Haze – Neil Fulwood

 

Soft haze hangs

over trees, over road,

view losing focus

near broken gate

at field’s edge,

rich man’s house

vaguely outlined

a half mile away.

The rumble

that trembles teacup

could be anything

passing at any

distance at any

point in time.

 

---

Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works. He has published two pamphlets with The Black Light Engine Room Press, Numbers Stations and The Little Book of Forced Calm; and two full collections with Shoestring Press, No Avoiding It and Can’t Take Me Anywhere. His third collection, Service Cancelled, is due for publication later this year.

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March 28, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: creative, creativity, edge, elements, focus, gate, haze, house, nature, Neil Fulwood, Nottingham, outline, poem, Poetry, road, scene, senses, sound, time, trees, UK, weather, writing Leave a comment

What the wind said – Rebecca Gethin

 

I followed a drystone wall down the hill in a mist

wind pattering in my ears like a pony

 

on dry turf and snaking through gorse and reeds.

I caught a moaning, a voice lamenting

 

on just one note with breathy inhalations,

its instrument a welded gate

 

played on as though it were an organ pipe.

I pressed my fingers to the holes

 

and nothing stopped or changed the note,

air finding what it needed for an utterance

 

of sorrow, the little Os its mouthpiece

calling out from among the silent stones.

 

Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor in Devon. In 2017 two pamphlets were published: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who published an earlier collection called A Handful of Water and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow. In 2018 she jointly won the Coast to Coast Pamphlet competition and has been awarded a writing residency at Brisons Veor. Find more at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.

February 3, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: air, creative, creativity, Devon, elements, gate, hill, mist, nature, note, pipe, plants, poem, Poetry, Rebecca Gethin, sorrow, sound, stones, UK, voice, wall, wind, writing Leave a comment

Last One – Rachel Lewis

 

The sun had almost given out that day

I went out late, after the sun had almost

Left us all behind.

 

The first thing I saw was the birch tree,

That had turned such a shade of yellow

As I’d never seen.

 

It was brighter and purer somehow than any green,

And the colour ran sharp through me, set me

Crying as I walked.

 

Blackberries were pouring down. The grass

Was dying in the last of the wintry light.

The streetlight glow began.

 

Willows by the river, and the plane trees,

All said “I know” whenever the wind filled

Their echo chambers.

 

Ducks and geese and magpies live here,

Resourcefully around our houses.

Swans, blackbirds as well.

 

I swung on the kissing gate and realised

I don’t know whether he’s for real, or if he’ll

Ever come back here.

 

 

Rachel is a London-based poet. She was previously a poetry editor for the Mays Anthology and a Young Producer with Poet in the City. Her poetry can also be found on the Poetry Society website, in the Dawntreader and Kindling journals, and unpredictably at live events around London.

February 2, 2018February 2, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, colours, creative, creativity, elements, fruit, gate, glow, light, memory, nature, poem, Poetry, Rachel Lewis, realisation, return, river, senses, sun, trees, wind, writing Leave a comment

Over the fence – John Grey

 

I watched the boy

struggle to climb a fence.

I don’t know whether his intent

was escape

or if he was merely retrieving a lost ball.

 

It was a tall, wooden stockade barrier

and progress could be measured

in the merest of inches

but failure was all the way back down.

 

I didn’t volunteer my help.

He was a kid

and that would have been an insult.

But he did catch my gaze

once or twice.

He must have thought my height

was unfair.

 

He could have much more easily

exited through his front gate

but that lacked the derring-do of a real option.

The fence was Mt. Everest or an opposing army

or a thick jungle or a rampaging animal.

Or maybe it was even me.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. His work has recently been published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review, and is upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.

July 15, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Australia, barrier, challenge, climb, creative, creativity, escape, exit, failure, fence, gate, gaze, height, help, John Grey, memory, opposition, poem, Poetry, progress, struggle, task, writing Leave a comment