Picking up lost leaves – Gareth Culshaw

 

The sunlight I once knew.

That yellow light that crept over

the slates and dripped to the tarmac.

Garages with corrugated roofing

that kept the snow from sliding.

Houses with gable and hip roofs

that now have a buckle of solar panels.

The tree that reached for the sky,

even stroked the clouds when we 

were small. Graffiti on the walls

and swear words in the puddles 

of teenage spit from years ago.

New neighbours with quiet eyes.

Swifts that came for a generation

now lost to the winds. The banging

footballs that hammered away time,

just an echo in the ears of myself. 

Moving back to a place I once knew,

is like a tree picking up the leaves

it lost in autumn, and asking them

to belong again.

 

 

IMG_1727Gareth lives in Wales. He has his first collection out now by FutureCycle called The Miner. He hopes one day to achieve something special with the pen.

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The Lonely Unicorn – Kristin Garth

 

A series, superficial cuts, the scalp,

angora goat, two budding juts of horn

are bound at one week old. A mane of talc

they tame and you are sold, filed point adorned.

 

A circus mythos man creates: a dance

of hooves, one horn, straight in a tent of red.

You shed a hundred sweaters life. To prance

you’re bred, be roses, oyster-cracker fed.

 

A scandal surgical that’s shooed away,

return to pasture, booed who did no wrong

All lights and legend, knows no other way.

Blueprinted beauty that cannot belong

 

Designed, reborn a show what would be shorn,

a goat does die a lonely unicorn.

 

 

unnamed (1)Kristin Garth is a poet from Pensacola. Her poetry has been featured in Anti-Heroin Chic, Fourth & Sycamore, Mookychick, Moonchild Magazine, Occulum, Faded Out and many other publications. Follow her on Twitter: @lolaandjolie and her website: kristingarth.wordpress.com.