30th May 2024 • The HERALD • Page 85 v THE NEXT HERALD IS OUT ON 20TH JUNE v Poets Corner HERALD RECRUITMENT THE DAY I FINISHED TRAINING by Jimmey Hannigan© The day I finished training My Sergeant said to me You are going to a foreign land To set the people free Which is way beyond the sea The government have told us We must fight and win this war ‘Cause the weapons of mass destruction Will come and kill us all. And as I sit here writing To my loved ones left behind A bullet rips into my chest From behind the enemy lines And when the war is over And we have set the people free Please write these words upon my tomb For everyone to see I fought, I died, I paid the price I paid the ultimate sacrifice. Thistle by Amy Ward© e thistle still small in the grass. Red spines the width of centipede legs. A crusty line through the stem where a rabbit began before wind shook it from its idea back into the brush. Half a mile across the elds, sunlight breaks into luminous bands of rapeseed. Light surges, lled with gold, picks out the furrows, a stone wall, tops of trees that, all the while, drop rooks like old fruit. ey are far o – only small pips of darkness gorging on distant crops. No one has been here for some time; nothing moving but grass and the worms deep underneath, tunnelling; a so -spiked leaf, uncurled from the thistle’s base, no larger than a beetle-shell. When light, chasing over the mounds, strikes the patch of land the thistle lives in, the wind presses the dry grasses aside, inspects the spines for a are of trembling red. It doesn’t matter the rent in its side or that it will die from the rot come morning. Here it is, held up as if to o er the world a simple thought, just for a time, the full face of the sun on it. EIGHTY? by Dorothy Lockyer© Old friend, you’ve reached eighty, is that really true? Where have the years gone? I bet you wished you knew! It sounds so ancient, but you’re obviously not So definitely with it, you ain’t lost the plot! As you open those cards that ridicule your age You can rise above it, don’t get into a rage! Keep showing the world you’ve much mileage yet to go Even though it takes longer, now you’re a bit slow. Think of all the wisdom and knowledge you have gained There’s still time to use it before you are deranged!! Should your faculties begin to wear away over time There is a plethora of aids to buy online! Shelves full of false teeth, glasses, hearing aids as well No reason not to remain as sound as a bell! So, grasp the nettle, rejoice in the eighty now Accept the day and leave with a flourishing bow! IRENE by Isobel Smith© Tell me your story from 17 to 70 at gap in our lives when we went our own way Our lives, though diverse, had the same basic start With Scotland within us deep down in our heart. Tell me your story from 17 to 70 e mad years, the glad years when we could run free Tell me what love meant and if you found joy Did you nd true companionship or merely a ploy? Tell me your story from 17 to 70 Tell me your story like I’ve told you mine Was your life full of good times, or rough times came too? Did you manage with skill to survive and review? Tell me your story from 17 to 70 No longer as youthful but still close with old friends Where on earth did those years go, did we treat them with kindness? But now we’re grown up and the past is behind us. Three Quarters of a Rainbow by Amy Ward© e ground was wet, the air clean and heavy with earth – an earth we heard pop and guzzle as we came out from the shelter of the elm and stopped short on the low rise. e light li ed o the lake – it was as if from the lake – rising like a colourful blade some ancient king might handle soon; and up it rose, curving as my back has below you; arrow, long into Space, glancing o a new moon; a bridge to get from here to a place we’d fashioned between us. en the reds ushed beneath the sheets of cloud-cover, the various blues darkening; greens of the land and primroses lazy in the lower meadows. We had walked too far that day. We were damp. We’d ung sticks at each other; my skirt muddy, your smile lopsided as the light streaked into the sky. It glistened almost, almost glitter. We expected it to come down, of course, meet the land farther on as it should do – as we should have done – but it stopped in that air full of grass and blossoms, its last part lost. We needed it complete, from earth and back to earth, not a blunt end stuck to the papery sky as if by a child. ree quarters this are of bright rain. Us, then. Our un nished bow. The copyright of all poems that are published in The Herald belong to the author and must NOT be reproduced without their permission
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