October Poems

by Laura Lyndhurst

Genres: Anthologies

Synopsis

Description:

These poems were all written, one each day, in October 2020. They are about aspects of contemporary life, in both its humorous and serious aspects. They began about mid-September 2020, when I was invited, by Nancy Bonnington, to join a Facebook group for writers. Within a week or so, she announced ‘Writober', to begin on 1st October and go right through the month. She would post a picture every day, and the task was to write a short story, of one to three paragraphs, of whatever the picture inspired in us. So, on the first day, I sat down with the picture in front of me, and wrote ... and what came out was not prose, but poetry, which I duly posted.
Nancy pronounced it ‘Wonderful', and some others were kind enough to ‘Like' it, and I was energised, and challenged. On the second day I produced poetry again, and that was it; I challenged myself to write a poem each day, to the prompt, and this book is the result. Some of them have been tweaked; others, like ‘Skin Deep', were not the original poem but another, equally valid, and which it seemed a shame not to publish alongside the other.
So here they are, in the order in which they were written. Some are better than others, depending on what the picture-prompt of the day suggested to me. They may not be perfect, and I don't say they're the greatest poetry ever written, but they're mine and I'm proud of having written them.
I hope you enjoy them.

Release date: October 31, 2020

Publisher: Independent

Print pages: 110

Content advisory: Contains some adult themes

Sample

 

Beached

The boat of my life, afloat all my life, washed up on the far shore of life. Launched with such hope, so long ago, so many new lands to discover, to visit, to return with a cargo of new experiences.

Not a champagne launch this, a bottle of bubbly broken on the bows like those larger or more luxurious launches disappearing into the distance, into the sunset of the far horizon. A more modest affair this, tea taken and get to school, to work, to marriage, to motherhood, the course plotted, to be navigated without diversion.

Yet a change of course occurred, a different sea was sailed, and tides, typhoons and turbulent waters brought me to a stranger shore; to wash up here, beached, alone, the nets now filled with another cargo than that required by those who trimmed the sails so long ago. But the sky is blue, the beach is broad, the sea is bright around this island where I await the journey to the undiscovered country. I am content.

Photo: Alexander Andrews ©

 

Blown away

Light, insubstantial, brief as a puff of air she moves on the breeze, taken this way and that at the whim of the winds, a will o’ the wisp with no will of her own.

Once she was part of something more; a clock, it’s called, a measure of time, and now her time has come, and that of those, the others who with her made up that clock, that globe, that sat in time and space and waited.

And now their time has come, with movement of air that changed their space, from all-in-one to one-in-all, each individual unit freed to space to find a place their own.

She is one of many, and where will her place be? She knows not as she moves, is moved, not of her own volition, drawn through the vortex of out-of-focus green, until release to where her space will be.

Does she have hope? If so, for good soil, surely, not thorns, or rocks, or unproductive places, as the man told in the story.

Only time will tell. For now, she floats, she slips, she slides through the stream of air; she seems without care. Until she arrives – where?

Photo: Wolfgang Hasselmann ©