Fairgrounds are magical places and the colourful photograph above taken by Ira Joel Haber (Week 14) took many of you back to a particular day, others used the wheel itself as a metaphor for life. Votes are now in for Week 14 and I am delighted to announce that the winner is Janice Windle with That Day. In second place was Lessons on the Wonder Wheel by Stephanie Haxton.
Well done to Janice and Stephanie and to everyone who entered and voted. Stephanie tells me that she is quite addicted to the challenge as many are…keep the poems coming. It is also lovely to know that the challenge is bringing in new people all the time, both readers and poets.
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Poem 1
A wheel waiting
to turn upside down, spin like a top
to go where clouds shift sideways
disperse streamers across blueness;
to swing glass huts like silver charms
on a bracelet where faces press
on windows and small children laugh
louder than the sound of ambulances racing
through held up traffic – a sense of push
me higher, push me higher – deep down
most of us long to fly like a bird over a city
to perch as a dignitary on statues or trees
to see the sun breathe over intermittent rain;
we know that London speaks for human
kind –centuries of life recognised in statues,
buildings and a river jewelled in bridges.
Audrey Arden-Jones
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Poem 2
Remember That Day
Remember that day
We went to the summer fair?
Five of us together –
“Best friends” you’d say many a time,
But I felt like the fifth wheel.
A puzzle – you fit,
I’m the piece you didn’t need.
That summer was cold.
All the colour in the park
I couldn’t see through the grey.
Laughter surrounded,
Beaming over my despair,
Drowned my silent screams.
While we raced to the big wheel
My heart sank with this knowing.
Four to one cabin,
One must ride her alone.
You scrambled past me,
Jumped into the swaying red
I rode the suitable blue.
The Ferris wheel span
And I sobbed at the clear sky.
Such a gorgeous day,
But my self-pity blinded.
How many more will I miss?
A E Nicholas
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Poem 3
the coloured threads
of life’s spinning wheel
start
slowly gathering speed
the colours merge
and change,
as each backward
view becomes clear.
The pace changes
as if in slow motion
and we
hardly breathing, watch
strangling strands
thin as spider’s silk,
barely visible
over the years
are knotted, twisted
ever tighter
woven around the two of us.
Surrounded, you
begin the change.
As you fly
above life’s wheel
you leave me
clinging to the empty
shell of sadness.
Angie Butler
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Poem 4
Lessons on the Wonder Wheel
She was, eventually, persuaded to
ride the wonder wheel,
romance overcoming reluctance.
He with the insensitivity of youth,
mockingly rocked the gondola,
laughing at her terror,
joked about the view.
Coming, bumping, down to earth
her nausea dispelled his mirth.
His reputation and suede shoes, blue,
accordingly acquired a blemish
that would never quite brush out.
The moral then is nothing new:
simply that rocking any boat
is very rarely prudent.
We get what we are due.
Indeed, like that wonderous wheel,
what goes around comes around.
Stephanie Haxton
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Poem 5
That day
The sky was a blue bowl flecked with ice cream.
There was a Flying Pink Elephant, an Astroglide
and the Dodgems were dodging nobody.
That day was white rabbits, purple monkeys,
and dragons as tall as your dad.
It was rifles lined up for the daredevil boys
and a Haunted House full of webs and toads
and bones and whistles and rattles and howls.
This was a day of puce clouds on sticks
and glittering jewels and toys up for grabs
by anyone with a twenty-pence piece.
And this was the day that I mounted the sky
and rode on the Ferris Wheel.
Janice Windle
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Poem 6
Psychedelic Love
I dream you in colour;
Rainbow fantasies of summer days,
Hands held and kisses sending me so high
Our hands reach to the sky and surrender to the sensation.
My fairground ride;
Coaxing me with the promise to fulfil,
Flying me higher and higher until you take my breath.
The world is blurred beneath us as we spin and cling and thrill.
Giddy with your touch, morning heralds our descent
I peep through my fingers
And the world is grey.
Sarah Miles
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