~

a small tortoise fights a lion

a one-eyed squid tumbles

clumsily from a ladle 

three bats rise from a bush

a starfish or it could be a crab

becomes an elegant seahorse

an errant piece of jigsaw, strange

a lizard becomes a key and is

swallowed by a mole

a glider stiffly breaks the scene

as a gull with rigor-mortised wings

the tortoise is back again 

fatter this time around

pushes a magnifying glass

with its nose

an elephant stumbles backwards

a whale masquerades preposterously 

as Madagascar 

a wide field of rain flattened corn

straightens to feathered plumes

a gigantic squirrel with two tails

is spatchcocked messily

and so the never-ending gallery

in the sky rolls on by

*

© Graham R Sherwood 05/23

~

22c in the middle of May

salad leaves already 

three inches high, 

in neat rows, green and bronze

one of our territorial robins

cheeky little devil, jumps

on and off the bed between

my visits to the water butt

to see if anything is stirring,

the geraniums have gone

out to adorn the front wall too,

our old neighbour wryly poking

that we have declared summer

too early before May be out!

my wife swiftly retorting that

it’s the May blossom not the

number of days remaining

that the old saying refers to,

we’re here all this summer 

as we missed the best of the

fruit and veg last year, away,

the house white Muscadet

is already in the cellar

and we’ve splashed out 

on new chairs for the deck,

at last life begins to feel good

*

© Graham R Sherwood 05/23

~

some lives can shape other lives

people teach others people

mentors plant seeds

that become branches

growing to boughs

eventually becoming trunks,

firm seamless structures

giving a person support 

vigour, strength and shape,

now with all my mentors

dead, their teachings 

still course within me, 

entrenched verbal mementos 

race through my blood, 

threading veins and arteries

like sap as a pulse

*

© Graham R Sherwood 05/23

~

a Windsor whale basks

a warhead falls on Ukraine

both drones in the sky

*

© Graham R Sherwood 05/23

~

forfeiting sleep for poetry

harking night noises

balanced on one elbow,

I’m intent on hearing 

those secret words 

that hide within the myriad folds 

of insomnia whisper mist,

the timid beautiful words 

that silently cock and writhe 

like tangled silver fishes, 

desperate to evade my intrusion,

the magical beautiful words 

bedrock and foundation 

to precious prose

are masters of disguise,

to the ear they are warm, lifeblood 

of sonnets, songs and sagas,

velvet to their core, which

cannot be tamely harvested,

lucky the poet who wins their gaze

*

© Graham R Sherwood 05/23

~

you’re back again

recycled, a satellite

from somewhere ‘out there’

back to say so much that

means so very little

leaving blood on the page

your personal control scene

of desolation and carnage, 

you, a coin-toss chronicler

a hard hat, soft voice narrator

swooping through our senses

with peregrine precision to

wring us out and mangle

our emotions

yet once again we praise you, 

welcoming your return and enjoy 

the brevity of your sporadic libations

before you spin away once more

into the maelstrom

a whirlwind in search of a tornado

*

© Graham R Sherwood 05/23

~

this house has aged with us,

a lifetime of faded memories

seep into its awkward creases,

hidden half-forgotten secrets

bide their time in cracks and crevices 

tightly clothed in cobwebs and dust,

we sit we eat and sleep among 

the invisible swirling foment of

past events that watermark three

decades and more,

there is love here given and received

a patina of unspoken affection

spread throughout a space

that we all call home

*

© Graham R Sherwood 04/23

~

it’s usually a man, 

who’s hails from 

God knows where,

there have been a few

Vlad Adolf Saddam 

Kim Joe Pol and more,

on a low light, 

insidiously simmering

before violence, guile, 

repression or just 

right place right time,

they bubble over to form

a toxic slime-scum

a gaseous livid stench

to blight the lives

of myriad lemming souls

who choke beneath a 

deadly nauseous filthy film

thus, fed on shite 

they mouth-to-mouth kiss

their pariah messiah

as we shake heads and 

squint between our fingers

at such a sinful shame

this evolution of evil

the tombola of tyranny

spreads across the land

deja-vu we whisper,

deja-vu

*

© Graham R Sherwood 04/23

~

I kneel down gingerly 

to become her height

her small comfortable hand 

cupping my shoulder, 

I feel her surprising strength 

a gentle pressing against my hip, 

not so much leaning on me

than propping me up

which I know is important to her 

since my troubles,

too soon my knees complain 

but I easily ignore the ache

to prolong this magic moment 

looking out to a silvery sea

that appears to be motionless but 

perpetually changing,

we watch a distant grey silhouette

perhaps a container ship 

drop over the horizon like a stone

I ask her if she will ever sail the sea, 

her answer although immediate

is clumsily qualified by proposing 

a future time when she has grown

notionally she lists the souvenirs she’ll

bring me, that I know I’ll never live to see

then previews the stories that she’ll write 

when she’s a famous author,

I send her indoors on a spurious errand

so she doesn’t see the mess I make

of trying to stand with numbed legs

as I know it secretly worries her

that I may fall again

*

© Graham R Sherwood 04/23

~

I knew my father

the father, not the man

so, I write 

that they will know me,

not me the father 

me the man, 

the man I am, 

somewhere 

amongst the words

the words I can never 

say out loud, albeit 

wish I could, 

there I am 

word for word

letter by letter, 

a man waiting

to be assembled

piece by piece

*

Graham R Sherwood 04/23