Winter in Skegness

Winter in Skegness

No-one to second guess

Standing on the corner

I couldn't feel forlorner

Seem to have lost the folks

Dad with his silly jokes

They can't have gone too far

Probably by the car

I've bought flowers for my mother

Though she told me not to bother

So I stand amid my fears

Stranded .... in middle years

Tomorrow back to the city

Where the world is fast and witty

Winter in Skegness

A few days away from stress

And although I'm feeling stronger

I couldn't manage longer

Thelma-june Jackson (mid 1990s)

Lament to the Linden

You scattered blossom on us
As springtime came and went,
The summer evening sunlight
Reflecting gold on green,
Your graceful limbs
And shimmering leaves
Whispering in the breeze.

Then as the darkness lengthened
Your leaves profusely drifting ...
Beauty filigree, silhouetted
Magical and eerie,
Against the winter moon.

The Linden Tree has been cut down
Guardian no more at the cemetery wall
It breaks my heart to see her
Lying forlorn, shorn, dismembered.
Her might trunk - felled monolith,
Oh, Linden Tree forsaken.

Pigeons congregate, fluster, fly on
A magpie circles lonely,
Calling its confusion
Oh, Linden Tree forsaken
Save for the smallest bird, a wren
Comes secretly, as ever,
To say a last farewell.

And me mere mortal
Who gazed upon you daily
And saw you as a friend
I take it as an honour
Witness, at your end.

TJJ (written February 2nd 2006)

Sparrows by the Old Canal

The remaining part of Swindon's old canal at Kingshill

Sparrows by the Old Canal

In the early daylight hours
By the bridge of the old canal
Sparrows in the hawthorns
Herald in the morning new
In this town, once small
But thriving, bustling busy ......
Pursuing its daily living
The way that small towns do

Now the old canal, long since filled in
Its path leads only to the subway
Which takes you to the centre of a town
The soul of which has long been sold.
Gone to the highest bidder -
Small town no more, mocked and ridiculed
For its multitudinous roundabouts
On route to retail parks

But the sparrows still remain
To remind us yet again

That the ordinary around us
Can be seen for what its worth
Only when the disappearing barges
Carrying what we've long discarded
Have slipped stealthily and silently
Under the shadowy bridge of time
And will the sparrows follow -
Flying to the echoes of the old Swindon canal

By: Thelma-June Jackson (2004)