ON VE DAY (or Liberation for all of Europe Day)

On VE Day

My dad was there

And my mother too

They survived the war

And the celebrations too!

For dad not quite the end

Off to Palestine he went

Two more years

Before they married

This poet is grateful for that!

Your mum too, enjoyed the day

Dad still in Burma, far away

Victory delayed

Perhaps sweeter for that

A few months longer but he came back.

We missed the war by a few short years

But they knew what it took

To win the freedom we enjoy

To overcome the threat

The debt we owe, we haven't paid back yet.

Let's remember what they did

Let's remember what they saw

Let's celebrate their lives

Enjoy the day today

And never forget what they were fighting for.

Donald James Dolby ©2020

8th May 2020

Shopping. Reg Globe

Wine and a chain saw

Is a bad combination

Shopping at Aldi

Organic. Reg Globe

Do organ grinders

Think much  about their monkeys

After the session

Knives. Reg Globe

Some people say keep

Your kitchen knives sharp but I

Cannot see the point

Raven Black

When Morris came to the silk-bound town 

he sought a subtler shade of dye; a pigment 

of his imagination, yet to be made and not yet found.

Raven Black was his holy grail: a richer tone lent accent,

then bent to a fierce intensity by native indigo ­

For this thing Morris knew: for black you must have blue. 

His blue could be no alien hue: no Prussian trick

mordant-fixed, no need of additive, no aniline 

from the coal-banked Rhine, seeping in a vulgar slick.

Another river wound round Wardle’s town; 

not chemist’s brine ­-– the Churnet, mineral-soft 

and serpentine. There, long days over dyeing trays: 

between the waters Morris learnt old mens’ ways.

But not for him the cruder search of absolute 

For Morris knew a deeper truth – that, however far you reach 

you will always find a blacker black beneath. 

Morris craved the corvid sheen

a moment in between two others combine

produced the glisten on a raven’s wing

That moment gained he knew would pass; nothing 

is for ever fast. No matter that it fades; it is right 

that the colour is true and the memory bright. 

Mark Johnson