healingwords: poetry for the soul

RIPPLES Sea becalmed, molten glass mirroring cornflower sky, evening storm hushed yielding tideline debris, waxed ribbon weed garlanding bleached wood bones, backwash piling curled pebble ridge. Crouching low in yogic ease, sea blue eyes scanning shingle, sifting stones, searching the shore for the perfect flat skimmer, fingers curled round smoothed rims, gauging weight in upturned palm. Standing crabwise, strong arm arced, chosen stone flies from practiced hand, skimming, bouncing on the silken sea, rings circling at each glancing touch, rippling outwards, effecting change, each thoughtful act reverberates. © 2019 Jacqueline Knight Cotterill.  All rights reserved.  

Today is the first day of Spring and my Dad's birthday. Another year has passed. The deep grief of loss changes but the loss remains This morning I am both sad I can no longer pick up the phone to ring him, hear his voice, his stories, his advice but cheered by thinking of him.  My parents stay with me in the memories of the life we shared.  SPRING MEMORIES I thought I was over the flush of tears, as if there is an agreed number of years when sudden hot, salt pricks are admissible, now melancholy feels like indulgence. Dates creep towards us, aware he would say a birthday is just another day, the dawn of Spring breaks with blue sky, streaked with golden memories to remind me of my loss. He is everywhere, framed his piercing gaze meets mine as if he is really there, trapped behind glass on the mantlepiece, winking in the flickering candle light. He is in the iridescent labradorite gleaming on freckled skin, nestled with Lili

This is a list poem prompted by the online course  ' The Wild Within' tutored by Wendy Pratt. Her courses are inspiring, if anyone is interested in writing or improving their poetry have a look at her website. https://wendyprattpoetry.wordpress.com/ Robins have always attracted me, they are such convivial, cheeky garden birds but this poem has a touch of melancholy as it is hard to picture a robin without remembering my dad in his garden. It has been two years now since I walked away.  Thanks to my brother Chris Knight for the photograph.  THE KEEPER Robin flies to his side, bone pain burns as creaking legs wobble up the cobbled path. A hop ahead rosy breast, grandad friending, tail wagging, earth skipping, scarlet waistcoat spade sitting, garden guarding, patch defending, cherry chest, fluff feathered, worm pulling, eye cocking, blackbird mocking, berry cheeked, pointy beaked, song trilling, cat teasing, squir

This poem is inspired by the photograph of a blue tit taken by my brother Chris Knight. His bird and squirrel photos take me straight back to the garden of our old family home where our parents spent over 50 years nurturing and enjoying the garden before we watched it grow wild as illness reduced their mobility. In his final years we would sit for hours with Dad in the glass walled garden room, open to the outside on a warm day, watching the birds together. THE NEST BOX Sawdust sprinkled the scratchy grass like  stale breadcrumbs scattered on the bird table. I skipped around him as he nailed and hinged, the bird box fixed to red brick where blue tits reared teeming broods of chicks, fledglings safe  from prowling cats hunting nests in beech hedges.  Hidden behind slanted greenhouse glass,  the nest box outlived him, hanging forgotten  as honey pine mossed to green, twig ringlet tendrils sprouting from rain blackened cracks. Hungry tits still fly, feather