I Wish I'd Written This

...and this, and this, and ...

This is as close as I can get to Christmas for a Friday post, so today is the day I am giving you a treat — a smorgasbord of poems from some of the wonderful people I've already featured before. But the poems are different.

I hope those of you, in any part of the world, who observe a festival around this time are all still having a delightful festive season — and that anyone else is also having a delightful time!

(And sorry, it seems this posted later than usual. I am away from my usual computer and even my usual town, and must have got a bit mixed up.)

Bounty (a remix)

By Jennie Fraine

Thinking of Christmas and the arrivals

with children, I take the camp bed

we no longer need

and come home with two green skirts

(my  favourite colour) and a felted

gumnut hat with stalk.

The very next day I can wear the hat!

The day after, it is warm enough

to wrap a skirt around.

I have drawers full of picture and photo

frames, toys on  shelves in garden,

wooden bowls, Bakelite.

Oh sheds and shops of donated goods

you constantly surprise me, gift me

a sumptuous life.

It Is Cold & Raining in Austin, Texas

By Thom Woodruff

The lights we share are candles and electric bulbs
if we were ancients, there would be fires blazing
to keep us warm and keep out the cold
yet wisdom says to welcome in / all elements challenging
Rain that floods, cold that freezes
Coughs and colds and sneezing allergies
Caught within this web of cities
that look like blazing fires from space
we steal back time, and for a moment
meditate on human fate.
Time's candle flickers in the wind
Night will reclaim us to the cold
We have this moment to reflect
upon the New Year—and the Olde.

The Tree Walks Home with Me

By Donall Dempsey

my uncle Seanie
growing from the soil

my uncle Seanie
a silhouette in sunset as natural as a tree

I climb up
into the branches of his hands and
the tree walks home with me

always in my dreams I am
always climbing up into my uncle
his footsteps falling forever in my mind

The Tree Outside the Yoga Room

By Helen Patrice

The tree outside the yoga room

 takes me through the yearly dance

 from summer to winter and back to heat again.

 We are both in savasana

 as winter blankets us,

 both deep into earth,

 muffled by sky.

 My hands curled soft,

 while outside, the tree stretches out

 and holds the clouds in place

 with bone and twig.

 We wait for Spring,

 for Demeter to cease mourning.

 We shall burst forth

 in joyous tremblings of blossom

 and Salute to the Sun.

 The tree and I,

 we take our yoga slow,

 like sap, like the year.

 There is time and space in both of us.

Elegy for the Not Famous Poet

By Lori Wlliams

Someone, I Tell You, Will Remember Us - Sappho

As we reduce to root and rock,

we speak there, still — recite with dusty breath

food for worms, old lovers, the synchrony in death

look up! at the tree above the stone,

see green turn to brown in a blink,

then blink again, watch peaches grow.

The sun once a sword that flamed our belly

now leaves us to bone. Don't cry,

listen for the poppies that burst

through the earth.  You can remember us,

what we meant. You have that.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).