kerry Brighton - Poem for Emma and Matilda her dog

Matilda

Thank you for taking
care of me this week.
For the walks on the field,
for the nice doggie treats.
For scooping my poop
and giving me cuddles.
For drying my coat,
which was drenched
from rain puddles.

We think you're so nice
and we'll see you
whenever
you come back to visit.

Love Tilda and Emma

Kerry Brighton

Café in the Square

I was your peach back then

cheeks fresh and pink.

You peeled me.

Massaged my plump tummy.

Shaped like a pear

you said

as you gripped me

wide hips bare.

I lay.

The summer of 82

me  17

you 32.

I worked as a waitress

in the café

in the square.

I wonder did you pick me

deliberately?

Or did I fall into your path?

Had we not consummated

our love in your Covent Garden flat,

would I ever have listened to jazz

in Ronnie Scotts or

danced barefoot amongst pigeons

in Leicester Square?

What fun we had

till mother's ruin  took her toll.

You dishevelled

a wrinkled prune

forty years old,

me still a waitress

in the café in the square.

Brian Turner

Here, Bullet
If a body is what you want
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Harry Clifton

The Park

Because anyone sitting still attracts desire,   

Even this will not be given you, the park   

In June, the silence of a bench at eleven o’clock   

On a Monday morning, or four on a Thursday afternoon.   

Someone will drift toward you, unattached   

And lonely. The spell will be broken, the wrong word said.   

It is cool, but there is no death in the few token leaves   

That must have come down last night, in the rain that freshened,   

The tree-smell that remains. For this season there is no name,   

Not summer, and none of the months of the year—   

A something inside you. Search your mind   

For the green arboriferous Word the boys and girls swing out of   

Like a tree, and the lovers   

On the grass in tantric mode, in an ecstasy   

Of untouching, and the human buddhas, legs infolded, reading.   

Branches, sheer translucent leaves—   

You would die to get under them forever, if it were given you,   

The park, on this, a day like any other day,   

And not the knowledge of everyone ever met   

Who will come upon you, sooner or later,   

If only you stay here. No, not people, or the walkways   

Made in another century, or the murmur of the great city   

Everywhere in the distance, but this breathing-space   

Where the void no longer terrible   

But to be relaxed in, the depressions   

Which anyway here are mild, incoming from the west,   

Slow-acting, chronic, lifelong not acute

Are there to be sat through, waited out   

On a damp bench, as a man sweeps up around you   

And the sun comes out in real time, stealing over the ground.

Fleur Adcock

For a five year old A snail is climbing up the window-sill Into your room, after a night of rain. You call me in to see and I explain That it would be unkind to leave it there: It might crawl to the floor; we must take care That no one squashes it. You understand, And carry it outside, with careful hand, To eat a daffodil. I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails: Your gentleness is moulded still by words From me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds, Your closest relatives and who purveyed The harshest kind of truth to many another, But that is how things are: I am your mother, And we are kind to snails.

William Butler Yeats

Brown Penny by William Butler Yeats

I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

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