Poetry

Five Directions of Escape…

humanist55

Silsden
in Cobbydale you will always
be an incomer to
those who lived here
always

Always
Northern Lights beckon – mystical
Earth’s shield made visible
– too cold and dark
perhaps

Perhaps
the sunny South could warm our bones
but heat is hard to bear
when, old, you seek
travel

Travel
East to Holland’s green and wet heart
go on – circle the Earth
return home from
the West

The West
land of Tír na nÓg where we
may live eternally
beyond our lives’
sunset…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write about leaving home…

  • 25 lines
  • 5 stanzas –
    • 1st stanza is your home (real or imaginary)
    • next 4 stanzas – each compass point away from your home
  • 5 lines per stanza – quintain
    • syllabic structure, optional rhyme (Crown Cinquain)*
    • OR
    • unrhymed and unstructured (Pentastitch)
  • the title should begin or include: “Five …………”

The Crown Cinquain is a new one on me…

Farewell Dolly Parton

humanist55

I heard the news today
that U.S. flags fly at half-mast
for Dolly Parton passed away
and I admit that in the past
I found her songs embarrassed me
D-I-V-O-R-C-E and Jolene
– Coat of Many Colours seemed
mawkish to my younger self
Country Music as a whole I deemed
outside my broad musical taste
but life rubbed off my sharp edges
and the spangled Queen of Country
serious, caring voice came to articulate
the various emotions whether
experienced or vicarious that make us
human, empathetic, emotional creatures
Dolly, for me, joined Dickens and Steinbeck
Vonnegut, Irving and Heller
Woody and Johnny
Billie, Bessie and Patsy
in weaving strands of social history
binding them with music from folk,
blues and bluegrass, Appalachian,
rock and pop – winning me over
whole-heartedly
– collaborators like Linda and Emmylou
blended their voices with Dolly’s
in sweetest harmony
so today I can but weep that the fate
that comes to all of us eventually
has placed another star
in the firmament…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

I wrote this on Wednesday when the sad news of Dolly Patron’s death was announced but I am sharing it with dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night hosted by  Grace. Apart from anything else, it is a tale of how one grows and matures and reaches different understandings…

Firefight

humanist55

He’s a bitter, fascinated
dangerous, pyro-twisted
firestarter

exulting, burning, destroying
racing and dancing and jumping
mad firebug

nightmare task to then put it out
stoking professionals’ self-doubt
the fireman

fighting fires of stupidity
or perhaps mad idiocy
faces firelit

their only thought to douse the flame
and afterwards assign the blame
post firefight…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write a poem incorporating compound words, in a
form invented by Margaret R. Smith (source here):-

poem’s title includes the stem word

15 lines

5 stanzas

3 lines per stanza

rhyme scheme a,a,b

meter 8/8/3

last line of each stanza includes a compound word using the same stem
e.g. footsore, footstool, footage; OR underfoot; pussyfoot etc

I should say that Barbara and I have been bingeing “Fire Country”…

For the Love of Clouds…

humanist55

Cumulus clouds towering like mountains, boiling and roiling up above the plains, cauliflower crisp at the growing tops, losing definition and melting into wispy cotton-candy fluff as the cloud moves on -Cumulus Mammatus drooping multiple, witchy breasts that offer no succour beyond pouring rain from the grey underside of who knows how big a storm – photographs of motherships ominous over Texas – clouds I will never likely see in person, but regard in awe at nature’s power – mixing warm-moist air from the Gulf, hot-dry South-western and Mexican, with cool-dry Canadian in an unholy cocktail that drops twisters on the panhandle and whisks away more than Dorothy and Toto in Kansas… On a calmer day, coruscating cirrus mackerel-sky not to be confused with expanding contrails crisscrossing the blue, and definitely not the chemtrail nightmares of conspiracy theorists, make a halo around the sun on high, or the moon at night, whilst grey-day lowering stratus brings dampening drizzle followed by heavier rain as a front closes in – clouds caught on mountain tops or melting as mist in valleys when the sun comes up – clouds layered in all their glorious types from the ground up to the realm of the noctilucent and sprites seen only from space – a mystery not yet explained by Atmospheric Physics – and all possessed of an ever changing beauty that cloaks and swirls around our blue planet…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

I missed the deadline for Mr Linky over at dVerse Poets Pub, where Lisa or Li in Poetics, invited us to write about Weather, something that Global Warming consequences have forced everybody around the world, to pay attention to ( and not just we weather obsessed Brits!). Li also gave a shout out to some previous posts on weather, including mine as guest editor in 2024.

Stuart McPherson wrote a prompt about weather in 2012.
Victoria C. Slotto wrote about it in 2015.
Andrew Wilson wrote about it in 2024.

I am posting it for Open Link Night #413 with Live Edition.

Just Say No!

humanist55

Famously, “No man is an island”
But there are those who deserve to be
Exiled for a whole lifetime’s remand
For their crimes against humanity
Their greed, hubris, crass stupidity
– Insanity may be an island
But no defence for crimes so clearly planned
By would be Kings in perpetuity
Building a court to destroy the land
Feathering the nest of their dynasty
Destroying hard-won democracy
No regard for how the future lands
– Against such Fascism we must surely
Draw the firmest red line in the sand…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites us to use negation as a poetic tool…

One Day I Saw…

humanist55

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…

humanist55
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…

humanist55

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…

humanist55

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

humanist55

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.