1434

Let everything that is me be

Emptied out to become

Nothing

That is not You.

Brian Hick Lent 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 4.3.26

 1433

She drifts by with lunch in silver-foil

To find her boyfriend outside on his bike;

And I am left to ruminate that she

Is a closed book

Save for the meal she served to us

At Joya, where she works,

Relying on her tips, before she leaves

To drift into a world we'll never know,

A way of life we'll never comprehend;

For while our paths have crossed this lunchtime, her's

Is lost beyond the smile she gave us

As I paid the bill -

And even if sometime we return

She will have moved on

Till nothing can recall today

Save for these few lines

Which she will never see.

Brian Hick March 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 2.3.26

 1432

Jean de la Fontaine

Don't write about the rhyme scheme, make it work,

Sort out your ideas and don't shirk

The task in hand as if the need to rhyme

Were more important than the need to say

Something that's of value and to sway

The reader who has taken her own time

To contemplate your thoughts here on the page

The mysteries of image and the rage

Which only a true poet can set down

Within the confines of an antique form

Cajoling it until the verse it born

To acclamation, credit and renown.

Brian Hick February 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 26.2.26

 1431

I need to find a form which is my own;

Not any form but one which can flow free

As if I wasn't writing poetry

But simply paring language to the bone

So that it said exactly what I think

And you would understand in simple terms

The depth and the complexity which yearns

To be transformed, changed from idea to ink,

Until, as if osmosis had occurred,

Nothing stands between the latest germ

Of an idea, and translation's worm

Cannot withhold the power of my word;

            But here we have another Sonnet, penned

            As if pentameters were their own end.

Brian Hick February 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 24.2.26

 1430

Our solar panels

Are quite unresponsive to

Fifty shades of grey.

Brian Hick February 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 20.2.26

 1429

knowing the rules

To write of Joy this form needs to explode

Yet, like the Masters, I'm bound by the rules;

Each sonnet, roundel, every type of mode

Encases all my verse as if the tools

I need to write have all been handed down

Unchallenged, unconcerned by what might change

Assuming what has been has won the crown

And I must keep my lines within their range.

But oh I long to cut the corset's laces

Swap pen for laptop, sonnet for simple line,

Throw out the narrow way, embrace the spaces

Sans iambic metre and sans rhyme.

I wish - but as this frenzied outburst shows

To give up form, I might as well write prose.

Brian Hick February 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 18.2.26

 1428

Fifty-four years since that first Valentine -

A nonsense verse because I knew no better -

But time does not encourage the sublime

And words are just as difficult as ever.

Fifty-four years of unexpected love

Tentatively etched as if aftaid

That any moment, like a startled dove,

It might fly off before a word is said.

Fifty-four years of constant mystery,

Delighting in the day-to-day unknown,

Hidden within a lifetimes constancy,

A union which endures to make us one.

We may not be as young as we were then

But our love laughs at time - and says Amen!

Brian Hick 14.2.2015

©copyright Sally Hick 14.2.26