1472

How much do I love you?

             No, not  you, the Divine

But those much closer to me

             My own kith and kin.

How much do I love you?

             Let me show the way

Not in high-flown language

             But the everyday

Where words are not the only

             Way to let you know

All you've ever meant to me

             Watching as you grow

From child to ratty teenager

             From youth to adulthood

Caring for you day by day

             Regardless of your mood.

For love is not a flowering

Of sentimental verse

A birthday card with bunny rabbits

Pussy cats - or worse -

But midnight listening on the stairs

             A waiting by the door

When you were sick or out with friends

             Fearing the worse before

You recover or breeze in

             Oblivious to me

Shoot up the stairs, without a word,

             Or make a cup of tea.

And all the time the love that binds

             Us to one another

Has hidden in the crevices

             Of sister, mother, brother.

Our reservation at excess

             Refusal to emote

May seem off-hand to the world

             Uncaring or remote,

But we know what we really feel

             Deep within our heart

For love that does not need to shout,

             Enduring from the start,

Will far outlast the extrovert

             The banner high unfurled;

For love that does not flaunt itself

             Has overcome the world.

Brian Hick June 2015

©Sally Hick 8.6.26

 1471

There are no rules in Poetry

The trendy teacher said

So all the children wrote a poem

Which had no form or structure

And simply dribbled on

Until it stopped.

If poetry has no rules

When does it stop being pros?

Brian Hick June 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 6.4.26

 1470

Mushrooms

Trays and trays upon a Tesco shelf

Identical in size and number

Perfect forms, perfect condition

And yet

The sell-by date tells us that in a while

Crisp bodies will turn soft

Oozing to repugnant sludge;

Wasted.

No resurrection here.

Brian Hick June 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 4.6.26

 1469

Where once the Drove Road ambled to the coast

To ship the lambs to London and the west

It peters out in terraces and lanes

Suburbanised with Chardonnay and toast.

No shepherds lead their flock across the Downs,

No lambs gambol slowly to the sea;

The sheep are segregated from the road

Which seers its croncrete way into the ground,

And though the seasons keep their wonted place

Rolling on impervious to change

The Downs lie silent underneath the roar

Of Tesco lorries angling to displace

The peace that you created at the start

To resonate within each loving heart.

Brian Hick May 2016

©copyright Sally Hick 30.5.26

 1468

Five years ago these notebooks all were full

Of poems and the comments in between

Far less substantial than the teaming verse;

But now creative notions are more lean

With pages full of meetings and the terse

Reflections on directives, new reports

On better ways of filling up our time -

As if that really mattered - when the curse

Of work is draining all the daily joy

Which comes from letting new ideas flow

And writing for its own sake seems to pale

Before the need to let the minutes grow.

            So I write this in hope for better days

            When verse won't need excuse to sing your praise.

Brian Hick June 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 25.5.26

 1467

Solstice

From this high point the cycle starts again

Little by little the sun will drift away

Until the darkness and the cold

Win out against the brightness of the day

But through all the cycles of the year

Your love is constant, like the ebbing seas

Which seem impervious to the length of days

Moved by a higher force than storm or breeze

And while we vacillate, emotions tossed

By every fashion, every casual word,

Your silence speaks eternity

Wherever it is heard.

Brian Hick June 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 22.5.26

 1466

Solstice; though clouds now hide the sun

Dawn winds rumbling through Gillsman's Wood

Muffle the chorus which has just begun.

Solstice

And I've decided, as I knew I must,

To move away from deadlines, to run

The race that raises me from out the dust

To fly unhindered until they are gone

The hypoctrites, the cynics, the unjust,

Who dare come between me and the One,

Solstice,

Brian Hick June 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 20.5.26