Page 27 - br-aug-2022

August 2022 August 2022

Who can know? He may be driven by a Unusual Pets
sense of fear.

He may be guarding a brood. It is that Hyena
time of year.
It may not be a joy for him to flit along the I have a pet hyena
fence, and this is not a hoax,
As he graces me with a step of faith, into
my present tense. it's always such good company

Paul J Openshaw (May 2022) and laughs at all my jokes.
Chris Nother

Worbarrow Bay

When the guns are silent and no rufous flag is flapping on
the whitened wooden mast,
when the Tyneham gate is open and entry is permitted for
all who wish to pass,
beyond the empty village homes, the school, the church,
which flourished in the past,
I’ll walk the rutted track between the wooded Gwyle and
the sun scorched hillside grass.

I’ll pass the crumbling cottage homes of the men who
fished the bay
to trap the lobster and the crab and harvest the silvery
mackerel schools
that swim off shore in summer beyond the tout and chalk
white cliffs a mile or so away,
and sustained their wooden lerret boats with oak and
copper nails and simple iron tools.

No more their voices as they dragged their clinker craft
down shingle slopes to put to sea,
only sounds of endless waves as each, in turn, caress the
polished pebbles of the shore
or on those wilder days, when channel gales sweep in,
charge shoreward so relentlessly
to surge then sizzle as they recede and flow back down to
join the sea once more.

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