A Summers Portrait

This year I entered five pieces into the Eisteddfod. I was thrilled for three of my entries to achieve certification, a first class and two merit certificates. Below is my poem which achieved the first class certificate. I must admit I was really pleased with my flash fiction story, Robyn Hood being awarded a certificate, I find this form of writing exceptionally challenging. All pieces can be found here on my blog should you wish to read them.

The Guernsey Eisteddfod is affiliated to the British Federation of Festivals of Music, Dance and Speech.

A summers portrait

Soft summer breeze in fluttering leaves,

Poem
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homemade lemonade, strawberries and cream.

Dappled shade under fruiting apple trees.

Grandpa's, creaky, rickety rocking chair

where rests his moth eaten Panama hat.

Memories full of mouth-watering fare.

Squeals of laughter riding the garden gate,

dip in, dip out of a water sprinkler.

Fine innocence of a summers portrait.

Julian Clarke © 2018

Poem
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Flash Fiction
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Nature and poetry.

I don't have any new poems at present, and so I thought I would share with you the first days of spring, post equinox, in my country garden. 

This morning we had a visit from six beautiful Gold Finches with their striking red flashes, feeding on bibbits in the grass; our resident Robin perched on the chicken run keeping a beady eye as I did the first weeding of the season round the apple tree. Blue Tits busy harvesting tiny twigs to build their nest; and those cockerels with confused body clocks! how they crow down in the meadow.

Nature, our natural form of poetry is tempestuous, and then beautifully graceful with her turning seasons and cycles of fertility and death, wrapped in her own fragility.

Dark Horizons

How many will cry beneath darkened skies?

The zephyr’s warmth chills to a frosty blue

the fragility’s there for all to see;

war words in the game of diplomacy:

politicians talk for the populous

and now, escalation, incredulous!

And there, lost within a volley of words

hides a greying truth, a boil laced with lies

and the tears will fall under cloudy skies.

How many will die beneath darkened skies?

Julian Clarke © 2018

Linked to Poets United

I hear your song

Gone, gone: on the west wind I hear your song,

The breath of your soul sweeps through to my heart

As winter leaves danced and scattered, then settled,

Lay frozen, crystallised in pure white snow.

Your life had reasons laid out in a line

Many of them good ones bearing no lies.

Spring exudes beauty, only you compare

Like nature nurtures new life to the world,

And smiles, with sun flowers of summer;

Gone, gone: on the west wind I hear your song.

Notes:
How ever you decide to interpret my poem, it is not one of sadness, but full of wonderful memories of an exceptional person.

Julian Clarke © 2018

Linked to Sunday Pantry at Poets United