Never having had a baby of my own
I always check out strollers
hoping to catch the newly delivered
out of the womb and into the world
– that wide-eyed look of wonder
of “Where on Earth am I now…”
The moment I looked into them
I was lost or maybe found
drowned in those blue eyes
or maybe saved
– thrown a life-ring
on a long lifeline
I watch “Here” a movie that explores
the inhabitants of a place then house
from prehistory to the present
with familial moments of life’s joys
and tragedy such as dementia
Forty-seven children and teachers
board my train and one sits next to me
I ask what she will remember from
visiting Saltaire – not the Hockney Gallery
but playing in Roberts Park
With age I move from making memories
to reviewing them and observing in others
the actions and dramas that make a life
and lose count of the number of times
each day that I find occasions to tear up…
© Andrew Wilson, 2026
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites us to write an Imagist Cadralor poem in five stanzas.
- 5 numbered stanzas
- choose 3-10 lines per stanza (but keep same chosen stanza length throughout)
- each stanza stands alone as an imagist poem (just the obliquest of connections)
- 5th stanza pulls the 4 unrelated stanzas together into a poem of love, of yearning
- rhymes and syllabic meter are NOT wanted
The Cadralor is a hybridised name from the 2 inventors, Lori Howe and Christopher Cadra
each stanza an encounter through the eyes – and #5 is the storage and the tearing up through those eyes that makes the collection
p.s. you might need to edit to keep the same stanza length throughout for the Cadralor -without the enjambment it works