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Destruction and Redemption

humanist55

Poetry Postcard Festival 2025 Received Postcard Cento

I: Destruction

People are waking in the night
hearts racing, blood pounding
dreams, fantasies, deceptions, escape
The future is – unexplainable
I try not to disturb them
when I slowly reach my hand toward
the culture that informed my values…
Cruel and crude, greedy old man
— shouting, destroying
the Bad King who demands from him,
the Good Kingdom
his world has become much smaller
a pretty close second
Puppets! Who is pulling the strings?
Like my heart, they did not weep
another missed connection, warped, failed
shouting colour into gray
streets where no one listens
the beauty of the Badlands

We know so little – despite knowing so much
Consumption society has chewed up
spit out this vast and beautiful continent.
transported in cardboard boxes
to lockers at Hub Food
discouraged now as our progress is torn down,
a government being dismantled
thinking then it can’t happen here. But it does
I’m not sure there is enough of me today
bobbing movement of nature
you are missed daily
somewhere unknown,
another world away;
it was there
….no more
what if I told you
still, I hope for forgiveness…
the suggestion of brokenness
the promise of wholeness
we are all a part of everything
– I can’t help hoping

II: Redemption
if humans could fly,
would we ever walk?
around my imagination
whatever you want’s okay!
I close my eyes
and breathe in fireweed
your magic encapsulates me
waiting for the perfect day
that clear blue sky
is here year round
stairway to heaven
sun drops sparkle air
to reach, always, for the light
someone is thinking of me
remembering gratitude’s
call to learn what
was above and
below
today’s sun reluctantly begins
to set…

Poets and lines:-
Penelope Moffet 1-2, Jerrold Narland 3, Kerfe Roig 4, Susan Montgomery 5-6, Lawrence Pevec 7, Nancy R. Parr 8-9, Emily Bernhardt 10-11, Anon. 12, Grant Swados 13, Margie Ripperger 14, Anon. 15, Akua Lezli Hope 16, Jeannine Jordan 17-18, , Mary Mueller 19, Cassandra Bissel 20, Suzanne Harris 21-22, Karen Keltz 23-24, Ruth Vanklstine 25-26, Laura Gamache 27, Anon. 28, Lulu 29,  Dava Wharton 30, Margaret Roncone 31-32, Rebecca 33-34, Muriel Karrr 35, Lisa Humphrey 36, Anon. 37-38, Nitya Prema 39, Karen Loeb 40, Amy Leonard 41-42, Donita Ries 43, Sandra Gadjewski 44, Diana Kolpak 45-46, Margaret Hill-Daniels 47, Cathy Wetter 48, Mary Skeen 49-50, Lynn Caldwell 51, Susan Vespoli 52, Julie Naslund 53, Angela Marie Ebba 54, Lula 55, P. O’Neill 56-58,Pence 59.

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in OpenLinkNight invites us to submit a poem of our choice…

This cento poem takes lines from all the postcard poems I received during the July-August Poetry Postcard Festival (POPoFest) run by Cascadia Poetics LAB out of Seattle, USA. Most of the participants are American but it seems that many want to send a postcard to poets elsewhere and so all the no-US poets are sent out on a separate list – so that I, as a UK resident, was lucky enough to receive 24 from my Group 4 list and 19 “bonus ” cards from the International list.

Taking a line from each, two poems emerged, which I have chosen to present as Parts 1 & 2 since the bleakness of the first needs amelioration by the optimism of the second…

Serendipitously, Björn’s optional prompt on this occasion was the writing of letters and the idea of the POPoFest, is to write Epistolary poems to the recipient that reference the image on the postcard, to write spontaneously without editing. I chose to reclaim my painting skills this year and sent 31 original paintings out, one of which is shown below…

Collaborators in the Craft

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You have done it on your own
the craft of poetry
garnering your words
identifying your voice
never mixing metaphors
unless you mean to
accenting with alliteration
tackling subjects
from waxing lyrical about nature
to sounding the clarion calls
to activism in a world gone mad…

Now, why not try the delights
of collaboration…
a dance á deux
a menage á trois
an orgy of poesie
with multiple poets
if you will
bat stanzas back and forth
ekphrast a painting
or photograph by a friend
why do it on your own
when you can do it together
become a collaborator…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Ten months ago, our very own Melissa Lemay, started an online journal of collaborative poetry, Collaborature so why not head over there and have a gander at all the exciting poems that have been submitted and then reach out to another poet to have a go at collaboration…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Lisa or Li in Poetics invites us to write about Getting Crafty…

