Visitor

They say that when a soul departs
A butterfly will come to call,
Fluttering against the window,
Beating, broken heart in sorrow,
Seeking ways to cross the borders
Dividing this world from the next.
Flittering wings that flap in vain,
One day to live and wasting time.
Perhaps that is its primal purpose,
Visiting when a person dies?

Chime Time

The charm of clocks that chime
Is not keeping accurate time.
When one strikes, there is two minutes' silence,
Like mourning, then the next begins.
When there are four in a house,
There is a stretch of mellifluous minutes
Marking the march of the hours.
On rare serendipitous mid days
They coincide, chiming a high noon,
A melodious ringing in my Quasimodo ears.

Breathless City

City of mills and cotton kings,
Old redbrick buildings towering tall
Above the mean and crowded streets,
The dusty, dirty, vibrant streets,
Where bankers and the beggars tread.
Grimy town of Northern grit,
You sit and gaze out to the moors,
The distant Pennine, rolling hills.
You dream of days when milling crowds,
Flat capped and mufflered, wheezed to work
Through thick and swirling, filthy fog,
Clicking clogs across the cobbles,
When barges jostled on canals,
Wheels of work spun foreign cotton;
City of chips and fish and tripe.
Today all changed: they've dressed you up,
Like a boy in his father's suit,
But still you sparkle with a fire
Not even planners can put out.
I watch your bright lit, buzzing nights,
Your busy, bustling, frantic days,
And you just take my breath away.

They seek him here, they seek him there.
Those French's seek him everywhere.
Is he in hell, or is he in heaven?
That damned French poodle from 37.
He'd deftly slipped through the open gate
To seek his true love at No. 8.
With nose to ground, and at a fast trot
He soon had reached his favourite spot.
With a lovelorn look upon his face
He loving gazed at collie dog Grace.
They Mr French found him - slipped lead through collar
And yanked him home before he could holler.
A good telling-off, and then put in his bed.
His sleepy eyes closed, and down went his head.
Then twitching and whimpering (in excitement, no doubt).
We knew what he was dreaming about.

Lynda Wootton

This is yesterday's country:
Here is the witch's cottage
Beneath the looming mountain,
The woodcutter and his children,
The bear's dark cave,
The ivory battlements of towers
Fit for a virgin princess
Of the most extreme sensitivity;

Where the youngest are the brightest,
With a troll under every bridge
To baffle and defeat;
Where poor misunderstood Rapunzel
Never went further than an innocent snog,
And the Sleeping Beauty
Never snored;

Where any passing frog may be a prince
And young love is ruled
By the whim of kings,
Giants are two-a-penny,
And dragons there for the slaying;

Where the Firebird flies forever,
And the fox is an eager steed
For the lucky third brother
Whose borrowed cunning teaches his elders
Respect.

Notice: the young are perfect here
In beauty and courage,
And no-one ever asks the old -
The dying stag, the raven
Croaking his ancient wisdom,
The stooped crone gathering wood
In the darkening forest -
How they came by their knowledge,
And what they paid for it;
Yesterday's country being, after all,
Much like today's.

Sylvia Christie