Dorothy Pope

Late Sunbeams

‘It’s lovely to see you so happy,’
my mother said, and I, startled to guilt
from an hour absorbed
in writing instead of offering
her cocoa with solicitude,

realised that she preferred my daughter face
to that of anxious carer.

My off-duty selfhood lifted her
from patient status
and restored her seniority.

She so basked in
motherhood, her words came clearly
through dementia’s fog.

‘Lovely to see you so happy,’
she beamed, and late afternoon sun
danced on her silvered hair.

Dorothy Pope began writing at the age of
fifty-three having taken early retirement
from teaching. She is author of The Fourth
Man – A Selection of Poems (self-published)
and The Summerhouse Poems. She teaches
English to individual pupils in a garden
shed at her Harrow on the Hill home.
Disabled, married (to The Fourth Man)
for fifty years of heaven, she has two sons.

Tim Taylor

The Old Couple

When they were young
their love was a thing of flame.
Colliding like two asteroids
they were magnificent
but sparks would leap from jagged edges.
Incandescent, they would fly apart,
only to spiral inwards once again.

Look at them now,
sitting to watch the sun go down,
still warmed by the embers of that ancient fire.
She leans on him, and he on her;
time has smoothed their curves and hollows,
sanded them to fit each other
like pebbles rubbed together by the sea.

Tim Taylor lives in Meltham, West Yorkshire and is a member of Holme Valley Poets and Marsden Write Out Loud. Tim’s poems have been published in magazines including Pennine Platform, Orbis, The Lake and Pulsar, and in various compliations. He was recently shortlisted in the 2018 Hammond House international poetry competition. As well as poetry, Tim has published two novels; he also does part-time teaching and academic research in Ethics at Leeds University. In his spare time he enjoys playing the guitar and walking up hills.

Michael Swan

I Ask You

Why don’t you get yourself a decent boyfriend,
I said,
instead of all these yobbos
with nails in their noses?

They’re not nails,
she said,
and anyway, Dad,
I could bring Sir Galahad home,
and you’d take against him.

Try me,
I said.

So OK,
Saturday night
she turns up with this bloke.

Rusty iron suit,
hair down to his elbows,
grail stains all over his moustache,
and a strong smell of horse.

I ask you.

Michael Swan is a writer of English language teaching and reference materials. He graduated from University of Oxford with a bachelor´s degree in modern foreign languages and has later gone for a postgraduate research degree. He is the founder of Swan School of English.

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