01 November: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – I am grateful to my daughter for coming round and doing some housework for Barbara and I, which, as she said, is also a chance to spend some time together…

2 – I am glad that once a month I have to take samples to a microbiology lab for testing and the drive back takes me “over the tops” and include this beautiful view…

3 – I am grateful that my work gives me a subscription to Adobe Suite, including PhotoShop, which, amongst other things, I use for resizing the pictures for this website; however, I promised t0 show you what I use the various textures I have shown each week and I thought to use the initials of Ten Things of Thankful…

The top version has had the inner area of the letters coloured in with an orange gradient.
The second version has four different textures, all of which you have seen – faded blue paint on wood, fallen Autumn leaves, a microfibre cloth and tree bark.
In numbers three and four, the orange layer has been placed over the textrures and different ways of blending the two layers have been applied.

That’s the magic of PhotoShop…

4 – I bought this bunch of flowers to cheer up my patrner and they have lasted really well…

5 – Following the disruption of moving the garden round to accomodate the roofers, I got everything back where it needs to be – all the bulb containers are to the fore, ready for Spring and indeed some of them are jumping the gun… The strange patches of colour are chilli powder to educate a cat that these pots are not it’s toilet…

6 – I have agreed to start a new collaborative poem with a friend to be published in another friend’s online journal – Collaborature…

7 – I finished inputting all the fabrics in my spreadsheet in preparation for the A to Z Challenge (blogging) 2026 – I found 139 different fabrics and if you include fibres and processes 254 items which need to be sorted and grouped into just 26 alphabetical items – hence the spreadsheet – I love a good spreadsheet!

8 – My salary (1/2 time as I am) and my pension will both come into my account on the same day – tomorrow – Yayyy! (Pension precesses as it is every 28 days exactly)

9. I spoke to my Sister in Nova Scotia and to my Critique Partner in Minneapolis which two meetings take place every other Sunday, and both of which I enjoy immensely…

10 – I got through my TToT…

Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A New Call to Revolution

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Demonstrators gather during a “No Kings” protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 18, 2025.


A nation birthed by bold revolution
now suffering a jumped-up would-be King
despite the founders’ strong constitution
how could their law be such a broken thing
– poisoned so, by the cunning fascist’s sting…
The tyrant can’t be broken using force
– garnered a band of brutish thugs of course
but being laughed at – one thing he can’t stand
marching in fancy dress, one such recourse
a steadfast, strong and democratic band!

© Andrew Wilson, 2025 – But feel free to share…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetry Forms, invites us to write a Dizain – ten lines of ten syllables and a rhyme scheme of ABABBCCDCD.

Denise and Rich Heinrich in Scottsdale for on Oct. 18, 2025 for No Kings’ Day.

26 October: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – I have virtually finished the layout of all the new Gelato Production Unit at work (remember the mess of pipework I showed you last week?) which means I can now proceed to writing the SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) for the plant. This is vital as if you open the wrong valve or leave the wrong one open, a potential £6-7,00.00 could be lost – you don’t want cleaning acid in your gelato mix…

2 – I am grateful to live in such a beautiful (Go’s Own) county – Yorkshire and this is a view I had to stop and photograph with a view to a painting – Beamsley Beacon emphasised by strong shadows on a levely Autumn sunshiny day…

3 – On a smaller scale, no unused corner – in this case of a snicket (Passgeway) – fails to be colonised by nature – I think this is a Lavateria…

4 – The Olive tree in our yard continues to darken its tiny fruit though I fear there is not enough sun to develop them further before I have to wrap the tree in frost protection for the Winter – however – one fully formed Olive has made it and by the Spring, when I unwrap the tree again, will no doubt have attained black ripeness…

5 – The roofers returned to fix and relace a few slates on the extension roof and renew the render along the coping stones and they also painted (and cleaned) the small upstairs window, which is otherwise inaccessibe…

6 – More bounty from this year – some quinces in my daughter’s garden – not sure if they are edible or only ornamental? I love to make Membrillo!

