Month: August 2025

30 Aug: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

PYO Wildflower Meadow near Helmsley

1 – Glad that my partner and I made another trip and managed to reach Whitby, or rather the adjacent beach at Sandsend. On the way, instead of stopping for coffee at Helmsley, we found this Pick Your Own Wildflower meadow where you can also get coffee and cake…

2 – This week’s texture for graphic work – woodchip path at the PYO – one day I will show you how these textures come in useful…

3 – Grateful for the sea whose presence and waves are varied but always there to provide a sort of meditation break from the affairs of men…

Sandsend is a popular surfing spot in the new world of cold-water surfing (who wants to hang out in Hawaii anyway – grab your wetsuit boys and girls…)

4 – Grateful that the Spider Orchid Lily bulbs I added to the garden this year have finally flowered – nothing to do with spiders and not orchids either…

5 – I collect odd bits of detritus to use in collages – this one (probably a piece of gearing from a Bradford Mill or more prosaically a piece of a car engine) is a bit chunky but it reminds me of the 30’s Sunrise motif…

Somewhere in Wiltshire from a sketch I did at 17…
Yorkshire moors between Oxenhope and Hebden Bridge

6 – There is but one Painting/Poetry Postcard to go after this – I am replying to the “bonus” cards sent by participants to the International list (as opposed to the majority US lists) of which five included their names and addresses and so though, under the terms of the PoPoFest, one is not obliged to reply – these guys were obviously hoping for one – in fact one was on my list in 2023 – so I decided to press on with the paintings. I was particularly pleased with these two which are acrylic on paper, because I achieved the sort of looseness of touch that I seek but don’t always find – this may be a result of doing 35 paintings in about 5 weeks…

7 – Glad that a friend of mine who has been struggling with having terminated an unsuitable relationship is getting back to herself…

8 – Grateful that our holiday in Cornwall is only 5 days away and I hope the change of scene will do us both good…

9 – Glad that the apples I scrumped are ripening nicely without loss and that Discovery apples – my favourites – are coming into their all too brief season – it will be Egremont Russets’ turn next…

10 – Glad that dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night gave me the chance to post an unprompted poem of a tender disposition which made a change from the angry poems I find I have to write in these difficult times – you can read it here.

Have your best weeks ever – be your best selves…

Why not tell us about your Ten Things o Thankful…

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Kiss Points

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Buy a proper bread roll
and it will have flat, crustless sides
where it swelled during baking
touched and melded with its neighbour
though not so hard that it
could not be separated
– bakers call this the “Kiss Point”

Do partners’ bums whose owners
both turned their backs to sleep
from argument or mild estrangement
– softly reach out to gently flatten
and warmly kiss their loves behind
baking a fresh start into
each beautiful new morning…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Kiss points in bread rolls courtesy of Christie the Baker

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetics invites us to post a poem of our choice. As a salve to all the bad news and hatred in the world at present, which even we poets must do our bit to suppress, I offer you this gentle poem of coming togetherness…

22 Aug: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – Glad we found the perfect spot for these carved Elephants in a corner of our winding stair – we bought it last year in the market in Dieppe whislt on holiday…

2 – This week’s harvest/scrumped apples and plums plus Blackberry and Apple jam and Apple sauce. – I say scrumped but the apples and plums were eithe wild or hanging over a wall into the public domain…

3 – Grateful that the fern I placed in this lovely Macramé plant holder, is finding sufficient light to thrive. The Macramé was a gift from our son’s crafty girlfriend – Yayyy the 70’s…

4 – Grateful for the cards I have received through the Postcard Poetry Festival – the ones on the left are from my list – List 4 and on the right are the bonus cards from the International list. Everyone wants to send to a person outside the USA so they publish an International List – there is no obligation on recipients to respond to these but most include their address so I gues they are hopeful of a return card and I will not disappoint…

5 – Glad that I finished and sent the last of my official PoPoFest cards – this one to a lady in Dublin, so I decided to paint Ben Bulben in Sligo where we lived for 10 years for which I am also grateful…

6 – After a week without rain and with watering by hand at 100litres a pop, I was glad to see a little drizzle today (manifested on my windscreen) – enough to moisten the leave though I had to do a proper watering testerday…

7 – Can you guess the texture I spotted this week (useful for backgrounds in graphic work)? It’s a towel drying on the washing line…

8 – Glad that my partner has managed to get up and see her best friend locally, followed by a haircut in advance of our holoday njext month

9 – Glad that my working week is over but grateful to still have a job 2.5 days a week…

10 – Glad to have found this list to do each week…

I am new to this – my second week but in these difficult times it seems an excellent thing to have to focus on Ten Things of Thankful each week…

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Ubi Sunt

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Where are the days of our young passion
Where are the parts participated
In more than some or other fashion
In fact, in lovemaking delighted
Where are the springs in our eager steps
Crossing the threshold of our new doorstep
Painting our very special bedroom
Yet there it was came the cloud of doom
From early, unknown trauma, came down
To settle like blight on our good life
Occasional sunbeams and some strife
Now forty years and more gone around
Where are the lovers are they still there
Still searching for sunbeams, loving pair?

