 

SELECTIVE MEMORY by Georgina Phillips

“This is my sister”, my mother says

to a fellow resident in the Home.

Today I am not her daughter.

 

 

GREEN APPLES by Anita John  

There were no bananas in the war

but there were apples: russets,

with their creamy, velvet flesh;

Cox's Orange Pippins, palm-sized,

like grenades; and Bramley's

for pies, if only you had pastry.

 

 

SEVEN TAKES ON A BICYCLE by Anita John
                             I

He is one with his machine: cleated shoes, helmet,

gloves to soften contact between metal and palm,

legs lycraed, crotch chamoised,

eyes stretched to the summit.

 

MY TWO FAVOURITE LETTERS by Sara Innes

Consider the frozen tinkety-tink of giddy ice
As it reels against the tumbler’s edge.
High-pitched, crystal cut
xylophone tones resound
like peals of liquid laughter.
Music to my ears.

DOCTOR by Bethany Halcrow

My dad was a doctor, the village GP.
He wouldn’t talk about it if we asked a question,
always said, “that’s private and confidential”.

SOAP by Bethany Halcrow

Plastic icy leaves climbed up the window,

the pink walls,

of your narrow, rectangular bathroom,

“Imperial Leather” stamped in capitals

on the metal rectangle

in the centre of the bar of soap.

Light shining dimly through the net curtain.

EVENING by Bethany Halcrow

Halfway up Arthur’s Seat we found a spot close to the sky,
to put our feet on the ground and our eyes on the water,
and stretched our arms up and shouted,
and screamed and ran as hard as we could.

MY SISTER’S FLAT by Bethany Halcrow

The budgie flies around when he wants to,
sits on the dripping dishes in the drying rack,
or chews someone’s hair, standing on their head.

SUNDAY SHOES by Lucy Douglas

The acrid smell catches my throat
And takes me back
To the glossy tan ranks of Sunday morning childhood.