So beautiful lay you all
In your tiny beds
Cuddled up with
Panda,  Firstlove,
Tiny tears and
Noel.
Little fingers curled tight
Knees rolled up
I leaned over you all and kissed
What was my great delight.

We went about together
Down the roads and parks
Caught a train to London
The museums and the art.

You grew up, gently, slowly
In each other’s arms
We made Chocolate Easter
Bunnies and Christmas shower.

We touched the lights together
Sang each other’s songs
Four wonderful children
Never got it wrong.

Love Mummy xxxxx

Do not let the days grow old after me
But polished with that ever sparkling
Anticipation which sets hearts aglow
They are the same street’s arching aways
Intermingled, the comfort of green trees.

Love Mum ***

Evolution set us on the wrong path
Being about the survival of the fit.
Which means shortage crucifies
Those who are disadvantaged,
We can never become wholesome.

To evolve the good in us
Many try for justice but usually
Regardless of their own decline.
Most don’t realise the guilt cut,
So much is just genetic code.

This is the lesson humankind comes to
Learn on the presipise of its own demise
But in reality it has always been too late.
Lonely, desolate it creeps along the beach
Cradling the possessions it collected in life.

Love Mary x

Everywhere you look
Evil is masquerading as good
Care companies, aid agencies
The church.
Humanity has not evolved.


Love Mary x

Under the hillbillies of yellow afternoons
You sleep in the sunshade toes quite ****
The curls on your head getting rather hot
But mummy loves you her cuddly ***.

Love Grandma x

On a stage in the middle of a wood
Stood a young girl who knew she could
But as it happened she did not
Pushed the young boy
And he got off.

Now when it’s dark
And the owls do hoot
You won’t find this young girl
Out in the woods
Even though she could.

Love Mary x

You linger in the long grass
Holding tightly to a tree
Dreaming of a somewhere
That you’d like to be.

Love Grandma

Come toddle here your hands stretched out
With chocolate mouse and lemon squash
You are my candy, sugar babe
Arrived at forty in a hurricane
But if love can spin a web
You little darling got in my head.

Love Grandma xxxx

She sits upon her mother’s knee
Her father’s off to see
All the latest drinking crews
In Windsor and Buckeroo.

The last of little darlings
In a line of brown haired beautés
Bluebell who follows the stars
While sunshine hits the hours.

What does a mother do
When daddy’s forgotten
The rent is due and baby
Blue needs a cuddle too.

Love Grandma **

I laid them on the old brick wall
Those many coloured hollyhocks
Their heads now cracked and open
Their stems brown and dried.

And as they pass, the friends of mine,
Gather in their gardener’s hands
What next year will begin to grow
The following year stand tall.

Love Mary ***

Few people can be believed
The lips are packed with lies
Words fall as if manœuvred
To benefit selfishness’s world.

I carry the dust of deceitful
tongues, swollen, diseased
Where is cleanliness left?
‘The dog’s bowl at the door’.

Love Mary ***

By running to the past
Where the sun came in
Can there be a retrieval
Of the happiness rising
On blue Iris in its bloom.

For the past is safely lived
Untouchable, protected
And the wandering warm
The hawthorn prickles
Not a spray or blight.

Love Mary x

It might as well be
So tangled is the web
Nothing surprises
Never knew endings
Could be so brittle.


The battle to see
Simply broke me
Drained, isolated
Ruined, blamed
Such an awful shame.

Love Mary

The candelabras light up
Down avenues of parks
Palest of yellow and pink
Against Summer’s green.

I see the old climbing logs
But which place declining
The dead wood of childhood
Or today’s magic shining

And skipping along the path
I know not here or there
Only that lighted candelabras
Were fleshy in the air.

Love Mary **

In Summer when the dew lays down
And fragrance sears the sky on high
We walk where yellow cowslips dine
And we go so slow.

Love Mary **

I went with a numbness, and sense of doubt
Dropped at the doors of strangers
But pleased to have been asked.
We all gave our presents to the birthday child
Watching the discarded paper fall and the pile
Fill out the large cushioned arm chair.

Not coming from wealth my present simple style
But always liked, it appeared, much as any other;
Coats taken and placed upstairs.
A quick glance at the other children’s party attire
Mine often a cream jumper and tartan pleated skirt,
Brown leather Clark’s sandels, sensible.

