Michael Jennings

Calling?

So close once – now I don’t know where you are.
Bonds that seemed so strong dissolved
by always leaving you until tomorrow.
Do you sometimes give me a thought?
occasionally resurrect old times,
each thought of me spaced longer
than the time before – a week, a month, a year?
And then today … It was the letter falling on the mat;
for a second it seemed to bear your handwriting.
The brief flutter of the heart was quickly stilled,
but in that moment I saw your face now no longer young;
your hair grey, your face lined, your eyes deep with mystery.
Was that mistaken glimpse of mine a prompt?
Could you be suffering and be needing my prayers?

Michael Jennings is an ex-cartographer, ex-teacher and failed novelist who became a Catholic in 1980 after twenty years of dithering. His poetry has been published in Acumen.

Kathy Miles

The Faun Remembers
after ‘Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune’

Longing again for his wanton days
in the hours’ still drowse shadows
slide across his eyelids
and the shape of a nymph
quickens the slack of his heart

hand over hand it plays out
the chase-and-catch (her, always just out of reach)
and in the trees a flute of wind
its gracenote a hushed ripple
above the stream’s cascade

and he drowns over and over in her arms
thinking of how it was when the us of them
had hardly begun her flesh unfolding
in the heat her dress a rustle
as she ghosts into his dreamtime

‒wait ‒

as he leaves himself sleeping
there beside the tall oak remembers
games of tag and hopscotch
in a bombed-out street her scarf catching
on a metal sprig their lost childhood

and the veil of his now-eyes
seeing her drift his fingers
stretch to her breath slowing
a falling cadence of light

Her work has also appeared in many anthologies and magazines, and she won the short poem category in the Second Light 2013 poetry competition, and the Welsh Poetry Competition in 2014. She also was the winner of the Bridport prize in 2015. Her third poetry collection, Gardening With Deer, was published by Cinnamon Press in June 2016.

Helen Ashley

Observations on the Creation

Den ausgedehnten Himmelsraum
ziert ohne Zahl
der hellen Sterne Gold

Joseph hangs notes on the stave
as he sets Uriel’s words for tenor voice.
He smiles, thinking back to June 1792,
to England, to William Herschel’s Observatory.

“You are welcome, Mr Haydn” she greets him.
“But sadly, my brother is away.”
Hiding disappointment, Joseph is resigned
to take tea, converse politely with Caroline,
sister of William, musician-astronomer.

But her words are not of trivia:
fervently, she leads him from the house
to their place of work; tells of telescopes
too weak to satisfy her brother’s searchings;
hours she worked with him, to grind and polish
mirrors for superior instruments.

She shows notebooks, relives records
of William’s insight, 1781: a distant star?
But no, something new ‒another planet,
seventh from the sun; his questioning
of nebulae: not strange fluid, but a mass of stars;
her growing curiosity; acclaim for separate
discoveries made by her own observations.

London concerts, Handel’s oratorios still play
through Joseph’s head. He longs to emulate
such grandeur. Returning to Vienna,
in his luggage is the perfect libretto
to set for religious convention.
In his thoughts, the music is forming
to reflect his new-found wonder:
how much of the creation still awaits
the enquiring minds of William and Caroline.

Quotation translates as:
The space immense of the azure sky
in numerous hosts
of radiant orbs adorns

from the Oratorio “The Creation” by Joseph Haydn

HELEN ASHLEY lives in Totnes, Devon, where she facilitates a poetry appreciation group. Her Acumen pamphlet, Ways of Saying, was published in 2010. In 2018, she was Commended in the Grey Hen Poetry Competition, and Highly Commended in the Torbay Festival
Poetry Competition.