1493
So many blue skies.
Yes, when it rains, it rains,
But in between -
So many blue skies.
After August's downpours
The endless squidgy days
Damp evenings and dull nights
At last in late September
So many blue skies.
On the beach this morning
Blade surfers ride the tide
Waves tumbling in a crystal haze
Of low sunlight;
So many blue skies.
Evening deepens
Into cobalt night
So many blue skies.
Brian Hick September 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 22.9.26
1491
This is just between ourselves
Just for you and me
And if we want to write in rhyme
Well then, let it be;
For no one else will see the words
Which we put on this page
And nobody will know if we
Are high or in a rage
For this is our own time
Though others call it prayer
And go all holy on the world
As if they do not dare
Admit that it is easy
Listening to you each day
Easy soaking up your love
Letting you have your way
And all I have to do is be -
As best as I can -
Your hands and eyes, your thoughts, your words
To each woman and man;
For, while it's easy for us
To join in love like this
Others find it oh so hard
To accept the bliss
Which your stillness, like a dream,
Wakens in my heart
Till all that you created me
Is you in every part.
Brian Hick September 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 17.9.26
1488
30. Aug 15
The shower trickled, either hot or cold
But at extremes scalding us or freezing
So we just gave up and had a wash.
Downstairs the cold tap oozed into the kettle
And while we had enough to make the tea
We knew something was wrong.
The website did not help but on our way
To church we got into a queue which crawled
Its way round roadworks by Old Roar.
Only when walking back home from St John's
Did I see the mud, the broken pavements
And curb-stones thrown about as if
We'd had an earthquake.
By eight o'clock that evening all was well.
Emergency supplies from Asda sat
Unused, as all taps flowed free once more.
Normality resumed
But this morning, making our coffee
I gave thanks for this normality.
Brian Hick 30.8.2015
©copyright Sally Hick 7.9.2026
1487
Stones for Dancing and Stone for Dying
These stones are for dancing
Cobbled streets down to the sea
Dry stone walls across the dales
Nine Ladies and Avebury Ring
Standing stones in hidden vales.
Lights at night upon a rock
Blazing hope across the sea
Tintern, Rievaulx, Lindisfarne
Rocks of Faith eternally,
While man-made dogmas come and go
We will dance the faith we know.
These stones are for dying
Roman castles, Norman keeps,
Wartime bunkers, Martello towers,
Granite, marble, concrete, slate,
Tombstones marked with faded flowers.
Memorials in market squares
Cryptic plaques upon church walls
Alters of eternal loss
Slabs upon Cathedral floors.
While men lie beneath the stone
Love will last, and love alone.
Brian Hick August 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 5.9.26
1480
Pompey
And once more
That Pizza Express
Moment.
But,
Will this
Ever be
As Valuable
As a few lines
By Picasso?
One thing I do know
This won't pay the bill.
Brian Hick July 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 29.6.26
The Pizza Express moment occurred while waiting for the next course, with the extra napkin enticing Brian to write something on it. Sally
1478
Children's voices playing in the tide,
Cut the endless pulsing of the waves.
A solitary gull rests on the air.
Grey clouds gather in the south
Threatening rain even as we sit
Waiting in the sunlight.
Tea and cake entice a red squirrel
And our table turns
Into a photo opportunity for passing tourists.
On Victoria's private beach the sun
Briefly warms us, then moves north
Exposing the brilliance of a sail
A flash of Spinnaker.
Brian Hick June 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 24.6.26
1477
I wait until the train's announcement stops
When only the tap of laptops and the click
Of iphones can excuse the hesitation
Before the first ideas begin to tick.
But words lie scrambled somewhere in my brain
And only as they spill out on the page
Shaping themselves into familiar forms
Can I begin to see what they might mean.
Six lines to go after the first quatrains;
The end's in sight and now I must display
A pithy couplet to ensure the tag
Will capture all I really wan to say.
There, it is finished, but I doubt you'll find
Any hint of what's deep in my mind.
This poem is about nothing;
Writing poems is easy -
Saying something is hard.
Brian Hick June 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 22.6.26
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
1451
On a roundabout near Galway
There's a dump for fairground rides,
A Ferris-wheel shorn of its seats,
A switch back thrown up by the tides.
But where are the crowds who squealed and shouted?
Where the candy floss and beer?
Where the children and the lovers
Clasping hands to share their fear?
Every happy moment passes
Every memory will fade
Every touch of human kindness
Will dissolve into the grave;
So why care if these abandoned
Rides are left to rot away;
Why concern ourselves with pleasures
Long since gone and had their day?
Do these rides so soon abandoned
Call to mind our fleeting lives,
The tiny sparks of love and gladness
Shining when nought else survives,
When even memory can't temper
Emptiness with thouhts of love
And life evolves in aimless circles,
Endless, as the skies above.
The Ferris wheel waits for the breakers
The Waltzers rust into the earth
Everything returns to dust
Until the moment of re-birth.
Brian Hick April 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 13.4.26
1439
What will be written on my heart
What truths will endure
When all the jostle of this life
And language ae no more;
When conversation and debate,
Invective, boast or prayer
Have run their course, and drifted off
Like smoke, into the air?
What will survive when I am gone
If what I've left in print
Does not reflect what's in my heart,
What I feel and think;
And how can these amorphous words
Ever hope to be
More than a distant mirage
With little that is me?
And will this futile pleading
To try to prove that I
Was more aware of what you were
Before we both should die,
Be enough to overcome
The limits of these words
Which want so much to tell the truth
Yet always seem absurd
When faced with love that reaches out
Beyond the sterile spree
Of words on paper, trusting that
You'll know the best of me.
Brian Hick March 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 16.3.26
1436
Bind my head, place coins upon my eyes,
Carry my willow coffin to the sea;
Build my pyre at the turning tide
To let the gentle flames set my soul free.
Pour the oil and set the wine,
Sprinkle salt and break the bread,
Share the fruits that have been gathered;
Do not mourn that I am dead.
As smoke drifts up towards the rising moon
The ashes settle and the sea is calm,
Let me melt away into the night
Until there is nothing for the dawn.
Nothing save a memory
The sum of all the hours passed
A clutch of fading images
Disappearing like the grass
For you will thrive though I have left this place
To generate the truth which we have known
Touching lives and healing all who come
To celebrate the love which was our own.
Bind my head, place coins upon my eyes,
Carry my willow coffin to the sea;
Build my pyre at the turning tide
To let the gentle flames set my soul free.
Brian Hick March 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 9.3.26
1435
Ditchling Beacon
I am not dressed for walking on the Downs
But having time between this morning's church
And listening to Sibelius at the Dome
Here I am - battered by the wind,
Stepping round the mud and boggy ruts
Heading up toward the Beacon's top.
A flock of sheep shelter as they crop
Downwind of a scrubby hedge which cuts
Across the open downland till it finds
The South Downs Way - but I must turn back home,
Or rather to the car park - while I search
For meaning in these moments on the Downs;
But who needs meaning when earth and sky above
Are one with me rejoicing in your love.
(Jung: I do not need to believe - I know.)
Brian Hick March 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 6.3.26
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
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
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
