Week 49 – photograph by Chris Sims
The winning poem this time is Michael Docker with Bridge. Congratulations! Thank you to everyone who submitted and voted.
Poem 1
@mazed
They enter the maze giggling like children,
Scurrying down the dry, well-trodden paths,
Hearing playful voices through the hedges
And happy with the sun beating,
Heating their backs and faces.
Oh, the joy of this adventure!
Then edges coil close like a giant brain
With a mind of its own and full of malignant
Green (not grey) matter. Soon they are lost
In its mythic wisdoms, lost in all its mysteries:
Lost in the whorls and twirls of snaking walls.
The laughter stops…
And afterwards they feared
The maze’s twisting graveyard corridors:
Trapped like flies in the labyrinthine web
Without an Ariadne with silken thread
To bring them out of the shadows.
To the nearest illusory stairs they fled.
And now, woken from a nightmarish childhood dream
Of travelling, travelling, never arriving,
They shout and scream,
Shout to be taken out, led
Away from the yew-tree maze—
@shamed.
Angie Butler
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Poem 2
Bridge
“Always it is by bridges that we live”
Philip Larkin
It goes on and on,
Spiralling, darkening,
Like folds on the surface of a brain.
Beneath creatures crawl, ignore,
Never having to believe. Birds fly on by,
Like words lost on the wind.
Somewhere a plane crashes, spiralling out of the sky,
Nearby guns fire, darkening our common mind;
Wounds in a believer’s war.
Over there children run,
Spiralling, darkening.
Inside words fold round us; we believe again
Through a long afternoon.
Spiralling, darkening,
We get lost. Like creatures never had
To, we climb the bridge to see;
No longer believing but going on,
And not defeated, and, for that, glad.
Michael Docker
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Poem 3
Sense of Direction
The hedges are flattened above head height,
within the green maze there’s no line of sight.
You brush hands along privet, down narrow
paths; claustrophobic, a fish-tank minnow
seeking the route only to find dead-ends.
Walking up the curves, pacing round the bends,
finding the cul-de-sacs going nowhere,
missing escape from this labyrinth lair.
The bridges to check out how far you’ve come
lead you on trails to where you started from.
Once more into whorls like inked fingerprints,
walled-up, wishing you had pebbles or string.
The secretive gardener plays lost and found
knows every leaf, every twig on this ground
and every track from the heart to the edge
but at midday he’s stuck too in this hedge.
Sue Spiers
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Poem 4
Lost
The maze of life
Many twists and turns
The paths we take
Snake around
before
Leading to our fate
The easy route
Espied from above
Would render life dull
Bereft of
Excitement
Devoid of thrill
We stumble
Lost and confused
Grope our way
Through life
Forever
In the maze
Carol Mills
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Poem 5
Mazed
It was all going so well,
until the door slammed shut.
I’d been naive to imagine
I could cope on my own,
so there I was in the cool dark shadows,
not knowing which way to turn,
right or left, this way or that?
Forwards or backwards.
Only the blind feeling of panic, of being alone,
lost amongst the tall, thick, moaning, whispering
walls that had become my day,
pressing in, looming over
and cutting out the light, forcing me
into the gloomy darkness..
And then it came… the shout.
Where are you?
I’m here, help me, I’m lost,
and no, I can’t do it on my own,
thank heavens you are here.
Lizzie Ballagher
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Poem 6
Life
The Maze in springtime
Mysteries to be explored
A new adventure
The Maze in winter
Smaller but no easier
To find the centre
Martin John
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