Val Plante

Born and brought up near Birmingham in the Black Country, went to Art College, married and had three children, youngest born in Scotland, where I've lived for the past thirty years. I enjoy doing all things creative: essays, funny verse and, more and more, serious poems.

Poems

HEALING

Rain, like broken strings of pearls
straffs winter windows,
gulls arc tearful skies, cry.
In a quiet house, mother
rests, daughter looks out.

Outside, a piece of rainbow jewel
pins hope to the horizon,
doves sooth, croocoo, croocoo,
from sunset-gilded roof;
inside, laughter catches.

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FRENCH WINDOW

Mrs Bradshaw beckons,
her English blooms,
poppy red, wave
on leggy stems,
uprooted into Gallic clay.

Dancing shadows deepen,
shuttered windows’
indigo shade, chase
ochre-encrusted lizards
across sun-warmed walls.

Golden orioles haunt
grey ghosts of poplars,
whisper through cloistered
groves and sunset floods
cornfields blood brown.

An elder tree amplifies,
champagne-blossomed,
the nightingale’s nocturne
and a startled snake
escapes into emerald depths.

At the open window,
an Englishwoman bathes
in the cool silk of a full
May moon, and listens
for the silent river.

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BEDROOM MAKEOVER

Ravaged by
the rituals of goodbye
I lie
on the fake fur
of my abandoned bed.

Released from
those habitual bonds
I cry
into the black sheet
of a nihilistic night.

Aroused under
that predatory gaze
I sigh
beneath the brindled gold
of this tigerish morning.

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