Poetry

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 10

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Cecil

If I were a West Coast biker
I would roar into Lincoln City
on my Harley hog down the 101
El Camino Real – The Royal Road
swooping up and down the hills
over bluffs between Pacific beaches.
My tattoos might inspire fear
by association with terrible tales
but if I was like this biker
from West Yorkshire
hanging out in Hebden Bridge
famously home to hippies and lesbians
I would have you know
my bark is worse than my bite
I am a big softie at heart
too shy to let people get close…

Andrew
© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Cecil may or may not have received my card before writing his postcard (below) – coincidentally, I sent my card on the 17th of July and his was the 17th card I received – on the 25th of August. His poem (which I am not allowed to show you) referenced nothing more frightening than a predatory Robin in a nature documentary – enough to make his wife hide her eyes – I do hope my card did not scare them…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 9

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Rachel

Passing the end of this street
I saw these sun-painted shadows
depicting the neighbouring houses
chiaroscuro – light and shade.
Morning sun swinging round
is what we notice both
creating and destroying shadows
but at eventide
it is the shadows winning
steadily reclaiming surfaces
for the night. I started
seeing shadowplay everywhere
best of all – shadows invaded
by reflected sparkles
from third-party windows
Chiaroscuro…

Andrew
© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Rachel fulfilled the PoPo brief perfectly, an epistolary postcard poem that referenced the picture on her card (below), and since she had presumably received my card, also referenced my theme of light and shade – perfect! I only wish I was allowed to show you…

Hold onto your hats! Myrtle and High Street Bellingham WA


Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 8

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Amy

This might seem like
sending coals to Newcastle
a picture of mighty mountains
to a woman who lives on a fiord
with her back to
mountains of her own
but these mountains have
never known the touch of glaciation
these mountains in Crete
where we spent lockdown
may be capped with Winter snow
but from their tops
you could see Africa
if only you were young enough
to climb and not locked down
so every day we just
admired from afar

Andrew
© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Amy’s card was only my second to arrive from Group 15 which I belonged to – I was the only non-American on the list! Her card was glittery and featured a drunken fairy and the mossy rocks which I imagine abound in the Washington landscape… I only wish I could share her poem!

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 7

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Julie

Wish you were here
is the common cry
of the holiday postcard
sent to a friend or relative dear
but I know nothing about you
beyond your evocative address
but I send this photo
with only a little fear
that you will not appreciate
the struggle of nature
to make this wild garden.
An upcycled tyre for a container
a Harts Tongue fern
a moss garden
what’s not to like…

Andrew
© Andrew Wilson, 2023

I wish I was allowed to share Julie’s beautiful response to my poem (perhaps she will see this and slip it into the comments) – she had received my card and it turns out that she had been thinking of the recuperative power of nature so no worries there! I cannot say where she lives either beyond naming the evocative address as Thunder Road… I can share the selection of beautiful skies Julie sent and which I am guessing she took herself…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 6

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Kim
I have a grandson who is a rapper
and recently dropped a song
about the question “Where are you from?”
Because the micro-aggression
implicit in the loaded question
is that your national identity
depends on where your ancestors are from
and not where you live
Nation, State or City.
But I like to ask that question
to know the many layers that
make up a person, present soil
and deeper roots
I see your name is from Poland?
Andrew

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Kim wrote about my being British and having a friend who lives near me whose accent she loves to listen to and in response to your question, Kim “Im reet enuff, thanks!”
She sent a card of a painting by one of my favourite artists, Gustav Klimt – more famous for his portraits and of course, The Kiss, he only painted landscapes when on holiday…

Promethean Autumn

humanist55

Time has flown from May to September
the Winter of my days heralded by Autumn
no Indian summer like some I remember
but odd flashes of heat returned
in the rollercoaster from May to September
floods, fires, heatwaves what a year it’s been
a metaphor for my own life’s glowing ember,
an ember stolen from the gods wrapped in a leaf
and whose life is not by fickle fate encumbered
he chained to a rock in punishment for gifting man
we tortured or triumphant from May to September.

Written in response to  Melissa Lemay in Poetics over at dVerse Poets Pub.

