Recovery

–by Alexandra Dean

Comfort was exactly the sort of place you'd imagine somewhere called Comfort would be. It was small and old-fashioned in a way that meant there was always someone to take in your parcel or help you look for your cat. Social life meant a trip to the local pub or a walk in the country. Followed by a trip to the local pub.

Tallulah had gratefully relaxed into its warm embrace after a particularly tough break up which meant she'd had to leave her home with few belongings and a broken heart. She had loved the simplicity, warmth and calm that the place breathed into her tired and ragged soul.

Here was space to breathe the air again; to rest her tired mind. To take long walks on sharp, cold days while the breath clouded in white clouds all around her face; to have a chat with her neighbours about the state of her garden. Here things were straightforward and reassuringly predictable.

Friends who visited weren't so keen; they complained that it was dull. Which was ridiculous. Dull was another two miles down the road after all. Besides, she felt safe here. When they stopped visiting, she could at last see that they had not been the sort of friends she needed – or wanted.

She let them go.

That was a year ago now, though. Tallulah was starting to see their point. (Though they were still wrong geographically). What had once been safe began to feel limiting. The reassuringly predictable began to feel tiresome. Though she loved the place and was grateful for what it had given her, it was no longer enough.

The time had come. She was ready.

She packed her things (and her cat). Waved good bye to her lovely neighbours, the postman and the milkman and hit the road; searching for a new home.

She thought it was finally time to give Joy a try.

Alexandra grew up in Chichester and lives in Rowlands Castle with her husband and two children. She loves reading and is interested in literature and history, particularly the Classical world. She is an English teacher at a school in Chichester.

Old Barn In The Lincolnshire Wolds

Between new wheat and glowing oil flowers an old stone barn rests. Its ferric tones and aqua shutters make pleasing art.

I don't know what black-white birds those are I think – the list of facts in my brain is short –as three loop up from the lemony yellow. Tomorrow, some knowledge may have flown, or drained away, from my porous mind: the angle of the serrated shadows, say, or even that any shadows were shown, at this exact time of day.

By other means, the facts persist. A photograph saved, if not those birds, a close-by moment, at least, a moment pressed like a wildflower, between pages.

Lapwings (or peewits, or plovers) rose, I now know. Crested, green-tinged backs, increasingly rare, a low eccentric flight. That made sense.

In fields of time beyond me, a grandson, or a great granddaughter, might unearth these pages, and read my thoughts on this picture of a field, from which lapwings flew, in front of the kind of barn for which Van Gogh might have picked up a brush: a barn that held my gaze.

–Matt Birch

From Matt Birch's book Meridian, published by Frogmore Press and reviewed on page 78

A Short Life

wild flowers free to grow without fear of mower blades in May daisies with their yellow eyes all seeing amongst meadow blooms yellow dandelion petals transformed into round delicate seed heads purple pansies pushing their way upwards to find a peaceful place buttercups rising high above their neighbours in yellow domination colourful conglomerations sharing space until the end of the month when mower blades will cut them down to short green grass alone

–Sho Botham

Peddling

Tired body slumped on buckled handlebars, Wheels turn slowly up Castle Hill.

A soft rain welcomes mother home.

Black potted kettle whistles

Children explode with excitement.

Cold dirty water washes away a hard day.

Warm bread red jam

One for you and me, scalding tea, red lips. The hands of time move slowly

As the fire smoulders.

Upstairs buried beneath overcoats and cotton thin sheets

Dreams are painted within innocent minds. The law’s the law

But people are people.

Downstairs the wireless turned up to greet his return, I know.

Mother, lost amongst the stars.

The scent of her Galway shawl

Afraid to sleep

While the workings of his mind

Unfold downstairs.

–Stuart Finegan

Sho Botham and Stuart Finegan are part of the Bourne To Write creative writing workshops, www.bournetowrite.co.uk

Summer Is

Sitting in my south facing back garden getting some sun. The wind through the trees rustling the leaves. I can’t hear the birds, as they can’t compete with the roar of the traffic in the main street that runs just the far side of the tall trees. Someone nearby is using a drill. Either that or they have a saw mill.

A lawn mower starts, and then it’s a strimmer. And then it turns into a noisy hedge trimmer. The young lads next door are playing football. Theres a THUD! as it hits my fence but they care not at all. The other side’s barbeque smoke comes my way, Along with loud music that lasts the whole day. They have a 'few people' – that’s 25 strong. In the smoke I smell weed that’s pungent and wrong. Then I look up in awe at the parabolic trajectory

Of a half eaten undercooked sausage that’s below satisfactory thrown without care to land in my pond to scare my goldfish of which I am fond. So I sit in my garden no “excuse me's” or “pardons” And soak up the sun while my will power hardens.

All in all, I prefer Winter – It’s a lot quieter!

–Colin Gandar

Colin is retired and lives on his own (with 2 cats) in East

Grinstead. He's been writing poetry, short stories and commentaries for a lot of years, but only as he is inspired.

Independent publishers The Frogmore Press celebrate their 40th anniversary this year. To mark this occasion they have published a volume of work entitled Frogmore @ 40. See the article on page 77 and for more information visit www.frogmorepress.co.uk.

Here are four poems, two from Frogmore @ 40 and two from their latest publication The Frogmore Papers number 101 (March 2023).

All The Never You Can Carry

The whole amount of no occasion that can be lifted and lugged.

Each and every not for a moment it’s feasible to pick up and hump.

The entire lot of on no circumstances the second person can convey.

Every single no way an individual is physically capable of carting.

The complete set of not on your life people in general can schlep.

The parts together of no account your own self is disposed to shifting.

Or the sum of ain’t gonna happen you guys there are up for grabbing.

–Paul Stephenson (Cambridge) from The Frogmore Papers number 101 (March 2023)

Evidence Of Love

An empty gin bottle in the dunes. Underwear in a sandy hollow. A pile of burnt out sticks shoved together. Sandpiper pecking at a used condom. On the rim of a foot print, one downy feather.

–Marion Tracy (Brighton) from Frogmore @ 40

Bliss

If there is bliss, perhaps we knew it the length of that spring afternoon.

I still see you, naked against smooth rock, still marvel at your body’s taut economy, the waterfall, wide-eyed curiosity of the deer, those startling shades of loch and ben.

I still feel exactly how it was to come down again – seven o’clock, sun and stillness; wood smoke rising and, awaiting us, dinner: two grinning plaice, fresh that morning –courtesy of the fleet at Kinlochbervie.

–Jeremy Page (Lewes) from Frogmore @ 40

The Day My Father Shrank

he was soaking his pebbled feet in an old enamel bowl with the thin blue rim, the water clouded with a hefty clout of Radox.

He was paddling his legs in time to the clock’s slow ticks until I noticed them dangling and him disappearing over the sharp edge. Soon up to his waist in tepid water.

Maybe it was the water, or the one rusted patch in the shape of a crab, or the habit he had of wiggling his toes, or just his time to go.

I should have stood behind him and hooked him up by his fancy braces, but what I saw was a ship on a well-oiled slipway off on its maiden voyage; and him leaving didn’t seem such a bad thing. But once he had dwindled to the size of a sliver of soap, I realized he could easily slide down the sink and block the drain, creating yet more trouble.

–Eve Jackson (Lee on Solent) from The Frogmore Papers number 101 (March 2023):

N.B. All poems shown are subject to copyright