writers page 5

Tony Wade	Poem for Autumn - Audrey Miles	After the Heatwave - Tony Wade	My sister the vegetarian ER
	October - Tony Wade	the Copper Beech - Tony Wade	My sister the vegetarian ER

Thoughts

Thoughts overwhelm when you let them run free.
Grief, sorrow, longing are the worst of those
who would turn life into purgatory
forever preventing all hope of repose.

Thoughts cannot run loose, be given free rein
of unbridled emotion and feeling.

Give thanks for Faith for relief from the pain,
by unfolding Life's blessings revealing.

Thoughts of hope of return in full measure
of courage to endure the daily grind,
brings the onset of peace and of leisure,
and the blessing of a truly quiet mind.

Tony Wade

After the Heatwave

A cloud-covered day,
Respite from the heat.

To work in the garden,
Wilderness neglected.

Thought of rain on the way
Makes the pleasure complete,
For these changes so sudden,
The unexpected, expected.

Tony Wade

A poem for Autumn

A Walk on an Autumn Morning

Silent, still, the mist suspended
Over dew drenched grass bejewelled
Cobwebs glisten, silver painted
Woven when the world was sleeping.

Gradually the day awakens
Animal and bird and insect
Each and every living creature
Starts to fight for its existence.

From their labyrinthine mazes
With blind eyes and busy bodies
Moles resume their excavations
Fabricating tiny mountains

Crows with raucous voices cawing
Start the chorus of the daybreak
Magpies, starkly monocoloured
Flash across the blue horizon.

Tangled briars, pink roses over
Now display their orange lanterns
Gawdy in the morning sunlight
Tempting birds to early breakfast.

Stalks of corn a perfect stairway
For the tiny hungry fieldmouse
Silken furred and twitching whiskered
Holding seed in dainty forepaws.

Flash of red around a tree bole
Tail erect and proudly waving
Scuttles for the elusive squirrel
Storing for its Winter larder.

Lustrous gleaming brown Horse Chestnuts
Polished by the hand of nature
Some with broken spiny cases
Lying like inert small hedgehogs.

Blackberries hang in purple clusters
Like dark tears, all fused together
Hold the taste of Autumn sweetness
In their thorny bramble branches.

Cows disturbed from lushly grazing
Look at me with bored expressions
Realise I'm only passing
Rasping tongues return to pasture.

So I wend my footsteps homeward
Through a copse ablaze with colour
Leaves of yellow, gold and russet
Breathing their last breath of glory.

All these gentle calm sensations
Sights and sounds and tastes of Autumn
"Mellow fruitfulness" remembered
In the bleak and barren Winter.

Audrey Miles

On seeing the Copper Beech that stood at the gate

How fair the Beech. Each bud responds,
Awakened by the surge of Spring,
Bursts into tracery of feathery fronds.

Each leaf becomes a wondrous thing
Of beauty, translucent, olive-green;
Emerging, evolving spreading sprays,
Back- lit by bright sunlight and seen
From Mother Earth below. I stood amazed.

A sight to delight the rooted mortal
Whose transfixed gaze, by chance
Looked up to view the vernal portal:
Times I'd passed under without a glance.
Now that I'm older and aware,
In early Spring, I stand and stare.

Tony Wade

October

All day, October's rain on window pane.

Tree tops sway, branches bow and gaily dance to the wild rhythm of the gale, shedding the leaves that remain.

Night falls;
still the torrent lashes,

Drops drum
on window sill.

Close shutters,
rake the fire,
ghostly spectres leap
in lambent light:
Armchair calls.

Heartsease; 'til Dawn
reveals the debris of the storm.

Tony Wade

My Sister the Vegetarian

Today my sister called on me
As I was jugging hare
I asked her if she'd stay to tea
And share our humble fare

'How dare you ask, you horrid man?
You know I don't eat game.
I'll come tomorrow if I can
Instead, thanks all the same.'

So I called out to my wife Trish
Not in anger, more in sorrow:
'We'd better make a veggie dish
- Hare today, Quorn tomorrow.'
E.R