Denise Bennett

Quaker Meeting

The door to the garden is open
a blackbird breaks the silence –

and we listen to his ministry
clear notes from the chimney stack.

Someone speaks about the sadness
of women soldiers drawn to war –

how they will carry guns, be trained
in combat to kill –

and still the blackbird trills his song
his curtain calling aria.

It’s not about feminism or equal rights –
its about nurture …

Gathered in stillness, our thoughts turn
to women who will learn to murder.

Denise Bennett has an MA in creative writing and runs poetry workshops in
community settings. Her poems have been widely published. She has two full length collections, Planting the Snow Queen and Parachute Silk by Oversteps Books and a forthcoming collection, Water Chits by Indigo Dreams.

June Hall

Homewards

“”We’re all just walking each other home.”
—Ram Dass—
I
Shapes cluster geometric in crescent, avenue, square.
Ring-road follows the sweep of Georgian Circus,
swings on to intersect with tyning, combe, parade.
Prospect with views, perfect or imperfect,
blocks cut from limestone hills –future landscapes.

Gridlocked or flowing, traffic curls
round the newly sand-blasted art museum
with glass-green cube tacked on its back
as undeclared baggage:
the weight of generations and their bequests.

Difficult to move forward.
Walking each other home the past pulls us back.
The winter afternoon feeling loops round
to the gloom of Gloucestershire schooldays.
Cramp tightens the stomach.

Physics homework, Thursdays.
All evening on the phone. No questions. Shame.

Adult brains connect:
reverse, revert, remember, restore,
re-assemble Assembly Rooms, Pump Rooms, Spa pools,
jets point homewards to homework.
Home is where we begin again and again.

II
Midlife explores neural pathways,
reverts to known favourites. Hope is not frozen
but squeezes into many shapes.
It enlarges dreams, wriggles into pregnant pauses,
expels and flattens air..

Some go under with their hopes,
some swim, all shapes, sizes. Reversals
from cradle to grave. Instant forgettings.

Genes may determine obstacles on the road
or shapes coded to ask for love or to be loved.

Blocks for building, communication,
constructing walls – till they fall, too tall
and the process goes viral.
Letters tumble from the Scrabble box
twisted DNA chains, parent-power stalls.

Home is the space we always shadow,
never forget. Ageing finds the magnet
to attract return.

June Hall lives in Bath, married to the novelist, Greg Hall. She has published three collections with Belgrave Press: The Now of Snow (2004), Bowing to Winter (2010) and Uncharted (2016) and a newly published pamphlet with Grey Hen Press What If? (7 th April 2021).

Marc Woodward

The Ribbon

Out of the loft comes a crumpled scrapbook
with flamingos snipped from World of Wonder
and a class project with paintings by kids
whose crayoned names conjure few faces.
And this: a purple silk sports day ribbon,
a triumphal laureate –a beauty,
the colour of a dead-leg bruise.
Most likely for sack race or egg and spoon.

I was an uncoordinated child:
throw a ball to me and my weedy arms –
useless and white as lilies in the wind –
would be up and waving
a squint contorting my face
as I prepared for a hit in the teeth
two seconds after it had passed.

So this small ribbon, almost certainly
a third place despite its regal shade,
was special to the ten year old me,
a validation, a dopamine high
for a kid picked last from playground line ups
by football captains, those pre-teen marvels
of athleticism whom I now know
were simply born early in the school year..

Shot-silk declaring I could keep an egg
balanced on a wooden spoon while jogging
over new-mown grass and worm casts,
a feat I’d fail at now since this shaking
came upon me unreasonably early
and without levodopa I can’t take tea
unspilled from the kitchen to the lounge.

But perhaps it was the three legged race?
Maybe I was hobbled and shackled
to another, a stronger person
who pulled me to the finishing tape?
I place the stuff back in the box –
not ready to burn it quite yet –
as my wife, steady handed as always,
crosses the line with two mugs of tea.

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician living in the English West Country – an environment much in evidence in his writing. He has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Recent collections include A Fright of Jays (Maquette Press 2015), and Hide Songs (Green Bottle Press 2018). He was recently awarded a writing residency at The Wellstone Center in The Redwoods, Santa Cruz, CA., and his poem ‘Luigi’s Calendar’ (published in Acumen) was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize.