Cooked Potatoes

Down the dark domed womb of my world, Insects flutter: little blazing miracles, symbols of hope, and of nostalgia for the light. In the cities, hummingbirds still fly, and bees with pollen laden wings spread life across the fields…still. There is yet song; there is still strife; there is yet love: all is not lost. Down the burning woods life trembles. Creatures are seeking sanctuary. And ferns that once boasted  the bounty of their fronds, today witness their own death. The acrid stench of greed permeates the smoke choked forest. Meanwhile the ignorant,  accomplice of the criminal, receives the calls, feet on his desk, and scratching his gold teeth says: “We’ll look into it tomorrow”. While creatures on four legs, and two, with roots, or wings, Or crawling, Wonder What, On Earth, Is going on? Special mention, poetry competition Nostalgia for The Light, London, 2016

A butterfly dances round a lamp. The girl bows over the bed and whispers into the old woman’s ear: if I am made of star dust, I live inside this universe which lives within me, then, no hunger, no pleasure, nor pain, are alien to me…”  Grandmother opens her mouth and the child’s eyes travel through an immense and timeless cave, which exhales a freezing breath. “Do you see that butterfly?” Says the woman to the child, the woman says: “at this very moment A mountain in China crumbles, And in other places, Where people have no lamps, butterflies flutter all the same out of nostalgia for the light. And when they bat their wings, wherever in the world a mother finds her child, a lover cries, or a tyrant tumbles.