The corn has ripened.
With it is the wizened laughter of a
Mirthless age, showing ashy teeth
Of dappled cowries.
A flavescence so bantered by the courage
Of wilting bloom!
Sadly, sea waves truss the feet of
Burning skies, loosening the tongues of beaches,
Which, with ague, recline on cold, cringing currents.
Old cats mourn the fall of strafed pillars
Burrowing through silt-buried kennels re-grassed for the
Salutation of new vistas.
Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
One girl grassed him up and the cops came along
And then he sang a quite different song
It was all consensual, he said, and harmless fun.
The boys in blue just shrugged and ran him in.
Now Sir mopes alone in his cold dark cell.
All that fun has consigned him to his time in hell
To his unending and abiding shame
The sex offenders' register now carries his name
From tall church spire
Grassed calms out to
What extends, by the hour
The shadowy.
As sacred over
Thoughts' hallowed ground
What casts, years further back
A memory.
Refuge
Whither the river flows and finds its way
Life surges and ebbs by hunter and prey,
There, beside wooded paths alert anglers fish
By slow waters where cool willows sway.
Painted boats glide on the bright wavelet’s crest,
Below shaded bridges, fish feed or rest
And gather in close clumps of reed or sedge,
A Grey Heron sits upon its open nest.
Passing tall grassed meadows where cattle graze,
Under oaks, horses retreat from heat filled haze
Nervous rabbits run to bank side burrows
And field mice escape the lone raptor’s gaze,
The silent hunter waits and finds his mark.
Inside a moored boat’s cabin, a dog’s bark
As fox and cubs sleep in their hidden lair,
While others find refuge in the watchful dark.
Barry Stebbings
July 2023
Slipping, as pain-free
A grassed buzz under
Woke sense, living consciousness.
Waspishly grating!
That smooth, subtely.
That unnoticeable.
One, a dream flight. The other
More liberating.
A daisy-faced sky. Of all
Reawoke freshness
The most trustful lit, so leant
In its cheerfulness.
Pale, spotless, impeccable.
Where's its schoolgirl's mime?
Besides, Day, as flushed to greet
Its well past which time!
How do you feel
when stepping out?
Of a cold dark house
into this returning first spring
full-sun warm morning
just at fragrant dawn
Embracing your shoulders
neck
face
arms
hands
and your naked
cool green grassed
wet feet
You
squinting appreciation for FatherSun's
sacred enlightenment
promise
multi-regenerations greeting me
again
as He has spawned
co-arising deep gratitude
Resiliently penetrating
since FatherSun
first fertilized
organic MotherEarth's
black and brown-skinned
organic
ecofeminist
health is wombed eco-wealth.
How do you feel
when stepping out
into Earth's last first spring
full-sun morning?
warm
passionately resilient
warning
about summer's relentless
emerging heat.
AUTUMN WINTER'S SPRING
Burnt umber reddish brown bronze
Folic tree leaves on the grounds autumn
Chestnut smoky topaz
Cracklings of fallen autumns spring summer camp fires
Springs crickets sings flowing grassed sway in the morning spring breeze
Drops drip, drip, drip water plops the drip, drip drip drops of water rains be
Burnt umber grand ma’s turkey
Reddish brown bronze pumpkin/sweet potato pie
Chestnut smoky topaz golden brown cornbread
Like marshmallows burnt umber
Feels warm furnace reddish brown bronze embracement
Like Chestnut smoky topaz
What colors can do, Embraceable Hues
3/21/23
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr.2023©
Let's take a stroll. Mindful
Each hilly step
But leads, ever closer
To a saint's rest.
Cloud pillowed; above
Herd's grassed request.
You, I. That world-detached.
If yet fleshed round.
In Heaven; whilst short of
Breathing our last.
There to stay. Til hunger
Catches up fast!
I hear the sounds of a spring brightening dawn,
As fledgeling birds from sheltering nests emerge.
A lone Blackbird’s singing lifts this idling morn,
A creature scuttering through the long grassed verge.
