4

It is of no great wonder

It is of no great wonder on an August day

that you should find me out at play.

Or is it? This is not your usual haunt

My, my, you are looking thin and gaunt.

I'm fine I say or so I think,

Teetering on that rusty brink

Of Charon's boat all on its own:

Am I to ascend to my throne?

I doubt it for that could never be;

It would all be done so easily

If I never had to aspire.

Never had the throes of desire.

Never felt the synapses' fire.

We each take our place on the softing silk,

Scarce aware of the serpent's milk

Waiting right beside me. And still waiting.

The minutes pass, we laugh and cheer

Towards the blondied babe we leer

(I didn't wish to be so base

I am not of that Neanderthal race)

And take our solace in the fact

that we all share a common pact.

Or do we?

The eyes turn round on me and stare

Those vicious vessels of verisimilitude.

I stop.

Dead.

I cannot succumb to your purgatorial passion

'Tis not in my nature, it's not of my fashion.

At last the truth is finally out

The gutless'd shirker, the courageless lout.

I stay awhile alas forsooth

Who can argue with the whitened truth?

Those sunny days so now pass true

Endevilled by the forks of you.

Alex Fisher

Scholar if you read upon

Scholar if you read upon

The darkest archives of my mind,

Would you recoil? And like a stone,

Cast me upon the wastes behind?

A tablet scored with fertile text,

That feeds the thinker’s thirsting tongue,

Tells not the fault with its ore mixed,

Until the heart’s with its lore’s stung.

The serpent hissing world’s undone

Beguiles a woman to his bed.

He speaks the script of which no-one

Could know, ‘til he’s the Bible read.

Alexandra Paddock

I Wed Myself to Promise

Oh, there, see that nothing weights lighter than glass. I first saw him walking the straight, cold road From frit to flint; though I thought, hoped he might pass, His cool hand slipped round my heart and he slowed. A man made from glass, blown to reality By the warm, sweet breath of unknown spirits, Molten beads of heat swelled to vitality Worth all care brittle perfection merits. But take care: resting all your hopes on one scale Can cause a splinter of pressure to trace A path through it, a fissure of stress through frail Frosted touch. For his lips pressed to my face With the hard certainty of truth, a false trail To only bitter shards now in his place

Madeleine Stottor

1

the owlet issue 1, michaelmas 2010 email: theblindowls@live.co.uk

blog: www.theblindowls.blogspot.com

In Michaelmas 2010, a creative writing society called The Blind

Owls was founded in Pembroke. This, The Owlet, is a selection of

some of the best writing produced by Blind Owls members. Happy

Michaelmas (and Happy Christmas!): we hope you enjoy reading

The Owlet as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Map to You He wasn’t there

She couldn’t think why

But she missed him she missed him

Her room seemed empty the moment

He left

Despite the bed, the books, the bright

Light of day stroking their surface

He wasn’t there

And she didn’t know what to do

To fill the hours till he’d be back

He would he promised so so soon but

Till then

She couldn’t rest couldn’t sit still couldn’t

Focus because

He wasn’t there

So she missed him she missed him

She found an old map of the city

And walked the streets with her fingertips

Until she reached

Where he would be

And she could stop since

He was there

She closed her eyes

Breathed slow

Measured

breaths

And wasted watches

Waiting for him to return

Madeleine Stottor

A Tree

The weathered oak grows and stretches,

Leans down the slope, and straddles the wall,

Heaves the weight of years,

And grips a stone between each root.

He plucks and casts the fragments,

Wailing, tumbling, down the slope.

The wall was built in a long hot summer,

And torn away in the flash of an age.

An old tree writhes in the wreck,

And his roots are distinctly moreish.

