Poetry

One Day I Saw…

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One day I saw that the hypothetical
mortality I had considered since
teenage years, was now a sure thing
and sooner rather than later…

A comparatively isolated childhood
had given me time to consider
many things that never occur to
some people until they do…

Is sex before marriage
a club to which members
recruit others to assure themselves
of their righteousness

Is there any point arguing
with people who believe in
irrational things like God
or the supremacy of the British

One day I saw that the struggles
of Feminism had largely failed
let alone broken the glass ceiling
and temporary wins are being rolled back…

One day I saw that World Wars
had not ended all wars
but only driven the game into
smaller battlefields fought by proxies

Even the MADness of Nuclear Deterrence
and the sanity of Non-Proliferation
were undermined by countries that possess
without confessing

And other countries elected demented
monsters to have their finger on the button
or to threaten to use the unthinkable
or assert that tactical nukes would not count…

One day I saw the world was sunburnt
because politicians count on being gone
before the bill for sun caused cancer
becomes due against their grandchildren

That the world ending less with a bang
more with a whimper due to overpopulation
was the least of Gaia’s problems
which no amount of Attenborough will fix

One day I saw that truth was no longer
binary and has, in any case, been smeared
until most people don’t know what to believe
and it seems pointless to care or have cared

One day I saw that another generation
would have to take up the fight
with new weapons like fact-checking
or digital abstinence, with

keenly honed humour targeted at
would be kings, and activism that
won’t lie down and be quiet
and disdain for status symbols

One day I saw that post-war boomer goals
were the exception and not the rule
and that the next world war
needs to be a war for the world

And then one day I saw that
I could relax a little, offer insight
when asked, without leading the charge
and just enjoy the day that’s in it…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Grace in OpenLinkNight, invites us to post a poem of our choice and this one was written for my local Keighley Library Poetry Group (the prompt was the title)and since I have now read it there, I feel like it deserves a bit more circulation…

Back to the Garden…

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Henri Rousseau, The Waterfall (1910), oil on canvas

When the white men came
Left their priest here with his tales of Jesus and original sin
we of course recognised the Garden of Eden
For is not the place we live in the very same

If we want to talk to God we go to the waterfall
We know our God is everywhere
In plants, and beasts, and soil – the rain that feeds the river
But it is here that we do truly hear her call

God waters the grass we bend to make our huts
Where even now the priest leads evening prayers
But I prefer our God’s song –I do not care
For wearing clothes, or to hear his stories -of which he has lots

Just like the snake, the priest would give us knowledge
Of our nakedness, our nature as sinners
But I know we still live in the garden, where we can pluck dinner
From the very trees, or, grateful, take in the life of brother deer

So whilst my kin listen to the priest’s lies
I slip away to the never-ceasing waterfall
Whose plashy tones are our God’s call
Endlessly flowing ‘neath Her created skies…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Melissa Lemay in Poetics, invites us to respond to the paintings of Henri Rousseau. Melissa was in part, inspired by a poetic exchange between myself and Merril about Rousseau on her site Collaborature which you can read here.

My Love is at Sea Now…

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My love is at sea now, quite lost in the blue
A blue funk has claimed her, she’s quite lost to me
No message of love works, they do not get through
My love is unmoored now, completely at sea

No pills or bright potions
Can bring her to land
Albatross on the ocean
We don’t understand

My love is at sea now, amidst darkest waves
The darkness crept up and it turned down her flame
Just bring back my loved one, it’s all that I crave
The mind is a mystery, that merits no blame

No pills or bright potions
Can bring her to land
Albatross on the ocean
We don’t understand

My love is at sea now, please return her at last
I fire up the lighthouse to guide her way home
The dark storm that took her, is now in the past
There’s still life worth living, if back here she’d come

My love is at sea now
Please return her at last
And pray let her see how
Depression can pass

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, Poetry Forms, invites us to write a ballad using strict metre and rhyme scheme. You may sing this to the tune of Red Sails in the Sunset which Bob Dylan purloined for “Beyond the Horizon” on his album “Modern Times” for, as he says, songwriters always steal, so if its good enough for Dylan, its good enough for me…

These I Have Loved…

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These I have loved
songs from The Sound of Music
in glorious surround-sound kitsch,
High on a Rocky Ledge, which is
a more quirky song about Edelweiss
from Moondog, the Viking of Sixth Avenue

The gravelly voice of late period
Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
gut-wrenchingly poignant
but you are commanded to listen
much as broken Robert Wyatt
for whom Shipbuilding was written
and when you realise the real subject
was the Falklands War, you can
never unhear its meaning

On a more cheerful note
if you’ll pardon the pun
almost anything by
The Electric Light Orchestra
but for its lugubrious intro
as smooth as melted chocolate
let’s slip Need Her Love
onto the turntable

And whilst we’re listening to love
another song whose slight delays
stretch the heartstrings achingly
it has to be UB40
Please Don’t Make Me Cry
whilst at the opposite end of the scale
(another musical pun)
Deep Purple’s Hush
hurries the beat and
raises your heartbeat
with an excitement that
threatens to burst all bounds
on the cusp between pop
and heavy rock

Yet another driven classic
unmistakable from the first notes
of it’s Electric Bass accompaniment
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
The Night will also set your pulse racing…
I could go on, for music comes
in endless forms and variations –
but these are the cream of the crop
– today…
All these have been my loves…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

