Summer Poetry

Poems penned by the local community

THE PICNIC

A basket of joy.
An afternoon of dreams.
A rolled up blanket opened
And spread like warm butter
On the parched earth.

Thin sarnies
And melted Penguins
Soft berries
And bashed up scotch eggs
Wrapped in foil
And love.

Warmed water
A platoon of ants
And buzzy things
And mozzies
And crawly things.

Sandwich crusts
And Penguin wrappers
Mushed up berries
And half-eaten eggs
Still wrapped in foil
And love.

We return home
Through whispering meadows
And wandering lanes
Sleepy and happy
To our bedtime rest.

David James
Whitchurch

NOW DOES SUMMER

Now does summer in all its glory reign
The season brought more fine by the herald that is spring
Its cloak of green that to winter did so restrain
And its warming breezes that of coming joys did sing,
In a field of so new a life to stand there proud
With golden rays its glory path to light
And creatures all their voices to trumpet and to sound out loud
That it may make their echoes wide and bright,
So then do blooms and blossoms on countless boughs to swathe
Their fragrance to float wherever air may flow
To meadows, hedgerows and many a garden to bathe
And further life to touch and there to onward grow;
The summer is of greatness in many forms to take
That nature in its span of time is ever more to make.

David Morris
Llandaff North

NEXT LIFE, YEAH?

We dreamed together, apart
Of a summer’s day at the beach.
Just us. Doing normal things.
Watching the slow dance of the colours.
The creams, the blues, the pinks.
But we never existed.
And our outcrop stays empty.

Alec Harvey
Cardiff

NO-MOW SUMMER

A polite suburban no-no.
Old mowers on go-slow.
Pianissimo.
The bowling green no longer
“Comme il faut,”
For longer is the educated,
Rated, stated – the hype of stripes old hat –
“Status Quo.”

Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow.

Be a bumble bee impresario
Apropos
An insect’s mojo
Apropos
The sward’s proposal for
A norm of swarms,
And wingey thing that
Sting,
Unsung –
And throng.

Let the shearers reappear.
Let the meadow overthrow
Slick Sunday – bracered blades.
Let the scythe arrive.
Let the buttercups and yellow vetches
Thrive. Accolades!
Let the trove of nature’s giving
Salve and save forlorn lawns shorn.

And so, “Bravissimo,”

Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow.

Nigel Phillips
Whitchurch

Barry Harbour in July

I saunter past the Ship Inn
And the boat which is now a flowerbed
Sporting a magical kaleidoscope of colour.
The wrecked boats in the harbour
Have yet to be removed yet I sense their ghosts
As people try to restrain excited dogs
On this warm summer’s day by the seaside
As I watch a tanker and seagulls glide.

It is low tide on Barry Harbour;
The sun paints the placid estuary silver
And the Quantock Hills are perfectly clear
As my shadow lingers at my side.
I travel to the water’s edge
Where half-hearted waves sizzle on the shore
Then I wander past the grey harbour wall
Which unlike myself, has not aged at all.

Guy Fletcher
Pantmawr, Rhiwbina