Fay Marshall

The mists are lifting on the Severn plain;

barely-remembered hills steal into view.

Recall of pleasure past is pain.

A poet wanders down a country lane.

in his mind’s eye the hills are clear and blue.

The mists are lifting on the Severn plain.

These are the ways he will not walk again.

He turns away from all he ever knew.

Recall of pleasure past is pain.

The roar of London beats against the pane;

no golden dreams remain he might pursue.

The mists are lifting on the Severn plain.

Love unrequited, every hope in vain,

the need to earn his bread demands its due.

Recall of pleasure past is pain.

He ekes out ‘half a life’ for little gain –

his courage constant and his vision true,

The mists are lifting on the Severn plain.

Recall of pleasure past is pain.

Jan 2011 – Fay Marshall had her poem ‘A.E. Housman in London’ accepted by ‘South’ poetry magazine for the Spring issue (no. 43).

War Scars 5 The Gardener’s Cottage – Winkfield 1940

Violet Dench (c)

Arriving at the cottage she felt a coldness,

not the reality of Winter, chilled by north winds

and rain turned to sleet, but a presence,

ambient in disclosure.

‘Seen and not heard’ meal times pursued days

& to their ending. In between, there was no warm

memory to reduce the harshness of distance.

At table, the man sat stern and cold, the woman

silent, frugal in her offerings.

Confined to her high chair, their small child

remained quiet and still in learned obedience,

and she, the unwanted guest, voiceless, immersed

in the knowledge of being a temporary burden.

At night the damp touch of the bed

in the musty attic room made her bones ache,

her misery increase.

It could have been days, weeks, a month or more,

the coldness lent no sense of time.

War Scars 6 Poor dog – Winkfield 1940

Violet Dench

I still dream of Mrs. P., my foster mother for a short time

during the war when I was twelve. I dream of the daily meal

of unwashed, over-boiled, potatoes in their jackets, the skin split

and water sopped, the dirt ingrained, the tinned corned beef,

its jelly liquid warm. Once a gift parcel arrived from America,

addressed to me. The letter said ‘Dear Miss Violet, We hope

you enjoy the enclosed... I didn’t. Mrs. P. took it. She took

everything. I dream of the lumpy chaise longue I slept on,

under the front room window, the smelly blankets, Mr. and Mrs. P.

in their bed nearby, their baby girl in a cot next to them. I dream

of the other evacuees. The family from Plumstead who lived

in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Gordon Cazaly and Mick Davis

from school who slept in the other. I dream of the poor German

Shepherd dog kept in the coal-shed, the coal in the bath. I dream

of everyone crammed in the dark room downstairs at night

when the air-raid siren sounded, listening to the German planes

overhead, waiting for the bombs to fall. Mrs. P. was terrified,

she’d keep whispering ‘hist, hist’, scared to death we’d be blown

up. One night Gordon Cazaly kissed me on the cheek in the dark.

I hated him but not as much as I hated Mrs. P.

Violet Dench’s ‘War Scars 6. Poor Dog – Winkfield 1940’ will appear with ‘War Scars 5. The Gardener’s Cottage – Winkfield 1940’ in the next edition of ‘South’ poetry magazine.

Eve

Finola Holiday

She stood in terminal 3

a cap of strident pink

pulled over her fair hair and the obligatory

two inches of luscious bare flesh

showing between her jeans and jersey

A gilded lucky-bean winked from her navel.

She bought a polished apple

and stepped out of view and so I did not see

the young sun-golden Adam

she gave it to.

Published in Ver Poets. John Cotton's Ten Liners 2010.