This is a carving I made for my late sister and brother-in-law for their wedding present – it is based on a drawing by Eric Gill.

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites to write to the question UbiSunt… Where are they 0r Where oh where?

Title your poem with the question – where are the/they…
Use the questioning within your poem, even with repetition
DO NOT ANSWER it though – the questioning is rhetorical
Employ concepts of mortality, the transience of life, a sense of nostalgia
Suggested themes: Childhood; Youth; Lost Generation; Days of Yore;
Employ whatever poetry style of your choosing from free verse to sonnet

A House Upside Down

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Our house is upside down
in more ways than one…

I wake in “my” bedroom
also my dressing room and study
to my right, from a huge shelf
hang my unenclosed clothes
a subdued rainbow – a male palette
with chests of drawers beneath
for more clothes and craft materials

Two bookcases bracket the bed
their shelves double stacked
with precious books and on
a pile of storage containers
my to-be-read are perilously perched
next to my desk – the space beneath full
four ukuleles lean against a bookcase
yearning to be played
one shelf above them
loaded with music

The ceiling is high since
horses once resided here
and through the window
our cobbled yard is packed
with plants and trees in containers
their aspirations to growth
also kept contained
Mock Orange, Olive and Winter Jasmine
now struggling with alternating
Yorkshire rain extended and
sun and wind induced drought

Rising I go to the spacious
though windowless bathroom
also given grandeur
by the high ceilings where
I had to lower the light
for effective illumination
and after some time checking
emails and doomscrolling
on the throne
I shave and brush my teeth
before breakfast
as per the latest thinking…

I look in on my partner asleep
at last, in the other large bedroom
where I began the night
falling asleep as she listens
to her talking book and enjoys
moments of snuggling up to my back
safe now the day is over
cut off from the world
by an evil disenchantment
forced to lie in bed like Brian Wilson
she may be asleep now but she knows
I am here and will feel safer for it…

I climb the winding stair
to the living area
once the hayloft
where two doors into open air
allowed the rapid transfer
of horses’ hay at harvest-time
Now made safe with Juliet Balconies
from which we can survey
the backstreet below or
the strange sight of our
garden yard seen from above
at night all a-twinkle with
sun-powered magic

The landing at the top of the stairs
is a library where recipe books
compete for space with novels
and therapy books and all open-plan
blends seamlessly into dining table
kitchen and sitting room
all traversed by a great King-post beam
in the centre of a roof rising
to twelve feet above me
I breakfast to the awful news
from Al Jazeera garnered
from around the world
and enough to make me as
depressed as my partner
if I were not able
to take action in polemic poems…

And so I descend to my study
and open the computer and work
at what the day provides
en route I note the cobwebs
and dust on the stairs
and when they get too bad
I will sweep them away
but not today
our house is upside down
in more ways than one…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics invites us to write a poem “wandering from room to room like a man in a museum.” 

14 Aug: Ten Things of Thankful

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My first time here on Ten Things of Thankful – introduced by Misky to this space…

One. My partner is in a deep depression which has closed off many of the things we used to do but on Saturday we managed to set out for Whitby which used to be a regular excursion. We stopped halfway at Helmsby and after having lunch, decided Whitby was too far, too busy, so we spent a liitle time in the excellent bookshop before meandering home on the smallest roads I could find…

One. My partner’s friendship bracelets taken as we had coffee in Helmsley…

Two. The book on Friendship from Helmsley Bookshop…

An alternative to buying a card – a ten poem chapbook from Candlestick Press

Three. Given that I spent 20 odd years as a hand-painted Signwriter, I am always delighted to see good examples of the craft which I am sorry to say are few and far between in the UK these days…

Four. One of the landscapes on our meandering route… I sometimes take pictures with a view to later making paintings.