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 5

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Ghosts

Dear R
Do you like ghost stories
for that is what you see here
the ghosts of Death Notices
once tacked to this telegraph pole
to tell the community
who has passed in the night
and where the funeral will be.
In Crete during lockdown
I saw this post and had to
ask a local what it meant
– ghosts telegraphing their
passing to the world…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

And below is the card RJ sent me with a poem of environmental concern which according to the rules I cannot show you…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 4

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Darla

There are no baby pictures
to share with you, the grand
-children are grown up and
scattered to the wind
but girlfriends are maturing
and the sound of great grand-
children grows off-stage
waiting in the wings
nascent ready, D.V.
as my mother used to say.
Meantime I offer you
a happy couple and newborn
painted to my prompt
by an AI in the style of
1960’s Ladybird books
are they not divine
too good to be true…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

And below is the card I received from Darla…


Love Is In the Air…

humanist55

Love is in the air
and is intoxicating
as the fumes
of brandy in a glass balloon
it wafts beyond the
happy pairs of lovers
rekindling memories
of a younger age
re-living and reeling
with heady recall

Three grandsons now perhaps
have found their matches
and you know when
talk turns to children
and which football tribe
they should be raised in
that these are keepers

I have never been to a match
and been drunk on shared
passion in a huge crowd
but watching a film
whilst waiting to meet
the latest and last to
join the set, we shared
the intimacy of lovers in
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

A camera takes us
to the heart of an orchestra in concert
with a closeness to each player’s
breath and movement
as they embrace their instruments
to pull on our heartstrings
and film likewise grants us
close-ups of couples
we would never see in real life
our neighbours love lives
hidden in semi-detached suburban rooms
separate, unknowable, ineffable
no matter how openly
the rest of our proximate lives
are lived
was it different in the
warm fug of tribal longhouses
lovemaking couples as close
as the next cocooning hammock?

Children don’t care to imagine
their parents making love
imagining they are beyond all that
however deep the love they daily show
and parents don’t dare to imagine
their children either
the perils of the heart
the baton passed
but when love is in the air
for those lucky enough to have
roots deep in the rich soil
of happy parents
there is the hope of
templating happy families to come

Such open-hearted boys
have not escaped without
venturing up blind alleys
at least two have had
songs of heartbreak
loss and bewilderment
plucked painfully
on their heartstrings
before finding their way
safely to harbour in
calmer but still deep water
after storm-tossed seas

I held those boys as babies
drew or close-up photographed
their sleeping faces
turned their living-room
into a fort, cave, nest
or whatever their imagination
could conjure from the
jumble of throws and giant cushions
taught them the love of the pun
witnessed tantrums and triumphs
watched football from the sidelines,
school and scout uniforms
gowns and mortarboards
how could I not be
drawn along in the
wake of their love lives
dropping away like the pilot boat
waving up to the after-deck
as I slow down
and they gather pace
on their own voyages of love

The calmness and Giaconda smile
of one, the bubbling enthusiasm of another
perfume from Morrocco the first impression
throwing one off the scent
of the depths of a doctor
the brightness and humanity
of all of them
grandsons and girlfriends alike
mingling as a family
dancing in ever closer union
my head spins and
my heartstrings resonate
simply on the fumes
as love is in the air.

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Written unprompted and posted for Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Live, OpenLinkNight over at dVerse Poets Pub

To Be Pretty For You…

humanist55

Dear Diary – As a last resort, to be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes – I heard it was a natural eye make-up but since my eyes are now red-rimmed from the gritty foreign bodies I discover I was wrong. Turnsole is a naturopathic remedy for conjunctivitis and in failing to prepare it properly I now look like a rabbit with myxomatosis!

To catch your eye I have tried Kohl – which really is an ancient beauty aide, I replaced my ‎L’Oréal eye shadow with a more expensive brand because I felt attracting you was worth more – today I must go to work with naked eyes till they heal up…

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Dear Diary – Today he looked at me, asked if I had been crying – he couldn’t bear it! Then he asked me out!!!

Today’s piece is a response to Sanaa‘s Prosery Prompt over on dVerse Poets Pub to write a story in any genre using just 144 words and including the line “to be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes”

© Andrew Wilson, 2023