I look out on the rich landscape
Hills rolling and glens changed
The map of times hands have moved
once more
My spine tingling in anticipation
Of what I do not know
See the remains of a home
long empty
The place where the door was shimmers
Light more prominent than anywhere
As I explore this living map
In a past I have chosen to return to
But filling me with a new sensation
Where futures merge with past.
Ailsa
©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2019
#3words #Y’s Words.
Sat in the boat moonlight flickers
Hauling at the oars
My young years the reason I’m given
The work of the donkey
Seventeen is what I told them
No soul here knows me
shall keep it so till the sea leaves my blood.
We row till my arms are screaming in pain
Begging for rest and warmth
I need to do this for proof of a life
A secret to know when I’m old that I did
Something different even for a while
Lucky that I’m tall for thirteen
As we load our shipwreck spoils to sell
No bodies were there no man harmed
I shiver in relief and grin
Lad, you can go when we hit the downs
And don’t turn back will you?
Our secret is not yours to have yet you see?
I nod and give a gruff reply
Race away across the beach and up
Into the sands hood pulled up breath ragged
starting to slow now I know I did it
They didn’t even guess they had a bad luck charm
They took a girl to sea.
Ailsa
©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2019
#Y’sWords. #poetryprompt #DavidBeaverArt
The temple reflects light in the distance
It’s stillness enticing her
As she is called to the place she heals
Herself in chanted words
A simple susurration of leaves
That blow softly
Her temple is the woods
The trees ruby leaves ready
To turn the colour of the magical elixir
The russets and yellows richly shimmer
Before their autumn departure
Regeneration to begin again
Ailsa
©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2019
I wrote this after watching a programme which was about a family but PTSD features heavily and this is what came out!
He was a speaker with animals
before the destruction
Feeding them, knowing their ways
Before the fodder was him.
Sent underground to set traps
For an unwitting enemy
A generals mind in foot soldiers body
The damning combination.
A world destroyed a mind fragmented
By bangs, shells, sounds, screams
Some are his own
When he wakes from the sleep
That he tries never to have
Nightmares worse than any day can conjure
He doesn’t speak of what happened
The words are not yet invented
Distractions, diversions, plans
All to keep his mind from being idle
So the torture stays away
He is there but not there
A spectre in his own life
This living breathing moving ghost
Who everyone knows
Yet nobody understands he’s locked in
Always in the terror of then
The time he cannot speak of
He is voiceless and it’s all there
Waiting to explode
At the back of his mind is a thought
Humming louder daily
Death is a mercy, sometimes.
Ailsa
©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2019
ailsacawley 