Seagulls
“ it’s okay; all will be well, be patient. It is this quiet evening hour. ”
Likewise, the supporting portraits, each capturing an individual moment that we all experience. I am placing it within Poetry.
The garden room in the quiet evening hour
Seagulls
It is good to hear the seagulls
The tide is on the turn
The storm has briefly passed
Hailstones
And on the horizon ...
Most surely, more to come
No wind though
But the bite is in the air!
Four-point-five celsius to you
Thirty-nine degrees fahrenheit to me
At four past the noonday sun
Absent but on the far horizon
The sky and sea merge and swirl
A great bank of cloud around a blue cavern
A hint that sun is not absent
Merely concealed from view
The iron men quickly recover,
Their timely ascent from below the waves
A seagull balances one foot
on a lifeless cranium
Nature loves to mock the human’s mind
that it, not Nature, has the upper hand!
Do not write for others
Do not write for money
Write only for personal pleasure
Be content
Keep an eye on reality
Reality counters delusion
Reality keeps perspective
What I think is good most regard as poor
Reality counters that inner arrogant thought
that one’s work is good
“People will willingly part
with a ten pound note!”
Not so
He or she who does is a fool
Too often, poets’ nights and open mics
once home, and eagerly opening
the latest anthology
the eagerly spent ten pound note
now feels like a hundred pounds
bookies’ cert loser
catching reality unawares
in the moment’s hype
Let secret pleasure be
the engine of my pen
… Put down the pen
Rest the hand …
Look out across the estuary
The mountains of Wales
from an english coastline
Listen to the seagulls
The tide is now receding fast
One leads the squadron
with noisy landing
venturing muddily onto
Rain-and-hail-drenched sand
detritus, jelly-fish, plastics
and the latest blight,
a discarded Covid facemask
And still it's only four-point-five
18 December 2022
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022-23
First written whilst walking Liverpool Crosby Beach 3.50 pm - 4.04 pm on a grey Saturday afternoon, 9 April 2016, it is by no means downbeat. I realise, now, on pulling it out of the archive, that I was preparing myself for my mum’s departure six weeks later. I’ve brought the piece up-to-date merely with one reference to 2020-2021.
I’ve retained the portrait that heralded the original piece. I like its quiet reflection and gentleness, and that hint of …
… … Contemplation
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
