~

I watch you

hold out your hands

and cup your fingers,

what you hold there

is invisible, with no

discernible weight

yet I know it’s there,

a handful of life, the 

air we both breathe,

I notice your stare

with eyes wide open

in disbelief,

(it reminded 

me of the first time you 

plucked a ripe raspberry 

from the garden canes), 

before slowly letting 

your fingers fan out

as if releasing a fairy

or a butterfly from your 

grasp and with it that 

brief fragment of magic

*

© Graham R Sherwood 10/25

~

my mother bless her heart

would have said

‘they’re both as bad 

as each other’ 

or 

‘its been going on since

that bloke writ the Bible’,

and

‘tribes always fight 

other tribes, always 

have always will,

they just have a rest

now and again before 

the next scrap’,

politics never meant much

at all to her way of life,

although if she went 

shopping for fruit and

veg at Dingy Underwood’s

shop, she would take the 

trouble never to buy an

orange stamped ‘Jaffa’,

come to think of it,

she wouldn’t buy one 

marked ‘Outspan’ either.

*

© Graham R Sherwood 10/25

~

a man must decide

one way or another

and early on in his life,

is he for himself or

should he be there

for his fellow man,

a choice, not easy,

and often made too

soon, too hastily and

with scant thought,

that once made,

becomes a rubicon,

a normal life shares

the way with many,

fame and notoriety

both beckon greedily

from a lonelier path

*

© Graham R Sherwood 10/25

~

under a rare pale grey, 

sky, so thin it appears 

translucent, we scurry

about our deliberations,

its feeble pallor cast 

meekly down upon us, 

like the oceans, we too

reflect the colour of the

sky, taking our moods 

and mindset from its

random offerings,

on this ambivalent day 

we shy away from levity

knit our brows and 

procrastinate, hoping

something will turn up,

surely there will be

better days ahead

*

© Graham R Sherwood 10/25

~

if faith is thought

and exists unseen

why do some think 

thought to be obscene,

which part of thought

irks some people so

they think it right to

cast a blow,

is it thoughts

that are thought aloud

to help the thinker

feel justly proud,

that others think wrong

to spread such thought

and think to stop it

with violence wrought

so, if faith is thought

and exists unseen

just let it be

and think again

*

© Graham R Sherwood 10/25

~

darkness comes

with a stealthy tread,

its silent cloak ushering

in primeval fears that

birth deep within us,

time slows, night noises

keen in our ears, the

imagined becomes real,

shadows take on form,

it’s time for poetry, thus

from the darkness

words begin to stir

solitary verbs creep

in search of furtive

nouns and sombre

adjectives collude to

 fabricate dreams,

ghouls and ghasts

burrow deeply to

prick and prod the

subconscious mind

then swiftly flee

as we sharply wake

*

© Graham R Sherwood 09/25

~

the grapes are safely in

now yellow-booted egrets 

greedily bother the plough

as it churns beneath every 

other row,

they billow up like 

a freshly thrown white bedsheet

at each turn of the tractor,

nearby in pasture a beauty 

pageant of charolais idly 

watch the din, knowing

nothing of its reason

*

© Graham R Sherwood 09/25

~

hares bound through the

parched sunflower stems

spilling onto the grass, 

before stopping short, 

curiously puzzled to see 

us at leisure there,

this daily charade, comical 

as it is, breathes life into the 

torpidity of each afternoon,

soon the raptors will take up

station on telegraph poles

and with dusk creeping in 

their aerial ballet will begin,

thus we are held and stroked 

in the tender palm of this 

pastoral glove in a willing 

symbiotic exchange,  

our wrapt attention for its 

hypnotic natural benefice

*

© Graham R Sherwood 09/25

~

I am immersed at St Nazaire

its rural quietude hangs heavy

deafening my willing solace,

as a sombre dawn teases the dark

fully ripened sunflowers the 

branches of a mimosa tree 

overhang the French window 

in a black on blue silhouette that 

could easily be a painting,

long seed pods take on a paler wash 

as each minute slips past my eye,

the cool air passes over me like a 

promise that I know will get broken

and I feel challenged by the calm,

*

© Graham R Sherwood 09/25

~

ten of us all told

five couples,

a large farmhouse

and one last hoorah,

the children have 

grown and flown

so we return to stir up

a melange of memories 

before re-burying them 

in this very special place,

boys wedged in trees 

Japanese soldiers hiding 

silently in the corn,

loose banknotes afloat

in the pool, a family 

of coypu in the ditch,

nude students’ GCSE’s

murders, mysteries 

and power cuts, 

pompiers and arsonists

to set the lane alight

opera wafting from the hill

normski toad on the step,

antique chairs 

recycled from the tip

makeshift music

baby secrets kept

torchlight ghost walks

to haunted ruins,

bathroom bats

and shooting stars,

such memories are tiny 

arrows to one’s heart, 

that fly again, then 

settle in their space,

so adieu La Tuilliere 

old girl, you’ve loved 

the very best of us

© Graham R Sherwood 09/25