Greenlane Poetry

All Saints 3pm
Bad Day
Bar des Sports, Charly-sur-Marne
Before and After the Watershed
Call to Witness
Carte Postale
Charlie
Clerk of Works
Dedication
Dog in the Night
Easter Saturday at Festubert
Fargate
first
first
first
first
first
Force Nine
Forge Island
Four Chimneys
Furnaces
Half Empty
In Glen Howe Park
In Provence
Incident
Kilner's Bridge
Lady
Last Train
Lilac Time
Magpies
Mungy Lane
North Line
Nurses
Outfield
Painting By Numbers
Patriots
Per Ardua
Pioneers
Release
Rememberings
Routine Visit
Runner
September
Silent Snakes
Spring Training
Start-1
Students in Crookesmoor
The Don at Swinton
The Festive Season
The Lavender Feast at Saullt
The Runners in the Fields
The Seasons
Treatment Days
Trips to the Seaside
Up Train
Valley Mist
Weston Park
What Love Is
Winthrop Park

--chosen-work--

The Festive Season



In the vase and centre-pieces
Holly leaves are turning brown
Folding, still sharp-spiked and prickly
Tired red candles guttered down

There will still be decoration
Fairy glitter in the grass
Bright red streamers, yellow plastic
Aluminium cans and glass

For a more enduring memory
Fixed on wall and tree and post
See the bouquets wrapped in plastic
See the tokens of the lost

Each brief candle there remembered
Friends and kin hold back their tears
With colours that defy the winter
Childhood toys and teddy bears

Sadder relics lonely flowers
Browned by days of rain long past
For those who through the greyest winter
Few remember or outlast