An apricot cloud adorns the sky
just there behind the birches
the silhouette of leaves in odd array
one stem a slender trunk
is like a pencil streak
with decorations on the tips

and Skorve sits there dressed in grey
it is the end of a summers day
pale blue the sky up there
beyond
so far away

the salmon on a plate of blue
in the lake of space
its crown
above and out that vacant stare
we watch the passage of that fish that changes shape just there
so seeming near

the scene it dominates in green
so many variations
of colour shape and size
the lupins look surprised

M. Ann Waddicor 1st July 2020

I have no golden crown to cast
no diadem
no halo's there at all
perhaps a mask
to let me see
but not be seen
no trappings go when I do
and where I go
is not for me to understand

perhaps those bearing crosses
can see what I cannot
maybe
but when my hour is up
there's no return
to earn a place in heaven's grace
alone
the dark brown sod will be my home
where nothing can be done

as nature takes again
what she has sown
returns us all where we are bidden
by chance
its willing hand
that holds the key to every door
to everywhere that's hidden

M. Ann Waddicor 30th June 2020

What's it take
These days

To write a poem

That makes the world go mad
That brings the crowds to their feet
That spreads like wildfire
Through a dry winter forest

Is it those excessively long words?
The ostentatiously loquacious
Platitudinous ramblings
Of an insecure mind aspiring
To authentic intellect?

Is it perhaps...
     the "creativity"
               of      varied      spacing
  or...    could it be..... the lack
                              of capitalization
               the loathsome little letters
               screaming out
                         hey, look at us!
         ... or maybe it's
               the punctuation marks,
     littered, haphazardly
          through the text
                    (whether used correctly)
               or, theyre not?!
     despite worrds mispeled
          and a grammar might is broken
   can these gimmicks increase interest
        though miswritten or misspoken?

Is the trick alliteration
Whose bite brightly bids us
To center on the snappy sounds?
Although all along
     unvoiced underneath
Ideas idle in the isles
   (or perhaps the aisles)
Of the mind
To meld and craft and bind
Our thorough thoughts
And worthy words
Into lines
Which
Heard by herds
Raise the
                  Praise for which we
                  Privately, desperately
                  Pray

Maybe it's a magical mix
Of splendid in-your-head rhythm
Marvelous meter that perfectly clicks
Flowing smoothly without schism

Well-spaced stanzas
Well-used time
Well-crafted phrases
Well-thought-out rhymes

Well, maybe not...
     those gems are often ignored
     cast-aside, unread, even abhorred

Why?

Because the modern world
doesn't need your rules
your restrictions
your regulations
your misguided boundaries
your oppression
your antiquated ideas
   of "the right way"
   to write
   to speak
   to act
   to live
   to (fill in the blank)

No, what the modern world needs
is
Negation!
Contradiction!
Resistance!
Revolt!

And poetry whose words
Say the same thing
Repeat the same meaning
Echo the same lyrics
Rephrase the same thoughts
But in an ever-so-slightly
Different
Varied
Altered
Adjusted
Changed up way

Line
After line
Of synonyms
          over
               and
                    over
                         and
                              over
                                   again

-----

What's it take
These days

To not give in
To narcissism's spiral?

But more importantly:
What's it take

To make my poem go viral?

Bed where now I am
is good to sense
to feel the sheets against the skin
and know that soon
all thoughts can cease
and meditation
blend with dreamed scenarios
unbeknown to present consciousness

a song sung in the vacuum
of invisible night
a light that shines unseen
a dream so curious
so strangely shaped in space
that isn't space
in nowhere where
it seems alive
intense until we wake
and know that it was not  

Margaret Ann Waddicor 6th March 2018

I write a poem about anything
a friend
a beggar or a king
each subject has something interesting
a challenge to my feelings

every time I start
it's natural
some call it art and art's a general word
whatever becomes
comes into being

there it is
good or bad
that depends on when in time
you're making marks
on life's waiting empty page

Margaret Ann Waddicor March 2018

A poem is
a diary of things seen
memories woken

the moment in the brain
when these things correlate
gel into a thought
become synchronised

a symbiosis
of all that one is at the time
an expression of existence
in the now of life

personified
described
intensely controlled
subtly born

Margaret Ann Waddicor 30th August 2017

A poem isn't

A banal expression of every day life
it isn't a substitute either
or a cure for some disease of the mind
it isn't an alternative to anything else
it isn't a final solved statement of reality
an equation fixed

it isn't meant to be other than itself
and within it are meanings it hasn't got
only those it engenders
it cannot define life
although on studying it
you can find a hypothesis of life

a meaning that might resemble others
ideas of life but isn't the whole story
it isn't what it isn't
or what it is expected to be

it just is
like music
measuring moments
concretising glimpses of that life
the life of one individual
a poet

Margaret Ann Waddicor 11th September 2017

Blown away the wind was today
no breath among the leaves
only the stir of little sounds
as we passed up the paths

padding the softened earth
the stones and roots between
so quiet among the firs
their pillared trunks
the light in the dark scene

moss and toadstools
sprouting from each dead or fallen tree
stripes of white shone through the gaps

and at the top the widened view spread out
in sunshine Oslo the fjord
the sky the house roofs parks and trams
so far below

no rattle no screech of brakes
just silence
broken only by the falling leaf
its landing recorded brown

Margaret Ann Waddicor 10th October 2017