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Product name: Reach Poetry 12

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Trad Music Night at Sin É – K V Skene

A soft evening, windows blur as we circle sidewalk smokers, slide in, let the music roll,
bounce off wallfuls of postcards, photos, out-of-date adverts, a John Lennon poster, a limp Cuban flag and an oversized oil of a haggard hurler, semi-lit by a collection of kitchen candles
jammed into bottles, counterpoint
to our empties and elbows ...
A fiddle spins out a reel, allegro, just this side of reckless,
followed by banjo, bodhrán, guitar
while the pipes play along, segue into another till a tin whistle mellows
the mood
and a girl sings
in a voice of country, sacrifice, loss as if she had already drifted away ...

From You Can Almost Hear Their Voices, IDP

Rag and Bone – Alison Lock

‘Any old rags’ she calls
pulling a cart, ringing her bell.
It is always morning back then
when the white sun
makes the tarmac black.

She takes my bag of rags.
I grab the pouch of water.

‘Poor little fish,’ Mother says when she sees
the ragged fin, the nick in the tail.
I let go, releasing long silver slivers.
 
As the goldfish is freed
it gives me a dorsal wave

  A Softer Beauty – Caroline Gill

A softer beauty floats along the sky;
The moonbeam dwells upon the voiceless wave;
Far off, the night-winds steal away and die,
Or sleep in music in their ocean-cave.
From Clovelly by the Reverend R.S. Hawker

A teardrop shimmers in the captain’s eye
as breakers pound upon a stretch of sand.
He shudders, fears he knows the reason why
the sea roars in, enveloping his land.
A softer beauty floats along the sky

and sheds its light upon a salty grave,
unfurls a silver pathway on the sea.
The captain’s men were loyal, strong and brave:
his inner thoughts embrace eternity.
The moonbeam dwells upon the voiceless wave

and distant donkeys bray as seagulls cry.
The lights go out. The village is at rest,
but one man lingers: bats begin to fly.
The captain scans the ocean to the west:
far off, the night-winds steal away and die.

This captain is the slaver and the slave:
his memories are shackled to a scream,
for on that moonlit night he failed to save
his faithful crew from drowning. Now they dream
or sleep in music in their ocean-cave.