Category: places

NaPoWriMo – Bonus

I’d already decided that I would celebrate the anniversary of my moving here in my final poem for this year, but then this afternoon the muse struck me again (and besides, I know some of the previous ones were a bit pathetic).

North Street Chichester, Saturday afternoon

In Caffe Nero
there’s a grey-haired man
perusing a graphic novel.

And the guy by the window
is talking to a pony
disguised as a dog.

So why shouldn’t I
do my knitting?

The iced pistachio latte
is delicious, darling,
and so will be
my handmade scarf.

Linda Rushby

30 April 2022

#NaPoWriMo

The Last Time I Saw Paris (Poem)

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,
not even the coffee is warm enough.
Paris in the (not quite) spring.

Linda Rushby 25 February 2022