Cirencester Scene

 

Poetry anthology

Seven Springs – by Frank McMahon

 

Who knows where they have come from? No

summer rains to fill the limestone

caverns, no spring time residue

and yet the tongues of water spread

in new directions, loosestrife by

the water’s edge; and willow herb.

 

Across a once-ploughed field,

mineral insinuation,

feeding the tangled hedgerows and

forcing the flush of hawthorn’s white.

 

Folded in dew, summer might bring berries;

fieldfare and redwing on winter’s winds.

 

 

Imperfect Love – by Sophie Livingston

You are not handsome, though you said you were

thought quite a catch before time thinned your face.

Nor wise, or else by now it would occur

To you that women are more devious

Than kind, and that just because a story’s

True does not make it interesting, and while

I like some of your jokes, the truth is this –

It’s more the failure rate that makes me smile.

 

But though I clearly see your flaws and you

See mine. I would far rather have the light

Of our critical kind of love, than view

With romance’s dull, fore-shortened sight.

 

So, I’ll not patronise with lies and you

May criticise, so that our love stays true.

 

Under New Management – by Iris Anne Lewis

(Written some time ago when The Twelve Bells changed hands)

 

Moored like ships beneath the sign

the skips are full of cargo.

Battered tables, broken chairs thrown

higgledy-piggledy in the hold,

jostling with threadbare cushions and

beer-stained carpets loosely rolled.

 

Only the sign remains.

Twelve painted bells, solid black on white,

sway gently in the breeze, while in the distance

church bells chime, twelve notes rippling

across the Cotswold town.

 

A new sign, fresh painted, hangs there now.

Bluebells, dainty, nodding, on a buttermilk board.

A patch of springtime meadow suspended

above the tarmacked road.

 

But winter comes, and with it, fog and frost.

Across the rooftops church bells toll.

A chill wind blows, the pub sign rocks

and creaking, keens for something lost.