Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

Waiting for Spring in Grimescar Valley A deer scouts the wood fringe where a laminated notice shouts, ‘It’s coming!’ Frozen still, every creature waits. Buds hold tight, not daring to breathe. Robin in military red - a thrush rehearses a private song while rooks conduct reconnaissance disguised as twig movements. Snowfall truce. Hard ground hesitates to liquefy - no squirrel springs to action, no mole digs in mutinous excavation. Tremor in the night - heavy plant thunder then landscape plundered for trenches, drains and aggregate. Frost delayed the advance. Now thaw brings war to fields - hedges ripped, stone walls breached, outmanoeuvred creatures flee. ‘It’s coming! Find a new home,’ the posted notice said. Only one side can win, and that side, this year, is not Spring. I wrote a poem, aged 17, about a housing estate being built over my favourite country walk. Fields have been lost to concrete all my ...

Joe had to run like mad for the train, no time to buy a ticket, over the footbridge, clatter down the steps to platform 8, heave the door open, jump on. It took him a while to catch his breath. He leant up against the corridor window and watched plumes of smoke belching from the funnel as the engine rounded a bend. Eventually he managed to summon the energy to walk down the corridor in search of an empty compartment, his wet clothes sticking to his body, his shoes squelching. He was in luck. Pulling the door shut and the blinds down, he slumped onto a seat and slowly started to remove his clothes until he was naked. Inside his haversack was a dry set, one he’d just had time to grab from the empty house, before dashing for the train, images of the river flashing before his eyes. How had it happened? He and Max had always had an up and down friendship, in fact he wasn’t sure ‘friendship’ was the right way to describe it at all. On the river bank, arguing about Morag, shouti...

A grain of sand.  A grain amidst a desert, grain on grain. Its absence goes unnoticed as it slips into the gap and falls beneath. Second by second, they disappear, each one leaving no trace. The tiny gap consumes them but only one by one. Their exodus relentless. And yet their passage shows itself from time to time, but briefly. At first, I wished them gone, to welcome new and better ones. Too soon forgotten. Too slow it seems and then too quick. Too much to bear, there’s more to come and brighter ones, I hope. The growing plane of fallen grains spreads out behind. Until the day, when suddenly the dunes are gone, the desert flat and, falling still, the grains. The reason clear to me. Too late.   So precious now each grain becomes and still I cannot catch and hold. But look at how the fallen ones have shaped themselves. Too far to touch. The landscape past is making sense. The one to come, though shru...

Sheila pulled her light jacket closer, and folded her arms, as she waited. She had donned contact lens and deep dark shades in the blazing sunlight much earlier that day.  Good thing that she had her hat though, her gran always said that the most important thing, is to keep your head warm.  The wind was now cutting through her like a sharp blade, and seemed to have a spurious relationship with her bladder too. A white van joined the line of cars, some with headlights on, and she remembered the text alert regarding the IKEA delivery this evening. She had another 15 minutes to be home before the designated delivery time. The green man flashed, and she walked briskly, then swerved suddenly as she reached the opposite side, almost tripping over a pushchair, the mother smirked. Sheila steadied herself and headed for the cobbled stone alleyway. This way was shorter than going around the block.  Not one for using parks and alleys after dark, she walked quickly ...

Deep within the tangled leaves, Furled in the rippling shadow It lies sleeping. Tight coiled as an ammonite, a ridge Of bright beads, dew-drop diamonds Spring from its spine. Amber orbs, flecked with gold, glitter Through filmy lids. It sleeps. Frail folded wings, in papery pleats Flicker with dreams of flight. Ancient as rock, yet fine as a new leaf Its emerald skin Stretches and shrinks with each long breath. In the warm damp air A sigh of steam Rises through the rich canopy - As among the myriad undiscovered miracles The dragon lies sleeping.