dVerse Poets Pub

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…

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”.

Sadly, Decrescendo, Rubato…

humanist55


There are songs too sad for me to sing
to sing that is, without tearing up
and who can wait for the singer to recover
and compose themselves sufficiently to continue…

At first there was just one song I couldn’t manage
Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto” – I could listen
but when I tried to sing it -my throat closed
and my eyes watered – I could not perform

As years go by more songs are added to the canon
of those I cannot get through without weeping
and often I cannot listen either – are they
songs of mourning, laments, requiems

nothing so formal, but tales of the human condition
the mere brevity of which is tragedy enough,
or the near impossibility of finishing a shared life
at exactly the same moment…

Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colours” might be considered
kitsch if it were not true or true enough and I weep to hear
the sweetness of her sometime collaborator
Linda Ronstadt who has lost her voice to Parkinson’s
and sings only within the loving circle of family.
The exquisitely sad songs of Charlie Dore – a woman pretending
her lover lives on the other side of the world in “Australia”
so as not to acknowledge his abandonment
– he must be sleeping while she endures the day…
The rubato moments when Patsy Cline’s rich voice
almost catches, falters, as it lays down
the tragic tales of loss, longing and betrayal
sung to cheerful melodies that belie the sentiment.
Joni Mitchell wishing for a “River” to skate away on
surely the saddest Christmas song
Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit”
a lump rises in my throat even as I write
and to think of all those who left us too soon
their lives driven, and driven down, by the need
to perform, entertain, be loved…
Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Prince
John Lennon, Jim Morrison
Ian Dury who sang of “Sweet Gene Vincent”
“Young, and old, and gone…”
so many more…

These are the singers and musical moments that undo me…

I used to say that I listened to sad music when I was happy
and that happy songs could elevate my lower moods
but boundaries blur and I see poignancy everywhere
and there are songs too sad for me to sing…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

The cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Poetics invites us to write about music and this is also the theme for next month’s meeting of my “in the real world” local library poetry group…

Birthday Reflections

humanist55

Seventy trips round the sun
My life has now journeyed
A race:
Times good, times bad, even times fun
In my body reflected
And face…

Reflection moves to centre stage
On loves and legacy
And how:
Did I with life engage
With passion, efficacy
– Weighed now…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, challenges us – for Laura’s prompts usually offer a challenge in form, if not in subject – to write about “moments in time that stand out from time; they are the momentous days we recall and revisit, year in and year out as holidays, as anniversaries. Formal or informal, they are replayed in memory…” and as to Form – to use Emily Romano’s Memento poetry style:

Poetry Rules:
rhyme scheme abc, abc
2 stanzas
6 lines per stanza
2 tercets (2*3 lines) per stanza
syllable count per tercet: 8,6,2; 8,6,2

Play

humanist55

would you like to play with me
says one grubby clothed
sticky fingered toddler
to another – no question
of race or status entertained
a playmate is a playmate
to be shunned only if
they won’t share and play fair

playmates with fluffy tails
stride statuesquely on stilettos
around the Playboy Mansion
of one who either likes to
play the field or has
commitment issues or
perhaps just has a
thing for bunnies

my mother gave us no pets
to play with – carriers of disease
she reckoned – except once
she did allow a tortoise
but you can’t play fetch with
a tortoise nor even give them a squeeze

I ache in the places that I used to play
sang Leonard Cohen – he was
definitely a player
play us a song
play with your hair
wrap it round your fingers
like you mean to wrap me too
play with your fan and
send secret signals
play me like a harp
with playful fingers
plucking at heart strings
gently please for I am
still bruised from
previous playtimes
play all night and play all day
play chess like a warrior
play Monopoly to practise
world domination
flirt play
sport play
game play
cos-play
and don’t come home if
you’ve dared to play away

life is not a rehearsal
but they don’t tell toddlers
that, when you grow up
they’re not playing any more
but try to make room
for playing somehow
some day
just to keep you supple
keep on playing…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  sanaarizvi in OpenLinkNight invites us to post a poem of our choice. This poem was written to the monthly theme of my local library group – a small group of poets almost none of whom have an online presence. Keighly Library is one of many in the UK which were funded by Andrew Carnegie the Scottish-born (in poverty) US Steel magnate from the Gilded Age, which presents me with an awkward feeling – he was typically, for the times, exploitative of his workers but then donated huge amounts of money to foster literacy in Britain – grey areas, not black and white.

Anyway, I resolved to try and write about subjects other than the current appalling state of the world and so this topic fitted right in…

Rotten Shark

humanist55

Is it a crime to sup on a Sleeper Shark
Genus: Somniosus microcephalus
the solitary fish swimming in the dark
waters beneath the Arctic ice
so few and far between
this shark is seldom seen
but in the photographs captured
the curves confirm this clearly is a shark
but unlike its cousins – sleek Silvertips
the Greenland Shark is no beauty
it’s skin blotchy and rough…

On an exchange visit to
an Icelandic ladies’ choir
did I commit that crime?
Our own ladies, scandalised
at the first stop on our itinerary
a swim in the Blue Lagoon
– by naked women brazenly European
walking around in the changing room
were equally horrified in Reykjavik’s
covered market to be offered
seagull’s eggs and Rotten Shark
– kæstur hákarl a national delicacy
but foodie as I am I agreed
to give it a go…
“Best hold your nose”
our host’s advice but not before
I’d caught a whiff like ammonia
I took a small white cube
upon a toothpick and ate
nose pinched
it was not as bad as some
wimpy celebrity chefs have claimed…

I was not told that this was
Greenland Shark nor that
it is now known to be the
longest lived vertebrate
thought perhaps to live as long
as four to five hundred years
one hundred and fifty before
the poor creature is ready to breed
imagine then it’s lonely search
for a mate deep in the Arctic dark
and the secret of this shark’s longevity
– slow living – snail’s pace metabolism
which is why, flesh full of bodily toxins
the freshly caught Sleeper is poisonous
but the peoples of the Arctic
are not ones to waste a food opportunity
and so they figured out to
bury the shark for six to twelve weeks
weighted to press out fluids
whereby fermentation detoxifies
to feed the nation it’s infamous dish
at the midwinter festival þorrablót

Now that the Methuselah nature
of the Greenland Shark is known
it is not legal to hunt or kill this
oldest of fish but fishermen’s bycatch
provides sufficient specimens
to feed the Icelandic appetite
for Rotten Shark – so it was no crime
to taste this long-lived being
whatever my fellow singers said
of the smell, but now that I know
of what I ate, I carry the thought
swimming in my imagination
of this patient, slow-living
denizen of the dark depths
the Greenland Shark…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics invites us to write about sharks as we approach Shark Week! So I dredged up this dark tail…

Turn

humanist55

…turn up for the books
turn the country, no – the world upside down
turn the law. no,-the constitution on its head
turn pawns into knights to do your bidding
but turn tail and run when pictures
of you and him speak truly…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, where the various customers are celebrating the 14th birthday of the pub, Lisa or Li challenges us to write a Quadrille, the pub’s own special poetry form – a poem in exactly 44 words…