Photograph by Susan Jane Sims
Votes came flooding in for these imaginative poems. The winner is Poem 6, Love and the bridge by Michael Docker.
Congratulations to Michael and many thanks for your poems which went down well with Poetry Space readers.
Poem 1
Locked
Met in May and fell in love
Yves and Nora out together
Buy a padlock for the bridge
Daily growing ever closer
Yves and Nora parting never
Fix their padlock to the bridge
Vow to love and cherish always
Yves and Nora joined forever
By the padlock on the bridge
Martin John
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Poem 2
Find The Key
I watch young lovers
padlock their love
to the wire fence,
toss the keys
into the water below.
Do they not know
that love trapped
is love doomed?
That love needs
freedom to flourish?
Observe, young lovers,
how swans, a cob and a pen,
glide together forever;
each free to fly away,
each choosing to stay.
Di Coffey
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Poem 3
Love is a lock
.
You unlocked every door of my heart…
When I slowly opened my eyes, I saw your smile…
And, found myself locked within your warmth…
Dulen Gogoi
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Poem 4
Yves & Nora
30-05-2009
We locked our fingers tight,
Gazing at the view
With years ahead.
Summer carressed our faces,
A tiny blue boat hugged the canal,
And in the distance,
The golden chimes
of the old church bell.
We locked our fingers tight,
Locked our padlock even tighter,
A permanent reminder
Of our fleeting place in time.
Beth Clutton
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Poem 5
LOCKED IN LOVE
- on a padlock inscribed ‘Yves and Nora, 30.05.09’, attached to a bridge
Was it Yves who chose the padlock
of Yves Klein blue to echo his name?
Did he decide the order of the inscription, him first?
And who is this barnacle-like Nora
who keeps her French lover under lock and key?
Do they each fool us with a romantic alias?
Is that a convent or a monastery complex,
down there by the river? What brought
Nora and Yves up the snaking road to this place,
on thirtieth of May, six years ago, to hoop
steel with steel? Which one of them
pressed the shackle into the block and linked their fates?
So many questions. But only these
truly matter to the curious like us: where
are they now? And do they love?
Derek Sellen
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Poem 6
Love and the bridge
She said, “Our love is tensile, high,
Engineered, an alloy
Welded into a span
To carry us across
The made, the dug, the built”
Yves & Nora in May that year stood here
And locked their love onto this rail, where
Others might come, in other years.
Purple is the colour of the cross,
But the love locked here was free of guilt.
He replied, “Our love is like a bridge”,
And threw the key away. The ledge
It landed on was farther than
Their furthest thoughts of loss.
Then beneath them things began to tilt.
Made things were unmade,
Built things began to fall, dug things to silt.
This year one of them returned,
Looking for the key. They’d learned
Much in the several years
Since of making, digging, loss.
The ledge was gone. The bridge, now
Lined with coloured locks – purple,
Red, blue, white – colours for all things,
All seasons, all years –
Had been rebuilt.
Michael Docker
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Poem 7
The Folly
I knew it was a mistake
Tempting fate
To buy a lock
Join in the craze
You insisted
I was easily swayed
Now it’s over and you’re gone
Fate has won
The lock remains
Mocking me
A reminder
Of foolish, wasted days
Carol Mills
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Poem 8
Heart Locker
Like two dew drops, tranquil,
Slowly flows, settles on the red flower.
When warmth of the sun kissed blue sky,
Merge them into one locked heart.
Her waits, his ride, and love in their black eyes,
Three years to that start, all in smiles and hope.
The city today applauds and says,
‘’after all, it’s a wait in peace for the days of glory’’.
A queer love tale, yet victorious in end,
For love is meaning, not a halt.
Denim Deka
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Poem 9
We were high
We were high when we did it,
we didn’t think of tomorrow.
Laughing the way youngsters do,
we swayed our way up and swayed
our way back, leaning into each other
for support.
But after, when it was done,
the next day, the next month,
the next year, and then the next
and the next and then some,
suddenly, we realised without
saying a word to each other
that this was where we
wanted to be,
that the highs would never stop.
Angie Butler