Five. We also stopped in Risplith at G & T’s Ice Creams (they genuinely do make a Gin and Tonic ice cream) and whilst eating our cones in the car, I photographed this weathered paint which may one day come in useful for a background in some graphic work…

Six. For the last two months I have been taking part in the Postcard Poetry Festival challenge which is a project run by Cascadia Poetics in Seattle, Washington. The idea is to write an Epistolary style poem to 31 poets whose address list you are also on – to write about the picture on the card and to relate it to the person who you are writing to, who is of course, a complete stranger. This develops quick improvisation. This year I decided to make postcard-sized paintings and at a rate of 4-6 per weekend I have finished all but four this weekend two of which are below.

Two paintings from photographs taken in Crete during lockdown in 2020.

Seven. I still work 2.5 days a week for which I am thankful both because I need the money and because it keeps me abreast of things I would otherwise slip away from…

I love to photograph repeated items… There is nothing to give the scale of these San Sebastian Cheesecake (otherwise known as Burnt Basque Cheesecakes) but they are full-size cakes awaiting cutting before packing in our factory.

Eight. Barbara and I have booked a holiday for two weeks next month down in Cornwall – what the weather will be is anybody’s guess…

Nine. It was cloudy this morning so the watering of containers in our yard (we don’t have a garden) can wait till I get home this afternoon after my half day work – we have a hosepipe ban so it will take about 60 litres by watering can..

Ten. Healthwise, I am going to get a Lung Health MOT and have also been invited to take part in a Diabetes study out of Oxford University all knowledge is great at 70…

Welcome to TToT (Ten Things of Thankful) blog hop! Join bloggers from all over the world as we come together to share those things that we are thankful for. Ten is in the name, but no one is counting; feel free to link up no matter how many (or few) you can list. Make sure to go read and comment on the posts, too. The TToT has always been big on making this a friendly community, and getting to know each other through posts and comments is a huge part of that. We’re thankful for you!


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12 x Twelve Good People x 12

humanist55

Speaking truth to power
can be frightening
that’s the whole idea of all those
big men in black uniforms
all leather and shoulder pads
masks and dark glasses and of course
scary looking guns…
(Where do they find such types you wonder
ready to do the dirty work)
Imagine if you dare
this sorry lot in the changing room
at the end of their shift – they will
certainly look a lot smaller  out of
uniform and you will then recognise
the usual suspects of High School bullies

And you may feel yourself
to be too small a number
knowing as you do that the one in power
pays no heed to Polls and
if he chanced to think of you at all
he would imagine a very small number
“So very, very small!”
But numbers add up and if you can
share the secret password – K1ndness#
to find like-minded souls
with whom you can conjugate
– like times tables and become
the very thing that fascists fear
“We the People!”

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Protesters against Trump’s visit to London – photo by Bishopsgate Institute

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Lisa or Li in Poetics invites us to write about “Power”.

Blood from a Stone

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Hani Mahmoud is starving
his face has presented the afflictions of Gaza
on Al Jazeera throughout the conflict
but now, shrinking like a prune
his face tells its own story

Today he covers the shortage of blood
blood is life and however much iron
Gazans fortified their souls with
there is not enough iron in their blood
for it to be usable and besides
they are too weak to be able
to give blood without fainting

Israel calls a special meeting
of the UN Security Council
to complain about the starvation
– the starvation of hostages
and calls it an act of propaganda!
No doubt there was a time
when hostages were looked after
as the bargaining chips they are
but now there is not enough food even for the captors
whatever sympathy he may feel for
the family member who voices the complaint
and pleads for the return of his relative,
the Palestinian Ambassador ripostes
that Israel is starving a whole people

In other news today
it is eighty years since the destruction of Hiroshima
by a bomb so small that some today dare to classify it
as merely tactical and threaten to use such on their enemies

So much for the “War to end all wars”
and we are come to live in the moral wasteland…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Hani Mahmoud screenshot from a broadcast of Al Jazeera

I had not watched Al Jazeera news for a month or so, partly because the news about Gaza was moving more into the area of political and world people’s awareness and response, but also I confess to emotional overload. Yesterday, also the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, I watched Newshour on the station and was shocked and upset to the point of tears, to see how Hani Mahmood’s face reflects his own malnutrition as well as the ongoing stress of reporting from Gaza for Al Jazeera. The screenshot above is from a while back, but I urge you to view Al Jazeerah news, not only for its coverage of the genocide in Gaza, but for a different perspective (non-American/Eurocentric) – even their weather forecasts cover all areas of the world…

Al Jazeera

Tonight, hosted by  Björn Rudberg (brudberg), is Open Link Night over at dVerse Poets Pub and so I am posting a link there and there will be a live meeting at 10 AM and 11 AM New York Time August 16th…