The chocolate game was my favourite
Eating with knife and fork,
As many pieces as able, real fooling about.
Then there was musical chairs that
Put me in despair, as some one always out
And lots of standing about along the wall.

Not very good at general knowledge so forfeits
Left me in tears.
But Oh! for pass the parcel
Always fun had here.
Then to the tea table we went
With eyes bigger than tummies.

All that blamange and strawberry jelly
Sparkly fairy cakes with silver *****
Discarded plates of uneaten sandwiches
Crusts scattering the floor, dropped,
Lastly, milk chocolate fingers galore
And a tiny decorated craker to take home.

The End

Love Mary

She fell out of heaven
Like a Bottichelli angel
With a smile as appealing
As any Fragonard or
Boucher cherub.

Gliding across the floor
on padded feet
She decides to smile at all .

Love Grandma xxxx

If you are four and wait at the door
The sun will rise and bring a surprise
For now its your birthday and school
Everything with be bright and new.




Love Grandma xxxx

Stand with me by the fence
Where all our life has been
The entrance to our hearts
And back again.

And if you have to weep
Not into the flowers
For they get enough rain
Love me, kiss me again.

Love Mary x

The trees were back to front
On the wrong side of the shade
Unbalanced in the garden
Reminded her of toytown
Where there was Noddy.

And those yellow bricks
Where she slid her fingers
Smooth arcs of space
To hide under
With big rabbit.


Love Mary x

In the middle was Evelyn
Shyly peeping out
In front was James
And behind Rose.

She hang up her coat
On a red metal peg
Put her snoopy box
In the wire basket.

Then Breton cried
For her Mummy
And was comforted
By Miss Petershore.

All the children
Played outside
On the grassy slopes
It was fun.

Evelyn liked her day
Did a picture
Of her family
It was put on the wall.

At three-thirty
Parents collected
She pushed into daddy
With a big smile.


Love Grandma xxxx

So slowly she bent feeling the curve of her back
As though someone had uttered long sad words
The endings floating in the window telling tales
As she swivelled on her tarnished leather boots
The sky stopped its pulsating beating and she fell
Dropping all she ever had been or would ever be
In a scattering of moments loved and missed now.

Love Mary

The past is a different country they say
Lost to us, lonely, forgotten, gone away
But that is our choice whether it remains
Or with glass ashtrays and photo frames.

Our past is a history of learned transcripts
Of written letters , conversations we had
It changed each future life that is now led
A continuity of patterns discarded or glad.

Love Mary xxxx

Love Mary x

The broken biscuits lay in a tin
An ordinary oblong tin
With turquoise pattern
And pink embossed flowers
Gold edged to finish the job.

How many times I visited
That tin on the middle shelf
In the top half of a cupboard,
Sawn door, to allow for fridge,
And quietly took out the tin.

Broken biscuits were my delight
All shapes and sizes tasty bites
Wafers,  bourbon, custard creams
Rich tea, digestive all suited me
Sometimes fig sandwich, pleased.

Love Mary

Here I stand in the row
Waiting to get my prize
The needlework certificate
I choose a chess set
Not to play chess
But because I liked
Shapes .

They would be my family
Mum and dad ,
Prefects at school
Brothers and sisters
An unusual menagerie
Of souls
On a black and white board.


Love Mary x

The magnolia sways in front of leaded lights
And I lay here thinking that all this beauty
Is all that there is or ever will be, a sanctuary
Where nature blossoms and is freshly laden.
But we are fallen like the dragonfly on wing
Hoovering, waiting for another knat to ****.

And as the carnivores devour their pray, daily
The human species, ruthlessly, turns over good
For another slice of the apple pie and so repeats
A cycle of never ending temptation baring thorn
With sadness I realise that I too wronged beauty
So mistaken in my haste for happiness and joy.

Love Mary **

It grew out of disappointment
That solitary word, indefinite
Lay on the back seat for years
Unneeded, lame
So when it erupted, a surprise
Hanging like a tarnished shade
Devoid of all light.

Love Mary **

Treasures layed out on a bed
On a rainy day staying indoors
Opening a lidded Formica box
Faceted stones glinted before.

From broaches now broken, undone
Sorted into colours, spectrum through
Golden backed pyramids of glass
All spread out in straight rows.

