Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Caught in splendour in the breeze
The glorious yellowness of them all
Can leave one breathless in the thrall.

And gaze I do at nature’s bounty
Stretched this Spring o’er every county
The daffodil, that sign of winter clear
When hopefulness replaces fear.

Now mallards swoop across the lake
A search for mate by flighty drake
As coots and moorhens build new nests
In reedbeds that will hide them best.

High in the sky the sparrowhawk
In fear below they hear his squawk
And suddenly all around is still
The hawk moves on, this time no kill.

And in the breeze those yellow waves
Such spectacle ones heart it saves
For how could not your spirits soar
Their beauty leaves you wanting more.

©Joe Wilson – Beside the lake, beneath the trees…2017

The first line and title are borrowed from
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth.

They go with prayer books and medicines in hand
To a faraway civil war brutalised land
Where war and death is all that lives
A land where the gun takes much more than it gives.

Where children, recruited, are taught how to kill
And women defiled at a vile warlord’s will
As here in the west we stand idly by
For this oil-free country we don’t bat a eye.

Smugness, that’s what the world suffers from
And I’m alright Jack, or how to dress for the Prom
While out in the jungle of life people die
But wrapped in our smugness we don’t hear them cry.

©Joe Wilson – Smugness…2017

Tradition has been sacrificed as
Rearing up in its wake is
A modernism that has no empathy.
Dreary new buildings share space with
Iconic masterpieces from a better time.
Torn down town squares means
Irreparable damage has been done.
Our lives, so much poorer now, the crime
Nothing it seems, was sacred.

Sacrificed to the will of men in grey suits
As once our built up landscape was art
Concrete and glaring glass replace tradition.
Redolent as the British public house once was
In its conveyance of a way of life to us all
Fields of broken brickwork sit where they fell.
I see quick fix estates slowly take their place
Crazily built on flood plains uninsurable.
Empathy too, is surely a thing of the past.

Empathy is lacking in the sacrifice of tradition
Modernism at any price is such a foolish path
Pathos now reigns in planning offices these days
As architects desperate for self-aggrandisement
Try our patience with glass monstrosities.
How one longs for a building of style.
Yesterday has become, well – yesteryear.

©Joe Wilson – Acrostic challenge…2017

Black the wave-heads as they crashed against the rocky shore
And Winter vulnerability was never felt the more
As sodden fields did fill and flood o’er the roads and lanes
And swamped rivers too with their associated pains.

Everywhere lay dormant as the deepest roots felt the cold
Occasional wildlife, hungry, darted about being bold
They were the feast for the dangerous raptors on high
Who’d swoop in deathly silence as they cut through the sky.

And then one morning, almost without notice or fanfare
The wave-heads turn white as if dark was no longer there
For though the cold still cuts like the beak of a feeding avocet
Spring has arrived and will so diminish that Winter threat.

©Joe Wilson – A Spring fanfare…2017

He stepped out for just a little while
He only wanted a breath of fresh air
Yet in the time that he was gone
His life had changed he was aware.
No more the carefree easy life
That he now recognised he’d led
For now on hourly watch was he
From rising till he went to bed.

Though still he wouldn’t change a thing
For life and love had brought them here
His role was now to take good care
And those he loved, protect from fear.

He rises now with renewed vigour
Old age is such a powerful trigger.

©Joe Wilson – Love brings us home…2017

In the streets we lived, Hugh and I
Where an old penny-piece was like gold
Where folks only had the clothes on their back
In the streets where Hugh and I lived.

And children like us didn’t get many toys
For the money there was, was thin spread
So those that we had we played with for years
In the streets where Hugh and I lived.

And two score and ten was a long life for men
Mothers oft raised the kids on their own
Yet raise us they did as they worked to their grave
In the streets where Hugh and I lived.

We didn’t have much, but we knew what we had
And the struggles it took to get by
But the kinship was there and the love it was all
At the core in the streets where we lived.

And though all those streets have long been pulled down
It’s only the memories that remain
We’re just two old men now who talk of such things
And the streets back where Hugh and I lived.

©Joe Wilson – Two old friends…2017

Busy ports, container ships
Filled by cranes with tightened grips
Thousands of them in each load
Sail the world on seaward road.
Maersk is one and P & O
Carrying goods for every joe
Catching tides where’re they sail
Weathered seamen tell the tale.

And in the midst of all that’s sent
A gift is there for you that’s meant
To bring a smile to your sweet face
You make the world a better place.
Yet such a gift is far too small
For one who makes me feel so tall.

©Joe Wilson – Gifts from abroad…2017

 

Upon that discovery
That I was quite good
At gathering each single fact
All manner of topics
My nature it was
The pleasure so real
Not an act.
To continue to learn
Is freedom to me
Knowledge is always
And will be the key.