7 – Across the road from the above, I encountered this tree spirit…

8 – More Autumn beauty – better on the ground than on my car…

9 – No Ten of Thankful complete without a little texture – so from the trunk of the tree that shed the leaves above – any graphic artists amongst you, feel free to use…

10 – Thankful to have found Ten Things of Thankful this week…

Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Monarch

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I am one of the fortunate ones
a member of the last cycle of breeding
in the North American summer
and as such I got to fly South
past California – could have stopped there
but by then I had the travel bug
and I, and many of my cohort
carried on to Mexico, not for the heat
Oh no! We settled in the great pine forest
in the mountains, where it was warm enough
as long as we huddled together
to survive the winter

We curtained the trees with our colour
– the reason we are called monarchs
allegedly – orange in honour of
William the Third of England – William of Orange
– so I guess we were named by the Brits
before the proto-Republicans got their act together
and kicked their oppressors out
– anyway, the name stuck
and no one thought fit to change it
even now, when Americans are driven
to hold “No Kings!” parades – we butterflies
– the most numerous in North America
retain our royal soubriquet
and regal we were as we rose
en masse from the Mexican trees
to head North again for the summer
and it’s not just for the food of course
but for the perpetuation of the species

I would like to tell you of my life
as a caterpillar and later a pupa
but as I overheard a young teacher
explaining to his class
what happens inside the pupal case
is so complete a transformation
it’s as if we liquefy and alchemically
transform into a completely new creature
and with it, gone all memories
of that earlier life – of course
– we see them – the caterpillars
our offspring
munching their way through milkweed
but I can’t imagine their lives
ae very interesting – not compared
to we adults, travelling thousands of miles
seeing the sights, hanging out together
and then becoming one of the sights ourselves
– a wonder of nature!

That teacher also said that
we are of the genus Danaus
Which is perhaps the masculine
of Danae upon whose great- great-grand daughter
Zeus came as a shower of gold
– and that is surely a fitting origin
story for the naming of we Monarchs…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, it is Open Link Night and lillian invites us to submit a poem of our own choice and if possible, to join on Saturday to read them out live…

This poem came out of my writing group, where, after reading The Promotion by James Tate, we were prompted to write the compressed life story of a previous life as an animal…

Reliable Rain After Lunch

humanist55

“Four seasons in one day”
sang Crowded House and
as you draw nearer to the Equator
all the seasons happen
in every day’s cycle

In Tennerife, north side
of the island
you wake to blue skies
and yet already a wisp
of cloud pours over the lip
of Mount Teide like
the tentative sign of
an eruption by this
still hot to the touch
at the top, relatively
sleeping giant, but
as the morning wears on
the cloud finds it’s level
and spreads less threateningly
over the pine forests
below the crater edge
shrouding them in fog
on out over the banana
plantations that surround
Puerto de la Cruz
then on over the city itself
where, just after lunch
they deliver their own
micro-seasonal rain
hardly worth the
unfurling of an umbrella
but nurturing the bananas
as reliable as clockwork
except when the occasional
Atlantic storm disrupts
the proceedings
and having delivered their
promise, the clouds dissolve
and the season of
sunny evening takes their place…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Poetics, invites us to write about “micro-seasons” after the Japanese custom of dividing their year not just into four seasons but into seventy-two “micro-seasons” such as ‘frogs start singing’ and ‘crickets chirp around the door’…

18 October: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – I am grateful that there is almost always a parking space just outside the gates of where I work my 2.5 days. There is a parking bay, occupied at night by residents of the adjacent houses and there is usually just one space beneath a tree which sports a lot of berries – currently ripe and so the birds feeding there leave little offerings on my car bonnet and roof (for which I am not so grateful lol).

2 – The tree mentioned above continues to unfold Autumn colours – not in a uniform way, but branchlet by branchlet – it is the same with many trees this year and I feel I am being shown something about Autumn that I haven’t seen before…

3 – I received this novel micro watercolour kit from my partner by way of a thank you for all the things I do for her for which she is grateful and I in turn for this…

The white thing at left is a wristband on which to wipe the brush…

4 – I have been involved for the last ten years, with the building of a mosque in Bradford, the city I work in. When I first started on the project, I was between jobs, and it gave me both income and a chance to keep my hand in with AutoCAD (computer draughtsmanship) and led to me working at an Architect’s office as the oldest person there, but in the office junior post lol. Now the mosque is nearing completion with the roof being put on the minaret tower which means the lift can finally be installed within the tower. The project has taken time because the money is raised from the community a little at a time, so the work progresses in fits and starts… I am not religious yet this is not the first sacred space I have been involved with as a designer ( I did work in Catholic churches when I lived in Ireland) and over the years, the ongoing role as project draughtsman to the mosque, has provided a little supplementary income, a chance to learn about Moslem culture, some enjoyable design opportunities and a number of friends. Within a year, my task there will come to a close and at 70, I feel this is a fitting time for me…