Love Mary x

Where ever the walk went
You took me
Carried me home on your shoulders
Showed me a newness bright
We picked up the remains
Of each day
Placing them in a memory
And I loved you father
A love that was so safe
That included me
Every mile of you.

Love Mary x

After sixty years have past,
I feel that same ache beneath my heart
As I did as a child of five
It slept by me in the dark
Searched for in the day
The wanting of return for loss
Which translates but does not go
Remains a relentless longing.

Love Mary **

The rustling of girls in nylon underskirts
And shoe buckle in bejewelled highlights
With presents so wrapped and tied bows
For bolero in angora to complete the show.

Love Mary x

That warm patch of earth under the damsons
Where nothing grew but children’s feet prints
Reached high for the odd black fruit showing
Sqealched between fingers the stalk snapped
And a mouth opened to taste the sweet wines.


Love Mary

Tall Nettles cover up the corner, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out and the harrow made of stone:
Only the elm **** tops the nettles now.

This corner of the farmyard I like the most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, neve lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.


By Edward Thomas.
This is just so unbelievably magnificent .
Love Mary x

Whilst walking my father and I
Fell upon words that brought
Out the skylight in a window
And made a dog bark for sweets
We shared words together
Hand in hand with each other
Trampling roads near shops
And under railway aqueducts
Seeing the daffodils growing free
The bubbling of stones in a brook.

Love Mary **

No we won’t go
Not to the island
For there fair flowers
Left early
And what was
Never is again
Or ever shall be.

Love Mary x

Along an avenue of trees
In a nearby park
Sat a young woman,
She held a camera
Inside her life
For that day.

A painfully lived life
Carefully considered
Captured in images
Of colourful trees
Sharing similarities
Of beauty.

Love Mary x

If I am displeased it is
Not because I don’t
Love you.
It is not because
You are not kind
Or don’t try
To do what
You think is
best,
But it is
because
You were
Selflessly
Wrong.

Love Mary **

Picking icicles from window
Sharp and cold under cut nail
And wetness into cuff of dress
With water in stains on wall.

Each breath a melt and flow
Drips as metamorphosis go
The sky a heavenly promise
Of snowflight by nightfall.

Love Mary x

By the latch gate he stood
Dressed in striped suit, why?
Someone passed by but who?
He never, ever knew.

Love Mary x

Treasure the path we walked along
It was not chosen but became a song
Not for freedoms are we born
Nor for the cowslips at dawn
But somewhere in our hours
We give to others
More than a smile .

Love Mary ***

Swinging skirts,  dancing rings
Girls playground, plaits begin
Up against the old brick wall
Hand stands and cartwheels
Revealing all.

What it is to be a girl.

Love Mary

I love the bauble tree fern
Out towards the sun you go
In decorations of crimson
Your seedlings circle rows.

Love Mary x

Inside where lining attaches to sleeve
The coming away had loosened there
Leaving the fragility of many winters’
And the oversewing of a tender hand.

Love Mary

BY EDWARD THOMAS

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.


Such an incredible poem by this young soldier
Who died in FWW.

Adlestrop
BY EDWARD THOMAS
Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

For you are more perfect than a sunrise
More blessed than all saintly wisdom
In your openness the world stretches
Out, and finds love’s longings received.

For Arlo love Grandma x

Under all the days that I have lived
Are you, my family, carrying bags
Filling my shoes with pebbled love
Running the last steps to catch up.

Hands splash out the blue circles
Where lollies drip Coca Cola ice
Wet towelling holding us so close
An avenue of trees to walk home.

Love Mary x

Here you are, our baby
So wanted, not expected
A little son, quietly there
In your cot, just by me.

And daddy lifts you
Bright in the morning
To see your first day
Over the chimney pots.

You are our newness
Opening the world
With your tiny hands
And we welcome you.

To Arlo
Love from Mummy and Daddy

The beginning begs to be noticed
Uttering simple syllable phrases
But you know those touches flow
Into the silent parts of me like you
And our ownernership is so new
The over folding of a pair of wings.

Love Mary  x

The day went  backwards
With memories straddling
Over all those fiery years
When I was fit and healthy.

And gaiety swung me around
Like a roll of coloured hoops
Never forgetting how I loved
All that this world presented.

I clipped the rose buds, slowly
Closing the secateur’s fastening,
Putting happiness in folders
For others to open their joy.

Love Mary x