William Bond

2

The Field Boys

Long, low cottages, hipped roofs not lately thatched lean with lion-hearted trees, distorted

by high plain winds, arching as though attached to the curls of steady chimney smoke; as if each supported the other, continually. The field-boys, who's sleep was snatched

while horses fed, now lay swapping still taller tales; each reported misadventure as glory, rejection as conquest,

and each felt better, knowing himself as truthful as the rest. These blossoming roads, mud baking dry, go to town,

Though the boys never went beyond Mr Finley's fence. Never but once, when with maids to wrap their arms around They pounded down in moonlight, led by the brightening sense

that the entire county, the whole country was to be found at the end of those roads; found beyond the dale and gypsy tents,

if only they held at it, held at it, dizzying blear-eyed, Ran hard enough, kept laughing and the girls kept by their side.

Daisy-chained and light linened, these girls now came, To sit and closely talk . Like river-tide

they were as ever had been, narrowly the same yet wholly new; this year's smiles were as wide as last's, and drew them as before. The blinking boys

were left lame by those canny girls, who took a cynic pride

in making dimples of their cheeks, and splashing water on their blouse; Tricks as old as the water, as old as the feelings they

aroused.

Michael Kalisch

The Guermantes Way

and Other Impressions

Anglers, sewn in the pockets of clear embankment,

shielded in the shallows either side by high-reaching reeds,

cast, and let reel. With quiver plashes

and timid ripples, copper hooks drop, bob, and sway, as

slowly, slowly the umber shadows

of hidden prizes, draw near.

***

This, too, the time of lilacs,

though not of the heady, humming rush of first bloom;

now, much of the lace-like, bubbling blossom lies

lost, trampled underfoot, or shrunken among the leaves.

Profusion has past, though in patches the perfume still pours

arching over hawthorn hedgerows

touched too with pink.

***

She wore a gilly flower

loosely looped within a curl.

And when it fell,

as she tossed her head skyward,

laughing, it spiralled to the ground.

***

As we stopped, you and I

stared at one another.

I believe you held your breath.

Then we heard the doors shut, the

rifle-click of the locks, and low whirring

as we moved past our destination. We drew ourselves

to the river, touching its banks, running with it, arching

away, coursing through country we'd never known was there.

A short platformed station, Victorian iron rusting,

now came to view. There were, I remember,

bold pansies in the box beneath the window,

and a colly to keep a wagging watch.

We had no bags, and alighted arm in arm

with small change and the flask of tea your mother made.

Michael Kalisch

Irony

Twelve

is the perfect

number of syllables. Dougie Sloan

3

spray above the surf

from sky to sea the scene is pale and blank

as is the dull and blaring wind which flows

in gusts across the wet and level sands

until it meets the weary water where

it flicks the green and curling lips of waves

up into white and vapid plumes of air

that ride along the tapered crests and fade

to spray that floats above the beating surf

and blusters out across the faded bay

- George Kenwright

Promises

Here’s my promise-

Yours to take from this, my outstretched hand My proffered promise plentiful with plosives Empty words.

Yours for the taking- should you so wish.

But don’t keep searching For a mysterious, unfathomable meaning ‘A promise is a promise’.

Eternal in its fragility Easily b r o k e n .

A rainbow of a covenant The tying bonds of marriage

My turn, your turn ‘I do’, ‘I don’t’

‘I will’, ‘I won’t’. What does she prove this fickle maiden prom-

ise? That I’ll be here today, but perhaps not for al-ways?

A peace-treaty, an agreement to be Smoothed and signed.

Are not the purest of promises Just those left

Unsaid?

Claire Cocks

On the Irony of Patriotism

True Patriots, pray look upon this sty,

of modern brutes who slander England's name; the proudest men who cause the greatest shame.

No voices tell her beauties, save the sigh of those who know her ancient blood runs dry. Great poems, prose and treatise lose acclaim.

What stirs proud hearts but anger's endless flame and flags held high, as swords to pierce her sky? What country do they boast of? And what good

is pride? Their empty praises pound in waves, wearing the slate of noble English graves!

Those Lords of art, long passed, shall name this nation great still! To think their hearts held British blood! While lesser men are roused in cheap elation.

Matthew Bird