I remember how you gave your heart
Wrapped up in a kiss and a sigh
You loved me with your passion
Did I really, really try!
I think I did, I think I did.
And yet your love, amazing love
It never ever waned
You always gave me all your heart
And I never saw your pain.
I was always looking the other way.
I could never bear my company
But I find myself alone
With guilt that I cannot forgive
For sins I can’t atone.
I will go unredeemed unto death.
©JRW2014
Just the faintest touch of sunshine
And another day began
Twenty-four beautiful hours that make
A day-long wondrous span
With seven of these together
A week is made each time
The weeks will then turn into months
Each twelve will make a year
And in every one of those with you
I hope my love was clear
For the rising every morning
Would be nothing if you weren’t there
I’m so happy that you found me
And we’ve had such love to share.
©JRW2014
Oh to wander down country lanes
Where ‘shank’s pony’ is the mode
By which one travels from end to end
Beating off the open road.
Willow-herb and cow parsley
Grow tall against the hedge
Where dandelions behave like kings
Growing wild among the sedge.
A toad pops out and then pops back
To long grass where he’s hidden
Where birds will sing a merry song
And ducklings scurry when bidden.
For these few hours you forget the world
And you feel at peace with yourself
But the lure back to your reality
Gets this dream returned to the shelf.
©JRW2014
He was sent to Aldershot for training
He would learn how to kill or be killed
The training was all done with broomsticks
When he thought back it made his blood chill.
His unit was sent down to Portsmouth
To board a ship and go over there
It was packed to the gunwales with weapons
And the rations left no room to spare.
He practiced with his rifle on the journey
Like others who’d not held one before
He’d no sense of the horror he’d be facing
Nor the violence he’d always abhorred.
It was such a small piece of shrapnel
Caught both eyes as a shell case shattered
He never saw his two boys as they grew into men
Missing out on so much that had mattered.
His wife who he loved always helped him
And a life with new interests grew
He learnt how to read the braille papers
It pleased him he’d still know the news.
But the trauma from the experience scarred him
And ire with politics grew by the day
So he took to his new odd braille keyboard
And wrote articles and letters to complain.
He could sense the new way that the wind blew
In the corridors of power in the House
There was money to be made in new weapons
And politicians ignore those who grouse.
Then again two decades later it started
Another war that would mean more dead men
The obscenity rose like a bile in his throat
So once again he took to his ‘pen’.
©JRW2014
One in a group of poems recognising the centenary of WWI
It was years ago he saw her
He loved her from the start
But she was not to be for him
Though she had stolen his heart.
As years went by and friendships grew
His love not once did wane
Though they both found and loved others
It barely masked his pain.
There had been times of quenched desire
Those times so very brief
The love was heightened so much so
As he slipped away like a thief.
And here he finds himself today
His love survived intact
In circumstances difficult
He loves her still in fact.
©JRW2014
He hoped no one would see him
Running naked and fast
He was living for the moment
Just making it last.
To a war that they’d never understand
Were sent men who hadn’t a clue
Because men behind doors make decisions
While the dying’s for me and for you.
So thousands went off into battle
To places that they’d never known
Over the top and shot down to die there
In fields where red poppies have grown.
Is there ever a point to this mayhem
I struggle to find one, I do
History will record that I stayed here
So it matters not, except to a few.
©JRW2014
One in a group of poems recognising the centenary of WWI
I was sitting at home with my beautiful wife
We were enjoying a simple cup of tea
Our son was astride his white rocking horse
Our daughter sat giggling on my knee.
The room seemed so lovely as the sunlight shone in
The children so happy in their play
Our world seemed exquisite and so full of joy
I remember as I wipe tears away.
And I’m again plunged right into this nightmare
Where there is nothing but misery and death
Where each time the shrapnel drives into a man
It will spell their last painful breath.
From the horror of all of this killing
So senseless, so cruel and obscene
If any man walks away from this carnage
He’ll scrub but he’ll never feel clean.
©JRW2014
One in a group of poems recognising the centenary of WWI
Mud goes so stiff as it dries on the clothes
And it gets in the rifles and ammo
And men live in the mud for day after day
And they die there as the death tolls just grow.
The lads call it Wipers, but we know it’s called Ypres
And we don’t know the language but know mud
And the massive field guns that are firing this way
Causing lots of men to stay here for good.
In two months I’ve not heard the sound of a bird
With the fighting and dying you don’t listen
But I saw a dead blackbird lying out in the mud
And memories of home made my eyes glisten.
I’d rather be back at my home on the farm
Tending cattle and working the land
But I’m lying here shooting at men I don’t know
In a hard bloody war that I don’t understand.
We’ll soon be coming to the end of this year
We were told that it wouldn’t last too long
I don’t know how much longer the men can last out
The spirits willing but their bodies aren’t strong.
We’ve been pounded for hours, we’ve been pounded for days
It seems like so long and it’s so cold
There are men who’ve got frostbite and gangrene and sores
But it’s the dysentery that makes some men fold.
When will it end and who will make peace
They’re decisions that aren’t made at the front
But by men back at home who think they know best
Not by poor dying men bearing the brunt.
©JRW2014
One in a group of poems I wrote recognising the centenary of the outbreak of World War I
How many generals died in battle last night
Asked the young soldier of his captain
They’re far too important to actually fight son
Their time is spent planning how to silence the gun
Soon they’ll send in the men in a large show of force
They’ll go over the top and get mown down of course.
How many soldiers died in battle last night
Asked the young soldier of his captain
You can see for yourself son as we look down below
There were many young men son, some who we’d know
But my eyes grow so weary from seeing all the pain
Of so many young men dying scared in the rain
Men like us two, who will stay here at least
Who will never grow older for we now rest in peace.
©JRW2014
One in a group of poems recognising the centenary of WWI
Jovis on a Journey... 