High on a Rocky Ledge

Edelweiss

Strange Fruit

Need Her Love

Please Don’t Make Me Cry

Hush

The Night

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Poetics, invites us to write a list poem in the shadow of ‘The Great Lover’ by Rupert Brooke, and to begin and end our poem with lines taken from the second stanza…

Psychosis

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I can’t face myself in the mirror anymore, bloodshot eyes from too much coffee, and the twitch, the nervous tic – it’s too much – it scares me almost as much as sleep, as you…. I haven’t slept in days, well, I have tried not to, even though my body is screaming out for rest and relief, I dare not go there. I fall anyway, fitfully dozing, into the waiting nightmare and come to with a start mere moments later – for you are always there waiting for me, remorseless, relentless, implacable hunting me down, chasing me ceaselessly away from the light, away from reality, your mantra always ringing in my ears “I am the creature who smells your darkest thoughts”. Is there no help for me?

“We’ve got you now.” I hear a voice say far away. ”Nurse, start him on Olanzapine 2.5 milligram’s…”

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Prosery invites us to write Of Jaguars and the Night, prose—fiction or nonfiction— up to 144 words, not including the title and incorporating a line from “Jaguar Song” by Artur Sze.

A Baker’s Dozen

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Ask a baker for a dozen rolls
and he may give you
out of the kindness of his heart
thirteen
a baker’s dozen
so with the Poets Pub
you go there not merely
to read and listen to poems
but for that bit extra…

Artwork in collaboration with Midjourney and unknown artists…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Mish in OpenLinkNight, offers us the chance to post a poem of our choice but it is also the 15th Anniversary of the pub opening its virtual doors to poets from all over the world and so I have decided to repost this poem, my 11th on the site, from back in 2023 since the pub was the subject of this poem…

The Man and the Moon

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Franz von Stuck, “Shooting Stars” (1912)

I thought myself chosen
as the moon kept pace with our car
speeding home through the night
my sister’s squabbling
before falling asleep
I told no one of how the moon
was watching me
occasionally, hiding behind clouds
but always reappearing
the face of the man in the moon
communing with me

By teenage years
I knew the truth
the moon was, well, just a moon
a celestial body orbiting the Earth
sloshing its waters around
to create the tides
and allegedly influencing
lunatics and mayhem
in the general population

If a god had made the world
then what a trickster
to make the circumference
of the Moon, the same
as the Sun seen from Earth
giving rise to panic-inducing
eclipses when peoples as primitive
as my younger self
felt their personal connection
to the god’s of the heavens
imperilled

Eventually, I owned a telescope
and gazed at the moon afresh
as it moved slowly across
my field of view, its details
craters and “seas” in sharp relief
and at the outside of the sphere
the crater walls visible as
a ragged edge and I saw
with newfound clarity
that we live on a planet
with a companion moon
in the vast space
between the stars
and I was once more in awe…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Dora in Poetics, invites us to write about the night and the night sky in particular…

Musings

humanist55

I would love to have a muse, I think
faced with a blank page
or a knotty prompt
she would be there in a blink
with ideas and inspiration
chewing the cud, I imagine
her gifts to me quite gratis
she would require
no acknowledgement
of our collaboration
a relationship too good to be true

Why are muses generally “she”
or is it in opposition to
the poet’s gender
– opposites attract and all that
can I pay to go on a course
to get my gal
is there an Agency for muses
that pairs you up like speed dating
could AI write me the perfect
letter of application – guaranteed
to find the perfect match
a muse for life – no shallow fling
here today
abandoned to blank page
tomorrow

Instead, if I choose
to accept this prompt
or if I wake with an itch
that only the laying down
of poetry can sooth
I face each piece of poesie
on my own, flying solo
never knowing where the words
will take me on today’s adventure
but within a moment
the idea arrives
the point of departure
then buckle up for the ride
here goes blue sky thinking…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, brings us a last prompt before our two-week Summer break and its a doosie – an Ars Poetica that goes to the heart of our craft of writing poems…

Utility saints

humanist55

If only I had been born Catholic
a Saint for every occasion
Saint Anthony would have been on speed-dial
since I was always losing things
I was well known for it—that and
forgetting what I was going to the shop for
but now I have acquired the habit
of carrying a little black notebook sadly
not for the phone numbers of paramours
but that I might return from the shops
with what I went for, amongst other things
and when, as a vicarious observer
of the sainted folks, I heard of
Saint Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes
I had a sneaking affection for him
I bet he would know how
to help a serial forgetter of shopping.

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Uncategorized, invites us to submit a poem of our choice for Open Link Night which will also be live on Saturday 20th 10 AM on New York time…

Elevenses

humanist55

At the eleventh hour we stop for tea
biscuits – bourbons, custard creams and digestives
birthday cakes for birthday boys and girls we see
abstemious or decadent their choice lives
or dies, pointer to their personality
but cake is cake, no judgement do we give
anything that elevates the office day
is most welcome so we always like to say
a merry office band forged in this routine
so that whatever friction there has been
dissolves in tea, lasting discord seldom seen…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVesre Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft is the mistress of poetic form and today invites us too write either a Hendecastich , a form by Michael Fantina, or the one I have chosen to write to (first rhyming scheme) – The Eleventh Power by Christina Jussaume:

  • 11 line poem
  • 1 stanza
  • 11 syllables per line
  • rhyme scheme of abababccddd or ababababccc,
  • an uplifting theme