BERWICK – ON – TWEED MARKET
Cold, even in summer
Vast bastide hides the place.
Tweed widens and shallows:
Its sallows harbor salmon.
In the ancient market place
Sneaky ancient marketeers pace,
Their faces seeking trade:
Fowl, flesh, or fish
Old or fresh, for cash.
…………………………………………………………………………
NOTES
*Bastide means a fortified town, often with wide extensive
earth embankments surrounding the entire settlement.
*River Tweed is on the border between England and Scotland
*Berwick is a small town on the border.
Categories:
sallows, places
Form: Free verse
GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN
She once said, “Heaven is in my eyes,”
And to me it was a mystery what she meant
Until one dreary city day spent
As heavy rain poured from the skies
And then the shining sun splendid and high –
Welcome surprisein the drabness around –
Made every thing except the puddles dry –
Wet mirrors – tiny shiny on the ground.
Each an empty hole in a shabby shroud,
A world worn through, where beauty had room,
As a patch of blue is seen through cloud
And you see beyond the gloom.
Glimpses of the river’s sallows,
Leaves and branches trailing down,
Every twig all dressed in yellow –
Autumn’s coming to the town.
Fragments of golden church dome over
Pieces of coloured glass window.
Moving cirrus patchwork cover
For the soaring, arching rainbow.
Like misplaced jigsaw pieces,
They didn’t belong - any more
Than fragments of crockery dishes
Fallen to the grey kitchen floor.
Each coloured patch in a world of cement
Was a fragment of perfection from on high –
A perfect glimpse of heaven – like her eyes ….
To me, that’s what she meant.
Categories:
sallows, world,
Form: Quatrain