When they buried me in the dark, I was frightened.
I didn’t like the taste of earth.
And I was so thirsty.
Some people are no good with plants,
Even the hardiest shrubs
Wither and wilt in their careless hands.
You aren’t one of them.
When no-one else could see,
You took such good care of me.
Water, warmth and love.
These are my needs, but I had no voice
With which to ask; without you
I would have remained inert
A lost life, in the dirt.
See now, how I blossom?
Just a shoot, but I will astound them all
With my beauty, in time.
Thank you for caring for me,
Thank you for helping me to grow.

The sky: an ever-changing canopy,
Endless variety.
Black at night,
Punctuated only by stars and moonlight,
And clouds by day.

Cloud-ships sail along an invisible sea,
Scowling black clouds,
Or fluffy white palaces of snow.
No end of shapes and forms,
Yet sometimes formless mists.

Clouds that are net curtains
In the window to space,
Or growling black monsters
Firing deadly lightning-forks.

If we’re lucky,
There aren’t any clouds at all,
Just blue from horizon to horizon
Everywhere you see.

Golden-red dawns and sunsets
Contrast well with deepest blues
All colours and hues.

By night and day, Moon and Sun
Play Peekaboo behind those clouds.
And stars forever twinkle and swirl
Along the Milky Way.
No words can adequately capture
The beauties of the sky,
It just gives God’s Believers
Every Reason Why.

Paul Butters

Season of sun and sand and sea,
Holiday time for you and me.
Daylight right ‘til ten o’clock,
Don’t forget to wear sun-block.

Sitting idly reading Keats,
Watching kids with buckets and spades;
Sparrows with their frantic tweets,
Flying high above the glades.

Oh it’s great to be so free,
No more snow or ice for me.
Even mugginess is okay,
So long as it’s warm throughout the day.

Swimming in that so cool pool,
Sure beats sweating back in school.
Summer is my favourite month,
Whoops my rhyme-scheme just went Whoomph!

Nothing rhymes with month you know,
But let’s forget about that snow.
Let’s laze instead on lawn or beach,
And keep a beer within our reach.

Paul Butters

What I ink to my page is not poetry,
There is not rhythm or rhyme, nor reason.
The empire state is no structure to my art.


What stains my page is not creativity,
Squiggles and lines leave marks from my mind.
The blank canvas does not lead to my masterpiece.


Words are my patchwork quilt,
Adjectives and nouns thread together my memoirs.
There's no glamour in my prose.


What I ink to my page is not poetry,
nor is it my intellect or wisdom.
What I ink to my page is life.