You look at me with green, accusing eyes.
There is no room upon my lap,
supplanted by computer.
I realised too late,
I have no poem today.
The Month of Fools
has had its fill of me,
(or I of it).
My day was filled with other stuff,
– returning on another train –
but I’ve exhausted those
(or they’ve exhausted me).
Abandoned by my words,
ungraciously acknowledging,
I must admit defeat.
Linda Rushby 4 April 2022
Another train-related one, but not written on a train this time. Instead it was inspired by an image from the British Library Flickr feed of copyright-free illustrations which I’ve mentioned before
I didn’t quite get as far as Scotland, just visiting my daughter and family to celebrate a cluster of family birthdays which are happening this week (including mine).
Caledonian Railways
Cross the border to a different country.
Wheels on rails, and a distant whistle.
Lift your hand to the misty windows
Streams turn to lakes
and fields to mountains.
Leave the carriage
at an empty station.
Take your belongings.
Mind the gap.
Linda Rushby 3 April 2022
Writing on a Train
Writing on a train
Listen to the rhythm.
Ponies in a field,
Blossom on the hedges
Leaving home behind,
Heading for the future
Could be going anywhere.
Moving through a life
See yourself reflected
Ghostly in the window
Clouds and trees and places
Moments fly too quickly
Riding on a train
Linda Rushby 2 April 2022 #napowrimo
Month of Fools
The Month of Fools has
come round again,
straddling the threshold
of winter and spring.
Daffodils bend
beneath snow flurries,
and blossoms scatter
from bitter storms.
But look again,
and there’s the sun,
teasing us fools
and spreading confusion.
Is this the best month
to be born a poet?
Or simply the cruellest of all?
Linda Rushby 01 April 2022
I don’t write much (hardly at all) these days, but here’s a poem that came into my head recently on the train to Southampton, inspired by some photos of Paris taken ten years ago, which had popped up on my computer earlier that morning.
The Last Time I Saw Paris
And that was Paris in the bitter end of winter,
gloves and woolly hats, and shoulders hunched
against the looming sky and constant drizzle.
Tourist queues outside the Louvre,
umbrellas by the Quai D’Orsay.
Bedraggled awnings on the Left Bank.
The Seine, grey and growling, spits dirty waves
in disgust at a sad busker
on the lower embankment.
Battered snowdrops in the Tuileries
and veteran Maquisards in flat caps and berets
blink rain from their rheumy eyes to see the boules.
Gloomy cafes and sulky waiters,
Linda Rushby 25 February 2022
not even the coffee is warm enough.
Paris in the (not quite) spring.
Leave your bed,
and step into the morning.
Heavy skies,
and empty streets.I thought I heard
the crying of the swifts
as I locked my door.
I looked up,
and studied the sky
but could not see their black silhouettes.
The sea is calling,
grumbling, moaning,
telling secrets
better not to know.Above, among the grey;
a patch of blue appears
very high,
and very pale.
Across it,
the dark specks flash;
not many – six or eight,
then gone again.And, in between two floating banks of white,
Linda Rushby 03 July 2021
in that crack of space
(very pale, very high),
I catch a sight,
against the deepening blue,
of a silver sliver;
the last paring
of the dying moon.
This is the house I lived in from when I was born till I went to university, aged eighteen – my parents moved out three years later. I wrote the poem in 2004, after visiting the old town for a school friend’s silver wedding anniversary party, but didn’t have a current photo of it till last week, when my daughter and son-in-law happened to be passing the area and looked it up.
Well, evidently the tree that wasn’t there in 1974 but was in 2004 is still there, and even bigger than I remember. What staggers me most is the fact that it’s seventeen years since I wrote this poem.
I wasn’t writing a lot at that time. It was another year before started a creative writing course, and then a blog. I used to be quite proud of this poem – it’s in my (self) published collection, ‘Beachcombing’ – but then I got a bit embarrassed by it, and thought maybe it’s a bit too sentimental.
Anyway, here it is:
How long does it take to grow a tree?
I stand before the house where first I grew
And stare in wonder at your size, your strength,
Your permanence. The wrought iron gate is gone,
The crumbling wall replaced by livid brick,
The house is smaller than it was, and in
My memory I find there is no trace
Of your existence, even as a sapling.
Yet now your branches tap
The window where I leant and dreamt of
Wider worlds and broader skies.How could you be here, and I not know?
Maybe you have a longer claim than mine
To this place. Thirty years perhaps,
To twenty that I spent. The Queen of May,
Your shining glory will return each year
To light the month that shares your name.
My beauty blossomed once, and faded then.
My branches tend to fruit now, not to flowers,
My seedlings spread their roots in other soils.How long does it take to grow a woman?
Linda Rushby 2004
Half a century gone, yet still I strive
To push towards the light. My roots dig deep
And greedily draw the nutrients to my leaves
Unfurling in the loving of the sun.
They grow and wither, fade and fall away,
Yet new ones come, and still I stretch on up
Until the lightning strike, or fungus plague,
Will topple me, returning to the earth.
And in my inner cortex, sap and wood
I know that I am still the girl who grew
And blossomed in the place where you now stand.
Full Circle (Part 2)
When you come to the end,
Linda Rushby 30 April 2021
and close the circle,
and you see it’s a spiral,
and you hope that you’re rising,
and not always falling,
and you look at the answers,
and all of the questions,
you found on your journey,
and the morning is breaking,
and the summer is coming,
and you still have no answers,
there are no conclusions
but you know you’ll keep asking.
Change
And as the light returns,
and warmth returns,
you know
that all is change
and everything is process:
progress or decline,
it’s all the same
until we label it.From beating heart
and thinking mind
to ash and mud;
the fire and earth
will get us in the end.And all we have are
spaces in between:
the dark and light;
the there and here;
the then and now;
the you and me.Everything else
Linda Rushby 29 April 2021
is fantasy,
the dreams in which
our lives are lived.
Destiny
Look back, and see
the paths emerging
from the origin,
the point where all began
and all that happened
seems inevitable,
predestined.But don’t be fooled;
there is no Destiny,
no mighty hand to guide you on your way,
it’s just a story that we tell ourselves
to make this living bearable.Look forward;
nothing is immutable.
There is no clarity from this point on;
the paths of chance and choice
twine round each other
and themselves.The web of causes
that you think you know,
may be disturbed
by action or mishap,
the balance may be lost,
and new effects, new fates
reset your path.Look around you,
Linda Rushby 28 April 2021
at the world that is,
and make your choices
take your chances
open up your arms
to what may follow.
Southsea Storytellers 