20th June 2024 • The HERALD • Page 81 v THE NEXT HERALD IS OUT ON 11TH JULY v HERALD RECRUITMENT Poets Corner O’ Lonely Cow by Katie Bartlett© Age 9 O’ lonely cow So sad, so sweet O’ lonely cow Have your grass O’ graze upon Lush green grass Until the Heavens open, Until then search The world and Your heart for Someone to have And someone to love. Describe Yourself: - The Silver Tribe by Isobel Smith© Eling Tide Mill by Phil Santus© Can I describe is psychedelic relic From the silver tribe Can I believe at the hippy here within Would ever leave And could I shed e peace and love For silver head Should I discard e beads and dreams No – that’s too hard Might pungent smoke For silver tribe once more Sweet memories evoke Come silver tribe Still echo peace and love Unite with pride. Saint Mary the Virgin church looks over the creek, half hidden by the greenery, a remnant from the simpler, harder times when the world to come was to be reward for the su ering of this life. Loyalties will shi in accordance with new beliefs and disbeliefs and fashions, jostled by ndings and technologies that reveal new truths and that challenge old, until certainties are humbled. You should hear the choir at evensong or the sound of bells that ll the morning air. ey contradict the clangs and clatters of the container berths that bring in the world. We are lost if we lose our past. e tide mill has been remembered at last, for the years are not to be discarded. Once again, the waterwheel and grindstone combine to mill the our in proven ways, the old technology working. TWO AT NORMANDY by Dennis E Bryant© Lance-corporal Higgins was lost in a book. His boss was a gangster and he was a crook. e pale streaks of dawn he ignored as he read. e boss had just put a big price on his head. Sergeant Bartholomew quietly prayed, although he was nervous, he wasn’t afraid. e Bible he held gave him strength to endure whatever he faced on that nearing French shore. Lance-corporal Higgins had had a tough life but in the last letter he sent to his wife, he wrote, “Please take care of yourself and our son. It will not be long now till this war is won.” Sergeant Bartholomew’s letter to home said, “Mother, don’t worry of what is to come. We each have a part to play, ours is to fight. Yours is to stay and pray for us each night.” ese men were just two of a much larger force that was crossing e Channel to change history’s course. Not knowing each other, though in the same corps, they died side by side on that Normandy shore. One came from West Ham, the other from Hove, ough their backgrounds were di erent, their fates interwove. Lance-corporal Higgins was killed by ‘ e Boss.’ Sergeant Bartholomew died at ‘ e Cross.’ From the Atlantic ocean and around the island, to where the sea and river meet, leaping sprightly above the rapids and strong against the current, the salmon travel to spawn new life and die. e bridge by the salmon leap at Totton is a favoured stopping place for walkers with a fascination for the torrent, and to the east are the tidal wetlands of birdsong, teals and dragon ies. From the raised boardwalk across the marshes you can sense the human world encroaching. e quayside cranes that li the containers populate the southern far horizon and buildings crowd the eastern shore. But the wide marshland is still protected and Wessex rivers are still a haven, with the crystal-clear waters streaming through white- owered water-cro and watercress, meandered by the centuries. The Salmon Leap by Phil Santus© Four seasons of life ere is no easy way to say goodbye, When a loved one dri s away. e helpless feeling deep inside, When you wish that they could stay. But time will pass and springtime chill, Will fade as time goes by. e summer sun will soon shine for you, For there is a reason why. Like autumn leaves will fall from the bough, Life blooms and alas will end. You will still have your sweet memories, And your broken heart will mend. For there are four seasons to our lives, We can look back and recall.. So when our winters chill our bones, Summers will be best of all. Four Seasons of Life by Jim Dolbear© The mark on the countertop is a heat stain – palm then fingers spread around it like a child’s sun and drying in the hot afternoon until, soon, there is only the smoothness of marble, the silence that follows and a woman with her back to a doorway made for children, made to swing in and out of the room metronomically for the needs of her home. Sometimes she thinks the wind is a song sung by the soot-throat of the chimney, concertinas newspaper in the grate with kindling and logs enough to roar through the bricks and smoke the notes into the blistering August above her house. As land buries each task it has finished with, the river turns and blinks beyond the garden fence, a bullfrog flops from the bank like a fat over-ripe pear, alder leaves heavy and green, the hot alder leaves glittering. Pendular Song of Summer by Amy Ward© 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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