her presence creates pause
consideration grace in the waiting

in her work meadows ring
sounding bell of sky

head bent over book she’s intense
as a swan over eggs

turning neck a tuning fork
vibrations in the air she cannot hear

floorboards grieve when she leaves a room
an empty room is emptier without her

her laughter is loud and joyful
like a child’s

when we read her courtesy is utter
when she reads we listen

to the silence around her words.

Pat Murgatroyd

Published in Poetry Review 2010

All weekend you want to lift
The phone and call. You didn't
Rising early you went for a ride,
Picturing her still sleeping,
A Sunday sleep, deeply.
A casual call, about that oratorio.
At coffee time might have
Been made. It wasn't.
Arranging the first daffodils
in a cobalt blue jug
You thought of her in the garden,
Dirt beneath each pearly nail,
Clearing a pathway to summer.
At lunch with friends you wondered
If she'd have an afternoon stroll.
As darkness fell the book you read
Beside the fire you'd lit
Was exactly what you knew
She'd like to read. You might
Mention it next time you meet.

Pat Murgatroyd

I bear away under a flag no one knows
radiance no one has ever seen.
My boat luffs up under a phosphorescent sky.
Hot to the touch wavelengths break
irridescent to leeward in lambent light
mainsail billows something like pink
something like purple.
The sun rises in lime green.

I'm an infra-red sailor on an x-rayed deck
beta beamed
gamma masted
discarnate as an offshore breeze
blowing spectral vapours
along ultra-violet cliffs.
Everything about me is close-hauled
glowing.

Shelley McAlister

published in Sailing Under False Colours,
Arrowhead Press, 2004

This year I fancy myself a Swaledale sheep
scraggy and thin standing around
with an ovine stare
steadily chewing
fleeced but not knowing it yet

When I've had a belly full of wind and rain
up on the Edge I'll drive myself down for a nip
out of the coffee-coloured Tees nipping
at my own heels circling menacingly
round rocky outcrops

Just as I'm about to leap a drystone wall
there by the Low Force where a stile
crosses the Pennine Way there'll lurk
a sculptor who'll capture me
in sandstone and leave me there
midleap

Or I'll be baa baa bad
wooed away from the flock
by the comforting crook of a poet
sprayed with words I'll roam
around like a troubador spreading
verse throughout the dales

Lost I'll stray into the arms of a fibre artists
posing as a good shepherd she'll steal
my wool and dye it
and spin it into balls
and knit it into jumpers
and put the jumpers back on me

A martyr for art I'll drift
through the valleys swathed in sandstone
and jumpers and verse seeing nothing
but concepts and the wool
I have pulled over my own eyes

Shelley McAlister

Published in Rewriting the Map 2004

I sit alone now to survey the view,
the breeze and blush of autumn hue,
I find in the colour and the leaf
A flush of hope that brings me kind relief

and multitudes of scents that wind and spin
my mind to whirl, my nose aflame
with colours red and orange, viridian
my summer’s lease, all wood smoke spark, burning.

The crackle on the air, the crispin leaf
Brown brittle now torn down. An unseen thief
the wind blows cold upon my aging cheek
and winter waits pale shrouded sweet

I fail too like dying leaf free-falling to release

Felicity Fair Thompson

You ask me what she looked like?
My collage, taken
from old photographs,
catches high cheek bones,
pretty hands, unquestioned cigarette.

My direct recollection? Little more
than a grey-blue haze of gentleness,
but for the ever-open button. No hint
of provocation just ease
of access to her slipping straps.

Joan Waddleton

Published in Seam 2002

I watch small flakes of snow gyrate in winter's light
trace the edges of the evergreens
start to mask the greyness of the flagstones

I picture them as flowers
as pansies, iris, peonies - all in white
cool amid the greys of southernwood,
of artemesia and cotton lavender
against translucent shades of summer green.

I plan a cool garden,
sense its solace on a summer's night
beneath the passage of a barn owl's wings.

Joan Waddleton

published in Envoi 0ctober 2008

February slips into March, blue
tinges on huddled hyacinths, light airs
rustle drifted leaves, Beaufort 1,2.

By mid March, the breeze is edgy, raw,
waves flags of yellow along the borders,
daffodils bow to celandine, Beaufort 3,4.

Two weeks more, a tide of green slicks
along hedgerows, blackthorn sprays lanes
with crests of seahorse white, Beaufort 5,6.

April breaks out, spindrift blossom, a spate
of oak leaves in a gale of mustard and gold
wins the race with tight-fisted ash, Beaufort 7,8.

Come May, there are no holds barred. Unkempt
tulips tumble, hawthorn foams thick as clotted cream,
invasion of bluebell mist captures slopes, Beaufort 9,10.

