Photograph by Susan Jane Sims
We received a wonderfully varied selection of poems for the above photograph. The winner of the readers’ vote is Poem 7, Jacob the Lover from Lizzie Ballagher. Congratulations to Lizzie and thank you to everyone who submitted poems and voted.
Poem 1
Africa arrived
Africa arrived at our house.
Over the week
it screamed from the newspapers,
popped out from hidden corners,
sucked its thumb at the cradle of the carpet,
rolled down walls
and stared out from holiday snaps in Spain.
It drummed off walls,
peeped from hidden papers.
It captured poems in snares of soul mates,
grabbed clothes and suitcases
and bade follow naked footsteps
with cries of ‘shoes’
and bandages and bras.
Patterns and pashminas came calling,
earrings and beads shouted ‘look’,
‘look, here we are ..we’re Africa hear us!’
And then , came a picture,
a simple picture of a simple well,
but what that picture said,
what it really meant,
was life!
Angie Butler
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Poem 2
Fathers
Fathers like wells
Are old waters stirred
Dark and bright
By the world’s winds.
In young summers
We dipped, though
Not much. That water
Could not slake
Us. But now age
Dusts we
Fathom much
In the whorls,
For it’s the drawing –
Dreams drummed
Tight as a stomach –
Matters. We’re taught
Like rope, from life’s
Mandril to luck’s
Hooked bucket.
Meanwhile at the crank
That common father
Winches our years
Notch by notch
Round the strained
Blood-grained spindle.
Michael Docker
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Poem 3
Well to live by
Toss a penny in the well
Carelessly,
Wishing, hoping for dreams
To come true,
Shallow it seems;
We drink, we wash,
We spray, we play
with water.
We waste and in haste
we let it drain away
This water, precious water!
Somewhere in the heat,
it’s a treat.
They pray for water
A well to quell the thirst
of life itself;
A well, not to wish by,
but to live by.
Leela Gautam
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Poem 4
Coins for water
Drop a coin
with a wish and prayer,
All those coins
for those we care,
A well in every far flung place,
To quench the thirst
Of the human race,
Water deep down in the earth,
Just needs a well
To give it birth,
Precious water, not a treat,
Its life for every man and beast,
For every tiny seed that we sow,
For every living thing to grow,
It’s not a dream, it can be done,
with you and I and everyone.
Leela Gautam
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Poem 5
Impression
Like the friendly sun and reticent sky,
like whirling leaves and stagnant grass, like a well’s silent water and the playful pail, lives a meek grandpa and a jovial grandma, in the haven of unfurled fresh air,where abandoned worries turn to leafy canopies soaked in sunshine.
Denim Deka
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Poem 6
Summer Showers
Her arms wind, he waits
her skin bark brown,
long days in Suffolk’s summer sun,
curls cover her eyes
she again brushes aside.
Cool clean water,
old oak bucket
sparkles as it reaches the sunlight,
she passes the pale.
He stripped to the waist
pours cold liquid
over his head
shaking aside.
Drops cascade
he wipes his eyes,
she throws the towel to him
and he laughs as he dries.
Andrew Scotson
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Poem 7
Jacob the Lover
Women of Canaan vanished into mirages
Of desert sand when Rachel brought her sheep to water.
Picking their way between sharp stones to the well
At Paddan Aram, she and her ewes
Drank deep when I had moved the shaft’s great stone…
While I—well, I—drank deeply of her face,
And all was lost in the limpid pools
Of her dark eyes,
All in the warm curve of arm and hip.
I saw she was my love, I hers.
Kissing her, I wept.
Lizzie Ballagher
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Poem 8
Early Verses
The imagery was clear
On the wallpaper in my room
Mary & her little lamb
The cow jumping over the moon
Characters I knew well
Little Miss Muffet and Bo Peep
Surrounding and watching me
Each night as I went to sleep
Brightly coloured pictures
Many nursery rhymes to tell
I adored them all except
The poor pussy in the well
Carol Mills
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Poem 9
The Old Well
Beyond the smoke and smell of roasting pig
The thing that I remember most of all
Is children laughing on the whirligig
The day we celebrated our new well.
For eighty years we washed and drank our fill,
Our daily ration seven buckets each,
Through health and sickness, peace and war until
The water dropped till it was out of reach.
And so old faithful well you’ve served your shift
And now you’re spent we say our last goodbye.
No more your ancient pail will drop or lift
But here you’ll rest redundant, old and dry.
A witness both to harmony and strife,
A monument to history and life.
Martin John
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