ailsacawley

Sitting here I wait for the right time to show

My face to you each season

Now I’m young again the reborn one

Of our pack no longer hobbling on

The stick taken from a branch to aid me

As the final season aches my back so

I appear withered when I’m merely tired

In need of sleep so I can return and help

The maiden when she wakes from her sleep

Stretching out in all her splendour

Fingers crooking and every year I am

Entranced again and we work as one

Through the trees I watch and wait for her

To return once more

As we are young together we grow old, tired

Withering and wizened in need of sleep

Resting the long winter

So the greenery lives again and I the man

The Green Man and my maiden are young again.

For @thewombwellrainbow. com

Picture credit: Green Man by John Law

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2020

Darling remember carry your keys

In your hand sharp end out

And if they come, when they do

Fight for all you’re worth

Take them down, out, run

Her grandmother said

Sweetheart watch for ones who stalk

Look at you like prey

Make your skin crawl

When they come, kick scratch bite

You’re in the fight for your life

I might not be there

Her father said

Decades later it’s ingrained

To have to be more careful

Go home earlier

Because she’s a girl and it’s made her

A target, a walking target

Not for any reason than she is she

No change needs to change.

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2021

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

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

It’s small but it’s there

That glimmer from the hidden

Fire that burns deep in my

Belly

It tells me determinedly that

I can do these things that

I dream of and it’s not

Idle dreaming, wishful nonsense

Distracting me from

Reality

The nagging whisper that

Refuses to be put out

Despite naysayers and laughter

Raised eyebrows that say

Dreamer

Smirks that say put it away

The glimmer that refuses

To be extinguished

The magical light that

Even as a tiny almost unseen

Flicker

It keeps on flickering

Glimmering and will not

Go out because the spark

Is hidden away in my soul

Untouchable.

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2020

He snatched it from her hands

Faint smile upon his face

As though mildly impressed

Then advanced cutting space.

Her feelings had been given life

On a world on these pages

And this is what you’re doing

The look in his eyes raged

She smiled still hoping for understanding

A moment where he’d utter

Where he’d see her need to write

Then she saw them, the shutters

They crashed down so silently

They ricocheted in her head

Do something useful, normal

You can dream rubbish when you’re dead

To make the point a certainty

He reached for a metal pan

In it page by page were burned

Her dreams by his gleeful hand

It took a while for her to see through

The veneer of his helpful comment

Until the day she snapped

Walked out leaving him to lament.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2020