This is the area which would eventually become the Main Prayer Room on the ground floor and this is the state of the building when I was first brought in to survey and draw up the building “as built”
The Prayer Room almost complete and in use already…
The mosque is a modern building but these traditional Islamic geometrical designs which I had to draw up so that they could be cut out on a CNC router machine – the finishing touches to the Prayer Room! As well as a place of worship, this mosque has been designed as a community centre. Many of the mosques in Bradford were converted from churches, halls, even cinemas but this one was purpose-built and is the most far-sighted in offering many roles to its congregation and community…

5 – Another project that requires my AutoCAD skills, amongst others, is coming to fruition at my 2.5 Day Job at the gelato (and pudiing and cake) factory. We are installing a new gelato production plant, bought from a factory closing down in Eastern Europe some ten years ago and awaiting the space to be reassembled. The oldest brother in the family firm is the prime mover in this and he has been thoroughly enjoying himself assembling it all, drilling walls for pipework to pass through. My job is now to draw out the system with a view to writing and illustrating the SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) which we will have to teach the workers who will opreate it. What makes it complicated is the CIP system in which successive flushes of Acid, Alkali and Hot and Cold water must be used to clean the entire system between batches. Below is just a small part of the task…

These are the “Ageing” Tanks where the pasteurised mixture of milk, cream and a special thickener will b held before being flavoured and frozen into gelato.
Just a tint part of the labyrinth of pipes, and more importantly, valves needed to get the right fluids flowing to the right places and which must be opened and closed correctly to stop the wrong fluids contaminating the product – imagine drawing up this system…

6 – My post-holiday cold version 2 is slowly abating…

7 – We had a lovely visit to my youngest but one grandson and his girlfriend in their new flat in Sheffield (home of steel, cutlery and scalpel blades).

8 – The roofers return on Monday to repair a few slates and coping stones above the work they did last week on the extension fascias, soffits and gutters…

9 – Managed to think of things I am grateful for

10 – It is a grey day, but it is not raining, or blowing and I see the reservoir above the town has largely refilled after the Summer drought…

Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Tomorrow

humanist55

“…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…”
From “My Epitaph, Written in Sprigs of Dill” Gunther Grass

Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything
The food I eat, though it’s too much
And I don’t want to see my guilt
For taking my small comfort there

Sitting down at my computer
Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything
Thoughts in emails to far-flung friends
Work will intrude briefly, perhaps

Poetry, words of protest hot
Letters within my novel too
Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything
Living my life there on the page

Days of action now mostly past
Memories wrestling with new thoughts
Both are rich seams for me to mine
Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites us to celebrate the birth day of Günter Grass who, as well as being a ‘politically engaged’ German novelist, was also a poet…

11 October: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – I am profoundly glad that a ceasefire has begun in Gaza although a lot will depend on whether President Trump will continue to hold Netanyahu’s feet to the fire to carry on with the terms outlined – however, a ceasefire is a start…

2 – I am glad the second cold I have had in as many weeks is abating as we are supposed to be going to see my grandson and his girlfriend’s new flat tomorrow…

3 – I finally got around to finding someone to redo the fascias, soffits and gutters on the extension. The oood has been cut for two years…

The gutters have been up for about 45 years and had gone brittle and needed replacing…
There were some very tricky angles involved in cutting the wood and the guys did well working from the old wood as templates – job well done…

4 – The building work meaned moving half the garden away from the building but I am glad as it all needed rearranging with next year’s bulb containers coming to the fore…

5 – The Spider Orchid Lilies are still producing excuisite blooms when not much else is showing…

6 – My Rhubarb – started from a fragment attached to a pulled stem, is a good size now and I will put it in a bigger pot once it stops for the Winter and hopefully get “fruit” next year…

7 – Some plucky bulbs are jumping the gun for Spring – crocii, I think…

8 – the weather was good today allowing me to paint the new woodwork

9 – I have finished posting poetry/postcards for this year – even the bonus ones from the International list – here is my favourite painting of the challenge – it is “The Island” – Spinalonga, former leper colony made famous by Victoria Hislop’s book…

10 – glad to have thought of 9 lol…

Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter