This was no laying on of hands,
But he saw at once
The sky's potential
Pouring through the stone.

Beyond reclining figures of the shelters
Where lines of bodies spread like bones,
There was a pantheistic world
Drowning under Yorkshire skies -
A form the slag-heaps printed
Through the mists of dawn.

He knew the light would alter
Every shape he cast -
Gave up his concrete forms to mystic space.

His naked bronzes warming in the sun
Record a pagan contact:
Stinging heat on nipples,
Candid breeze that riffles
Into ravines - down the alley
Of the spine.

We never feel the elements so close;
The landscape in us, round us, through us.

Our hands are aching - empty.
We lay them on the bronze.

Frances Sackett
Published in The Hand Glass

Of safety tossed mostly aside.
To cross the winning line,
He hit the wall; he felt the burn.
Margin’s error left wide.

In the economy of pain,
He bought too many shares;
The peddler with too many wares,
The man with much to gain

-And lose. The gears, automatic,
Put through their last paces,
Were flip-flopped, almost systolic.
A grip as loose as lace,

He fell; the stumble so heart-felt,
The watching, worldwide crowd
As one, as if the screen would melt,
Received him in their loud

Repeating chambers, muscular
In their insistent clash
Of interest in the whisper
They half-heard, hoped, would mesh.

David Morris-Kenny

Peaceful, inert and beautiful she lay,
Kissed by summer sun,
Sleeping the days away
‘Til called to venture forth,
Dreaming perhaps of Caribbean nights,
Star studded skies and palm fringed bays.
Or was she due to test her strength
In harsher climates and in sterner ways?
How soon would all that surface sheen be dulled?
Yet beauty also dwells in shape and line
And she, I knew, would serve her purpose well,
Rising to each adventure with a will.
Her spirit, dormant now, would soon be free,
And I could only stand in silent homage.

Andrew Woffenden

His mother works shifts at the Wooden Heel factory.
Today, as she is turning a Cuban
she cuts off her thumb.
This is the very day the roof
blows off her shed.

He is at home counting cutlery when the two plywood sheets
sail past the kitchen window,
blocking the road.
He turns on The Simpsons then Top Gear.

Later, at the factory, he sees the thumb
on the floor.
Covered in sawdust.
His mother is yelling a lot, so
he throws the thumb in a bin,
and goes shopping for shoes.

Patricia Manson

Once many bustled here busily,
activities and action to address
the needs of brothers and others,
All in the name of God.
Now a shattered shell of stones
stands shrine to an emptiness,
still quiet, deeper than the silence
once held in the inner sanctum.
Spring birds bustle about and above,
below, hasty tourists linger
lazily over the stones and bones 
and God is only a name.

Ed Blundell

First published in Reach Poetry.

I loved this girl, she wore a blood red cloak
Which had a hood, her smile and eyes were bright
And keener than a woodman’s axe.
On Sundays she took me to see her gran,
We sometimes went for picnics in the woods.
She said she thought that I had soulful eyes
And such strong hands, of yes and lovely teeth,
Except that when I kissed her with my tongue,
She told her dad she thought I was a wolf.
So he came looking for me with his axe,
She must have spun him some big fairy tale.

Ed Blundell