Here are examples of poetry from some of our members.

Boot Helen Meakin I smelt him first before I saw His hulking mass inside the door ‘No tramps in here’ my colleague spoke He laughed as if she’d told a joke And moving down aisle A to E Looked back and threw a smile at me Which I caught, and kissed, without a care I searched but he, no longer there Travelled to large print and oversize In a perfumed cloud of fetid pies He danced, books caste within his wake Shakespeare, Auden, Shelley, Blake Grains of literature scattered to chickens Within his mind, Trollope, Dickens Were but names without redress And now a literary mess Milton, Wilde, Chaucer, Lee Works of art, flying free Leather butterflies of words Flapping ’cross the room like birds And I, enraptured, followed on Praying soon he would be gone And take his passionate hold on me Away from Wythall library But no – he would not leave quite yet As he traversed the alphabet Until again he reached the door Where his hulking mass had stood before And disappeared into the night With my heart held very tight In his filthy travellers glove Stealing all I knew of love But wait – what lies there in the road A boot he’d dropped as off he strode And now I search from mount to pit A stinking foot that boot to fit…

The Cruise Joan Johnson For Fred and Bet, a holiday meant a caravan Somewhere on the Western coast, and once the Isle of Man. For Fred had always said that they could not afford (even if they’d wanted one), a holiday abroad. So Bet was quite delighted when Fred broke the news They’d celebrate retirement with an Eastern Cruise. At last! A chance to see the places she’d only seen in books Pyramids, Oases, Mosques, Bazaars and Souks To hear a Muezzin call in a Cairo street, To feel the warmth of desert sun and sand beneath her feet. That night she dreamed of Egypt, sailing down the Nile With Omar Sharif in a felucca, Cleopatra style. Next morning she could not resist going into town In the Oxfam shop she bought a lovely evening gown (a necessity for dinner serviced upon a cruise) Some sun block, sunspecs, and a pair of pretty summer shoes. That evening, sitting by the fire, said a happy Bet “Fred dear, have you applied for our passports yet?” “Passports?” said he, “We don’t need those for our trip afloat We’re cruising east from Gas Street in a narrow boat. Along the Coventry Canal we’ll cruise, and we’ll explore Places in the Midlands that we’ve never seen before!” Fred never understood why Bet screamed till she was hoarse, Then packed her bags and left him, and is suing for divorce.

After The Tornado Eileen Terry Barriers stretch from kerb to kerb An unfamiliar eerie silence. Busy roads now traffic empty But for lines of parked white vans. The whine and whirr Of chainsaw motors Swiftly slice uprooted trees Disturb the peaceful afternoon. Shattered windows, blown out doors De-roofed houses sporting covers Red and blue and gaudy orange Look like mushroomed market stalls. People calmly moving rubble Stacking doors and window frames Bits of fences, strips of flooring Onto bonfire looking piles. The little park where once we played Was closed, deserted, silent, bare. The trees we climbed, when kites got tangled Lay flat, exposed, plucked from the ground. A man stopped by, with broad white smile, ‘Come to see our big Disaster I was shopping, sky went dark I hurried home before the storm. Turned the key in my front door It wouldn’t open, wind so strong I pushed and pushed till I fell in Thank God I’m safe, we’re all alive.’

The poems are extracted from our anthology “A decade of writing 1997—2007 ”.

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