I hear a fox barking in the fading night,
An early bee droning through the warming day.
I hear breezes rustling in the morning light,
The slow risen hours of a full budded May,
I hear the symphony of the pouring rain,
The hiss as sudden watery puddles form,
Fast rivulets gushing through the gurgling drain,
Low grumbling sounds of a distant passing storm.
I hear the woodland stream sing its own refrain
And slow draughts whispering through the barn’s stored grain.
Just for to pause
And so let pass
In its own sufficient time
A Day. Slow as!
To be changed by
As to allow!
Tense-eased, life-gripped. As showed
For wrinkled brow.
Hour of it grassed
That courtesy
Eerie-stepped, * restores our sense
Of Eternity.
*Windiness
"A goodly, gainful thing"
Caribou told me
"To leave, once in a while
Home's high-ground safeness;
To roam, for what as sun-grassed
Lies in wait sweetly
Fills which need, Surprise's;
Feeds on vast Newness."
"And the most jubilant!"
Dragonfly added.
"To up and go, but now
Out which comfort zone
With that relief's burst, once deemed
Unthinkable sped!
Isle-eying, isle-engaged!
Floaty; no more lone!"
I stood on a wheat-grassed hill,
It's crest a overpass.
Pine rows below overgrown.
Forming into forest behind.
My childhood grounds.
Three boys, friends in time
Winter of "78"
When clouds dropped heavy
Deep covering, white cold
Draging sleds, overstuffed
In snowsuits.
The boys used this hill
With joyous lust
And loud laghter.
Slicing with metal runners
Above depths of storms.
A ramp.
Formed snow tight.
Near bottoms incline.
Shot there pleasure upwards
Twards a haze of gray,
In the quick, gravity's glee
Bodies held tight, gut waiting
For ramps flight.
Later that spring
A newspaper tucked
Under my arm
Told of a woman,a body.
Beaten, burnt
Left in the fall.
We stood, three boys looking.
Polices tap streamers,
And vehicle tracts.
Seeing black Reminisce
On white grass shoots.
We could smell decay
Were the ramp use to be.
Three boys, guilty faces
Scilently reminiscing joyouse lust
On the back of violated dead
Over and over to the haze of gray.
Life kept the body and heavy.
Burdend by snow-pleasure.
A beautiful soul with spreading arms, but tired of a constant embrace
a steep valley, grassed and watered by so much pampering
bordered by two massaging hills and round-the-clock sheltering
then much attention is given to the Winchester to always stay refilled.
Wide is mother’s bossom but becoming a soft blockade
strong are father’s arms, enough to be restrictions
their eyes, stationed in all cardinal points of this young life
to measure every alternating radius and changing circumference.
Grateful to dad and mum, they yet not deserve applause
boredom slowly germinating from the show of too much importance
with a younger one, the dry lands will also be riverine
when the seeds are two, this being will become superordinate
please give this child a sibling and with peace, she’ll reconcile.
Why not be righteous, stay one of the best
Spill not your beans, keep cards close to your chest
Today you are bounding, fresh in your head
Tomorrow a mind change, you wish you was dead
Your brother is your best friend, you have loved him from birth
Then tomorrow, the world hears, he is the scum of the earth
The friend that you schooled with, that one of a kind
But now shes a slag head, another change of mind
Why tell the world of the things in your head
They don’t give a , if your alive or your dead
Bragging rights on holiday, living the dream
Photos from wine bars on everyone’s screen
A picture of happiness, sunshine and wealth
While they burgled your home, when you grassed on yourself
Emptying your cupboards from the baggage they hold
One minute your pretty and the next, you look old
Why tell the world all the thoughts that you think
What happened to the good days, the old pen and ink
The press of a button, the type of a text
Reveal your first secret, then reveal the next
Facebook oh Facebook, you sure got a hold
An headlock that locks round the young and the old
Facebook oh Facebook, well you ain’t got me
I got chocolates and cider and my colour tv
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