Writing

Opposites

humanist55

Black and white
surely opposites?
Yin and Yang
perfectly nested
complete a circle
no mixing, no grey areas

White light is a mixture
of all the colours
whilst dark is the
absence of light
light’s shadow friend
inseparable

For as long as stars
burn bright with light
and there are objects
arrayed to block the light
then there must necessarily
be shadow until
all the stars go out

When we paint we
use chiaroscuro to
bring our canvasses to life
light and dark to throw
our subjects into relief
to shade them – then we see

that shadows are not
universally dark but
illuminated by reflection
of the light from other objects
whose colour has sucked dry
those hues that are not it’s to own

Yellow swallows everything
that we do not deem yellow
and reflected into neighbouring
shadow – a hint of gold
will now suffuse the shade
making it less than black

Nowhere is free from
scattered light and so
no white nor black
are wholly pure
Yin and Yang
a pure conceit

Shadows are shades
of other colours who
are merely filters that
absorb some wavelengths
reflect back the rest
to our miraculous eye

Watercolourists work
with transparent hues
whilst oil painters apply
solid, light-absorbing paint
and TVs shine out light
and print must duller be

We swim in a milieu
of light and filters
making shades of hues
and dappling shadows
with subtle colour – we are all
in reality, impressionists…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace is hosting Open Link Night when you can post a poem of your own choosing. This one was written for the monthly poetry group at my local library, a small and distinctly analogue group whose subject this month was Opposites…

Finding Happiness

humanist55

The pursuit of Happyness
is not a straightforward path
signposted clearly for each of us
to follow to our heart’s content

Stumbling on happiness
is nearer the mark – a series of
Happy Accidents amidst the
inevitable unhappy stumbles

One person’s happiness
is another’s purgatory
so distrust universal guides
like The art of happiness

Happiness cannot be regulated
and a Ministry of utmost happiness
would never dare be adopted by
any government for fear of failure

to meet the metrics and achieve even
More happy than not let alone promise
a triple locked happiness
quota for all…

Happiness is a choice asserts
Neil Kaufman but try telling that
to one who is not
Stumbling on Happinesss

and can happiness be described
without reference to it’s opposite
The Happy Prince is a tale that
will leave you moved to tears

So when you find your own source of
happiness, don’t proselytise for it
to be universally adopted but
carry your flame wrapped in your heart…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Punam – paeansunplugged in Poetics, Uncategorized, invites us to write about Happiness and offers a series of titles which we may choose to use one or more of – not wanting to make any of the authors feel left out and unhappy, I went for all of them…

1.The pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardener

2. Happy Accidents: A memoir by Jane Lynch

3. The ministry of utmost happiness by Arundhati Roy

4. Stumbling on happiness by Daniel Todd Gilbert

5. The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde

6. The art of happiness by the Dalai Lama

7. More happy than not by Adam Silvera

8. Happiness is a choice by Neil Kaufman

Health Conscious…

humanist55

Give me not statins
those white little pills
give me good greens
let me not eat too much red meat
whose production decimates
our blue marble planet
white meat takes a lesser toll
I will not eschew the yellow yolks
of eggs and go full vegan
limited to the orange, brown
and greens of lentils
the gold of grains the
white of rice and others
of the blond grasses
but let me sway more
in their direction
– to healthy balance
whatever colour that is…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write a poem with a colour motif and optionally, an Imagist poem.

  • take one or more literal colours (not a fancy colour name)
  • repeat the colour word(s) throughout the poem (e.g. refrain; anaphora, epistrophe)
  • use colour synonyms
  • employ colour with its specific meaning to the poem’s theme
  • let your colour motif(s) also become symbolic
  • Your poetry style is optional but you may want to experiment with Imagism. If so these are the guidelines:
  • Use language of common speech. direct and economical, using common words and phrases.
  • Embrace free verse. Disregard poetic meter but rather, focus on the rhythm of your phrases
  • Your choice of subject should reflect real life

The Last London Smog…

humanist55

Three years before I was born, my parents drove to London only to be wrapped in the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, the last London smog – born of ten million coal fires insinuating their smoke into the streets and passageways and parks – those lungs of the metropolis – fog turned to smog -mixing its sulphurous poison with fumes from the growing tide of motor vehicles to burn the lungs of the pulmonarily challenge – trees recoiled and people died…
A fog so thick my mother had to walk in front of the car waving a torch – a fog that recalls Dickens’ opening to Bleak House, and at least there weren’t motor cars in his day, but this twentieth-century fog too far, sealed the fate of future smogs by ushering in The Clean Air Act and the advent of smokeless fuel…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Police officer with a flare. Source: Public Domain. From The Story of the Great Smog of London

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Prosery, invites us to write a piece of poetic prose in exactly 144 words to include a line from T.S.Elliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – “The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes”. This recalled for me, one of my Mother’s stories about driving to London in 1952 and encountering the last great London smog…

Kiss Points

humanist55

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

humanist55

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

humanist55

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

humanist55

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.” 

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”.