Midsummer: out of the eye of the storm a raging swell,
a hurricane of petals swirls, a tornado of crimson, purple, rose,
attacks senses, snatches gasps from open mouths, Beaufort 11,12.

July: disappointment; a whimpering dive
down the scale, summer subsides to common-
or-garden Beaufort 3, intermittent 5.

Camilla Lambert

Our northern friend
calls an arse an arse
regardless of who owns it.
No bum for mates
bottom for babies
behind for those with nothing
between waist and thighs
no derriere for aunts
posterior for those he really dislikes.
This is not for me; give me a man
unafraid of euphemisms,
who calls me his gorgeous darling
when I behave like a fishwife,
look like an unmade bed.

Marion Carmichael

Published in Envoi October 2006

Marion Carmichael

Terrific body, I particularly like
The rear view, neat bum, great calves,
Smooth curve from skull base to nape neck,
Which I long to stroke,
But he is too high above me.
From the front I swear he is smiling,
Not the 'Aren't I gorgeous?  I love myself.'
More the, 'Hey honey, you look great.'
But his rigid arms stretch too wide,
He will never embrace me.
I shelter behind his ankle
From the biting northeast wind.

Kate MacDonell

Acute admission, chest pain, aged 42
tubby, mis-shapen, looks 60
3 months pregnant, threatening miscarriage
last child 13 months, younger of 20.
History includes 2 still births
2 cot deaths, a spontaneous abortion.

A son brings the baby in to be breastfed
but his mother has arrested.
The boy and the baby are crying.
A cleaner bringing tea recognises
they're from the wee tin house painted pink
at the top of the old mountain road
with the lop-sided caravan alongside
and hedges draped with washing on fine days.

Kate MacDonell

Published in Images of Women, Arrowhead Press 2006

She pulls the fabric of herself
across her outline,
it curves and catches in her soft folds.
Aqua, her veil like a wave
along the sun bathed blue edges of the Nile
like the pearl sea
where Aphrodite rose;
like milk water in the baths of Rome.
Oh lift the veil more, goddess,
make me your own.
I am man, not good, not made of stone,
just flesh and blood.

Felicity Fair Thompson

Far from Illyria, the Christmas tree
is stripped of its disguise. Stars and all
the golden spheres are wrapped once more
in crumpled tissue paper, laid to rest
along with memories that link them
to each year they first spun in candlelight;
they wait for December, oblivious whether 
the rain it raineth every day.

Branches stand bare, casting unease
in a room flattened to everyday order,
just as the sky darkens and hurls snow,
with a magician’s flourish, spreading white
shrouds flecked with black, burying borders,
spiking a walk with doves of danger.
The day is upended in a sigh for January:
hey ho, the wind and the rain.

Camilla Lambert

Now, little baby, why are you curled up there?
Baby, why aren’t you gurgling, with your curled fists there?
You did not call out for me in the cool morning air.

Little baby, you laughed so loud at the flowers,
Laughed at the puppy in the park by the flowers.
Now, baby, no laughing matter, my mouth is dry and sour.

No, little baby, this does not happen to you and me,
Maybe to other people, but not to you and me.
We have rich red blood and a strong family tree.

So smile, little baby, open your heavy eyes,
It’s all a bad dream, baby, open your dark brown eyes.
For you I’ll dam the ocean, cut the moon out of the skies.

Hang on in there, baby, the doctor’s on his way,
Believe me, baby, the doctor always knows the way.
Tonight I’ll tuck you safely, your daddy’s sure to stay.

Baby, listen to me , there’s the ghostly sirens wailing,
Coming closer, baby, such a weeping, wailing.
Baby, baby, there’s no shore to hear me hailing.

The moon has gone black, the sea waves grow tall,
There is no moon, no sun, just sea waves growing tall.
Baby, can you see me? I can’t see you at all.

Camilla Lambert

Published in South, April 2010

This is the field my father ploughed,
my grandfather, six generations of my family before.
This is the house we have all lived in,
foundations date back five centuries, other farming dynasties.
This is the meadow my sheep graze,
shelter in the follow where remains of a hill fort
rise to a flattened ring.

This is where my ancestors grew corn
three thousand years ago, enclosed animals
to protect them from wolves and raiders,
built round houses, dug dutches to protect themselves.
They must have worried then, as I do now,
about weather, failed harvest, debts, threats

Kate MacDonell

published in Island Voices 2010

Diagonal display, graded,
Colour co-ordinated, provenance clearly shown.
Each one matching stated consumer preference,
Nothing random grown.

While supermarkets shout
Their rival bids
I sigh for unnamed apples
We scrumped as kids.

Joan Waddleton