~

her, two doors down

is having a sale 

stuff all over the drive

she’s already peeved,

her only child, a boy, 

now lives away, works up north

conveniently leaving

his adolescence behind

for her to clear out, 

christ alone knows where 

a doll’s house came from,

it started me thinking 

of the back bedroom

I grandly call ‘the office’

from when I had a real job,

long before people started 

the ‘work from home’ caper 

and it not meaning

just throwing a sickie,

I do a swift scan realising

how much stuff isn’t mine

and what if anything

might be worth a bob or two,

what two things I’d carry

out in a fire, easy

the Martin and the Hardy,

I stroll down two doors

and chat to Mary,

ask her if she’s sad

to see all this go,

she says no rather too quickly,

then tenderly strokes 

the doll’s house musing

‘this was mine,

I was never lucky enough

to have had a little girl’.

*

© Graham R Sherwood 08/23

~

a sky full of false promise

bears down like a bully

threatening a turbulent

morning walk beside the stream

now returned to its shallow glass

after yesterday’s storm spate,

 Bella disturbs an egret from reeds

which lifts away discontentedly

yellow boots hanging below

its snow white plumage,

 holiday jet highways form

tight vapour trails that 

bloat into huge serpents

before dissipating vaguely

as new ones take their place,

 occasionally I am forced to tiptoe

through the new urban litter of

abandoned electric scooters

purportedly saving my planet

making my neighborhood

easier to breathe in,

 I look to the heavens

and see myriad false promises

cynically arranged in committee

gloating at my curses

*

© Graham R Sherwood 08/23

~

my youngest, herself now

married and a mother

asked me when 

and how I knew, 

an impossible enquiry,

love, that undecipherable entity

a peculiarly complex viral affliction 

for which there is no antidote,

I succumbed at only seventeen

and have lived for over 

half a century within its tenancy,

perhaps a chance meeting, 

a snapshot from a bus window

a photograph in a newspaper

who will ever know?

the ‘when’, was on first sight

a warm enduring ache,

the ‘how’, harder to fathom

remains an enduring enigma

*

© Graham R Sherwood 07/23

~

all through that Summer

questions, questions, 

were you my guardian angel

or my demon devil?

was I your Noah’s dove?

now distant memories 

mysteriously weave their way back 

through the mist, like the blind 

ferryman who reads the tides and

 navigates a route through 

the perilous reef,

memories that swirl around my legs,

like old newspaper, their

sharp words pierce my ears, 

and cling to my shoulders

as I try in vain to shrug them off,

but they cannot harm me

I have waited here too long,

secretly seething outwardly sanguine

and for the briefest moment 

you recoil, before once again

 goading me with your lion-tamer’s

 whip, before placing your lovely head

between my chastised jaws,

all around leaves fall 

a point of no return reached

from proud green

to humbled bronze.

*

© Graham R Sherwood 07/23 (rev)

~

the morning is coming up and

gradually like am-dram footlights

pale streaks begin to bleed

dimly through the flowering cherry,

it’s 4am and across two gardens

next door’s cinema screen sized

television still flickers through a film

looks like he’s gone to sleep in the chair again,

why I’m sitting at the kitchen table

like a condemned man, only a mug of tea 

and a blank page for company

heaven only knows,

I can’t even blame the pigeons, 

all of which are hunkered down 

out of this mean inconsistent wind,

I had woken up from a dream 

about Rugby (town not game) 

the people, old colleagues and neighbours

we’ve not seen for forty years, and was

wondering if they ever thought of us

who emigrated south,

not being a smoker, rather strangely I

warmly remember the triangular tobacco shop 

perched at the confluence of two narrow streets,

and the children’s favourite the cattle market, 

both now long gone,

we discovered our son’s colour blindness

in the park there, evidently baked beans 

were the same colour as its green bandstand,

it was our first house

we were very happy there

*

© Graham R Sherwood 07/23

~

Saturn looked so close last night

unusually to the left 

and lower than the moon,

as if sitting on Seamus’s roof,

at 3am it made me think, that

when the end comes and all 

chance of animal and human 

life is extinguished,

whether by cataclysmic event

or our own infantile foolishness,

three things will remain for

future exploratory

extra-terrestrial pioneers

to consider, 

Termites, Marmite and Lego, 

the three building blocks for 

a new civilization

*

© Graham R Sherwood 07/23

~

sixty-some years have passed

and here you are a local icon

a flamboyant emergent

post-pupae, post chrysalis

from timidity to tenacity

you stand erect to bask

amongst the wailing riffs and

heartache chords

but hidden in a shallow grave

buried beneath another life

a shy voice briefly calls you back

to childhood innocence of

simpler times, easier days

to steady your stumbling gait

brush the dull dirt from your feet

point you back into the light

with new words to sing

with clearer voice

*

© Graham R Sherwood 07/23 

~

in a good year for poppies

I step carefully through the

blood red hearts fluttering

in silent multitude,

singularly fragile, as a host 

a shimmering jollity, belying

their tragic associations,

each slender stalk

sturdy as any soldier,

each bloom chattering

soft words of tenderness sent

in wrinkled love letters,

they stand to face any foe

brave fearless hearts 

unbowed resilient

casualties of the battle

*

© Graham R Sherwood 06/23

~

haughty, frigid, aloof

call her what you will

Chomolungma or 

Sagarmatha 

casts a scornful eye

two ways

as they camp, shivering

around her chilling skirts,

seeking audience

a chance to plant 

a reverential kiss 

on her craggy brow

they may be lucky 

where others have failed 

crushed like flies, 

frozen into dead signposts 

used by those pilgrims 

yet to come

once her pristine white

majestic, unsurpassable

they now foul themselves

around her feet

in their avarice

to meet her icy gaze,

no longer sacred

a cruel sacrifice

*

© Graham R Sherwood 06/23

(For John Davies)

~

it’s an unusual relationship 

a friend of a friend

becomes your friend, 

not someone you’ll see every day

twice a year, maybe thrice

but across many, many years

of celebrations, madcap parties,

murder mysteries or fancy guise,

gradually the jigsaw of a life 

clicks into place

through shared passions

food and wine and more wine,

long conversations 

stretching into the night

sensing his humour 

spotting his hurt

knowing him 

without really knowing

in a group or one-to-one 

he’s always been just that,

a friend of a friend

now he’s dead and I’ll miss him

*

© Graham R Sherwood 06/23