Month: January 2021

Deeper than the surface

I ask you to look below the surface

To base your thoughts on other goals

Not money, glory and gain

Yet you look at me and see a waste

A foolish waste of space looking at

People who matter

Telling you that the waste is ignoring

The things before your eyes

Looking at need not greed

The deeper than surface things

That mean you really have to look

But never just glance

To care, help, look at another being

To give a moment of your day

Is never a waste of time

The real shame is missing

Out on the people you could have known

The conversation you should have had

If you hadn’t thought of it as a waste

Of your precious time.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2020

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Waste

You leave it for someone else

Your plastic that infiltrates the sea

That poisons the lives of the fish

Aquatic life swimming below

I see you don’t care yet what if

That poison comes to your table

What then?

When it’s too late to take back

The waste you left behind

Because it harmed your child

Wife, husband, sister, friend

When you have hastened our end.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2020

Blanket Days ~ for a friend.

Hunkered down

Pull a blanket around

Hide in a warm cocoon

Where tea flows

And nobody knows

If you’re staying or leaving soon.

Take a blanket day

Ease the cares away

Running everything to ground

As you nourish your soul

Stop the world grabbing hold

Stay invisible to the crowd

Give to yourself the things

You’re suggesting for others

Treat your own body carefully

As if that of a lover

You’re filling up from the inside

Receive till it oozes out of edges

That you never knew you had

Smoothing away the harshness of days

And making you full once more

Until then stay in your blanket

Warm and caring for you

With what you need and a brew.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2021

What you see

With thanks to Paul Brookes at the wombwellrainbow.Wordpress.com for the ekphrastic January challenge.

Picture credit Kerfe Roig ‘handeye’

Every time you look at me you glance

At your hand and I imagine

That in the centre is an eye

Because you say the same thing

I see in an all knowing way

Generally you don’t see, but it’s said

The expected comment to pretend at

Listening to what’s being said

Instead of what you want it to mean.

A shell described becomes a butterfly

A key a lop eared rabbit and so on

Until my heart says why share the acorns

That grow into truth trees

Or rose bushes that hold thorns

And not everything is neatly packaged

As a diamond ring

The sky doesn’t only hold pretty birds

Or the sky hold only sunshine.

All is a mix , unpicked threads that make

Something different or new

You see imperfections, ruins

Rusty keys, thorny flowers, cold nights

I look for both sides neat and messy

Both bring their gifts making up a new

Pattern in my palm to see the world

In colours swirling in my palm.

As I watch the moon shine and stars

Vie for place in the palm of the sky.

Ailsa

AilsaCawleyPoetry2021

Flame in the snow

My feet are blue with cold

As I trudge the snowy hills

To find the signs of those gone

Ahead leaving wispy wisdom

Like golden coins in the drifts

Of feather like flakes

Heart thudding as I hear a whisper

It is your turn to pick up the baton

The lit torch in your path

Forge on with it, it’s magical light

Guide for head and heart

My feet cold no longer I see

I am clad in shoes to protect

A cloak grown warmer around me

Heart steadier and surer

That my path however different

Is the right one to take

And so I shall

Head bowed I thank the ancestors

The hills, and wind

The quiet now gone and a bird sings

Heralding my newness.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2021

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