Bum..blebees
On a warm, spring day
in…… May,
when there’s a hum
from the bum…blebees,
PLEASE,
just freeze
and……..listen!
For on that warm, spring day
in….May
that buzz and hum
does come
when young bees
are in a fret of sweat
learning their humming alphabet!
So on this warm, spring May day
when the hum of the bum..blebees
is buzzing lightly through the trees
just listen far and near,
and you’ll definitely hear
the humble, bum...blebees
practising their humming a,b,c’s.
They may, at times,
rumble or stumble
even jumble!
But a monotous, murmuring mumble
earns a teacher’s cross-grumble
No understanding of anything carefree;
the culprit simply removed to plan bee!
Ian Souter
Nature in a Mischievous Mood
Early Sunday morning;
nature rattling at the front door!
I accept its clamorous invitation
stepping out with nothing more
in tow than an upturned collar..
and a theatrical imagination.
The morning ground is well-baked pastry,
all crusted with a shiver of winter;
sunlight whispering across the ground
all sharp colour and playfulness.
So I step out, church bells skipping alongside
and light skating off in front of me.
Soon I am within reach of the beach;
my sandy sanctuary,
but nature is in a mischievous mood
the light fluctuating,
its moods shifting,
gloss turning to flat matt.
The sea offers up a cold, blue arm
encouraging me into watery depths
while the sky sits heavily
in a grey leather-weathered armchair.
Behind, peeking through a curtain of cloud
a new season waits to spring into action.
Ian Souter
Autumn
….. is mortally wounded!
It stumbles, tumbles
across the silken, rouged sky
quivering over rusted hedges
shivering through shouldered trees,
splattering, smattering
everything in blood-red.
On it goes, on it flows
gasping and grasping
at clouds of bandages,
hobbling, wobbling
suffering deep gashes;
haemorrhaging life
in crimson splashes.
While winter;
with the sly smile
of an Arctic fox,
coldheartedly waits for autumn’s
shredded, dreaded last breath!
Ian Souter 2025
Bonding with Nature
Early Sunday morning;
nature rattling at the front door!
I accept the invitation to bond,
stepping out with nothing more in tow
than an upturned collar
and a theatrical imagination.
The morning’s ground is well-baked pastry,
crusted with a shiver of winter;
sunlight whispering across the ground
all sharp colour and playfulness.
So I stride out, church bells skipping alongside
with light skating off in front of me.
Soon I am within reach of the beach;
my sandy sanctuary,
but nature is in a roguish mood,
its light fluctuating;
its moods shifting;
gloss turning to flat matt.
The sea offers up a cold, blue arm
encouraging me into watery depths
while the sky, heavy in thought, reclines
on a grey leather-weathered armchair.
Behind, peeking through clouded curtains
a new season waits to spring into action.
Ian Souter
Winter Withers
…… its way into the woods
and waits….and wonders….and watches
until…. No-one is looking.
Boorishly, an ally introduces itself,
an iced-sliced wind to quiver-shiver
the woods’ most tender saplings;
to shudder the aged evergreens
with sharpened, encrusted crystals
sandpapering the toughest, roughest bark.
Weather warning complete,
Winter then crunches forward,
cold shouldering its way through the night
to finally rest against a solitary cabin.
Inside that logged shelter, Man awakens
allowing his thoughts freedom
from the waiting room of his mind.
Man has learned how to listen,
but much more importantly,
this man has listened how to learn!
What he now sharply tells himself is…
Winter has arrived; survival demands action.
Man has lived for a year with Mother Nature
after his severance with city life;
he now feels a yearning for the three R’s:
reconnecting, refiguring and relocating.
Man can’t allow Winter’s weathered wings
to embrace him with glacial isolation
nor allow its benumbed playmate… Loneliness
to knock, again, on that fragile, front door.
Ian Souter
The Lake.....
lies… still,
a glistening sheet of tin foil,
shimmering in a cold-eyed wind.
At night
the lake still... lies… still;
a coffin with lid screwed light-tight.
On occasion, the moon trickles light,
lightly across the lake's pitch-black back;
the knack of making the coffin lid crack!
Today, I challenge myself
to touch-dive the lake’s chilling depths,
halfway down I halt, a dark vault,
weakens my errant confidence.
Despite puppet legs and handcuffed arms
I spin frantically to reach a detached surface,
bursting out like some skittish, Scottish salmon
only to be held between the two supremos;
illuminated sky and darksome water.
Tonight, the lake grips my bedroom window
and I watch as watery, inky tentacles
claw and talon at an unsettled shoreline.
Later, I wait for sleep to possess me,
sensing surrounding hills clinging closely
while rain falls like pellets of iron.
So I drift…listening to the lake
whispering dangerous, whispering treacherous secrets
until nature’s seesaw; night tilts into daylight.
Ian Souter
I Tried to Unlearn
……. his name , his face, his memory
but each morning they kept resurfacing;
rubber ringed feelings that would not sink
no matter how hard I pushed down.
So I journeyed to places
that had rooted our relationship:
The park where the broad-shouldered oak
unwrapped delicacies of intimate memories
then leaning in much closer
it shared a consolatory shadow.
The river that coiled past
churned up affectionate thoughts
then rippled onwards to twist back
with a scornful smirk that made fun of me.
The café where he teased
about expressoing our shared ideas
and consolidating coffee compatibility.
Then on the butterfly wings of symmetry
our relationship seemed to fly to new heights
but was I another Icarus on a solo flight?
So the past that I had plucked at
offered no signs of warning, no signals of regret;
sadly the present, the here and now,
yields no guidance on how to….. forget.
Ian Souter
‘The Long Shadow’
Jenny Souter 10/07/2023
My shadow is longer than me.
Pooling my shape and stretching limbs, distorting reality.
I turn the thin paper edges up and over, frayed, like old baking parchment.
A kind of alchemy against the shadow, that is me.
We lay here together- just so-my shadow and I.
William S* showed a poetic voice
the quatrain form,his choice
he named a whigmaleerie
became a lasting legacy
* William Souter ,also famed along with Adelaide Crapsey for the popularity of the American Cinquain