Goodbye in November, by J.C. Almain

The leaves that are falling now
will be renewed next year;
but she,
she will never return

Lorraine, by June Pettitt

Gerald had been known as Gerry to his friends: not that he had many of those since his divorce - a messy affair, where all their dirty linen had been aired in public. Since then he had more or less kept himself to himself.

  He was exhausted. It had been a tough week negotiating terms and prices with a new customer for the building company of which he was a partner.   ‘Thank goodness it’s the weekend,’ he thought as he packed his briefcase and closed his laptop. He could not wait to get out of the office. Every weekend he would drive to the Lake District where he owned a small cottage. It was in woodland in Grizedale National Park and was quite isolated. It had been left to him after his mother and father had passed away; his father first after a short illness. His mother, who was devoted to her husband, died shortly after from a broken heart. Luckily, if you could call it luck, it was after he had been divorced and a settlement had all ready been agreed, or the greedy whore would have claimed half of that.

  Unlocking the car door he put in his briefcase and laptop, he had packed his weekend case before leaving for work that morning. Gerald loved his Jaguar, often reverently stroking its blue metallic bodywork.  When he sat in the cream leather driving seat it was like sitting in a warm bath. ‘At leased the bitch hadn’t taken my car,’ he thought.

   He could hardly wait until he reached the cottage where Lorraine would be waiting for him. ‘Lorraine. Lorraine, my beautiful Lorraine.’ He repeated her name over and over again, sometimes even making up a song about her. At times, in his eagerness to see her, he would drive too fast. ‘I must be careful. If I got killed, what would happen to my Lorraine then?’

   It was dusk when he reached the cottage. No lights shone from the windows, but he hadn’t expected there to be. Lorraine always liked him to switch on the lights when he walked in. 

  Leaving his briefcase and laptop in the car he grabbed his weekend case. Just in time he remembered to lock the car, although there was very little crime in the area. ‘You could never be to sure,’ he thought. That was why he always told Lorraine to keep the door locked when he wasn’t around.

  Eagerly, he ran up the steps to the cottage and unlocked the door. Putting his suitcase down in the hall, full of anticipation he opened the door to the lounge and switched on the light. His breath caught in his throat when he saw her sitting on the settee waiting for him. She looked so beautiful dressed in a scarlet chiffon and satin evening gown. Slowly he walked towards her, savouring every moment before putting his arms around her.  ‘Darling, darling, you look wonderful,’ he whispered as he pulled her close to him. He kissed her cheek then her pouting lips. He did not want to hurry this first encounter.

  Sitting her back on the settee he asked if the champagne was in the fridge. ‘I knew it would be,’ he said, going to fetch it. He poured two glasses and lifted his, saying, ‘Here’s to the most beautiful woman in the world.’

  He sipped his drink slowly, devouring her body with his eyes. His gaze travelled from her long blonde hair to her brilliant blue eyes, fringed with thick dark lashes. Her lips smiled invitingly. ‘They could wait,’ he thought. He wanted to take in the rest of her beauty. His eyes went down her slender neck to her half exposed taut breasts, their nipples aching to be touched. Her suntanned legs were crossed provocatively; his fingers itched to stroke them.

  She sat there not saying a word. She knew that’s how he liked it: quiet and submissive, not like his ex-wife, who had the language of a fishwife. Lorraine knew how to please him.

  Gerald carried her into the bedroom where he slipped her evening gown over her slender shoulders.  She wore no bra - there was no need with her firm breasts. He removed her red thong leaving her standing before him naked. Gently he laid her on the bed, stroking and kissing her all over. Gerald loved the taste and smell of her body.

  When he was fully aroused he pulled her on top of him. This was the way she liked it. Lorraine’s eyes gazed unblinking into his.  This always unnerved him a bit, but because of all the other wonderful things about her he pushed it to one side. Grabbing her, he moved her up and down. Oh, it felt so good. She put up no resistance; he could do what he liked with her.

  After he had climaxed he lay back exhausted, both of them wet with perspiration from their love making. Lying by her side, he pulled the duvet over them and fell into a deep sleep.

  The sun streaming through a slit in the curtains awoke Gerald. He thought of last night and of how wonderful it had been. He put out his arm to touch the now deflated latex body of Lorraine.

Sicily, by Annabelle Jane Palling

What land is scented quite like this?
Of sun-drenched lemons, pepper, thyme,
Almonds, stone, baked earth, azure,
Sea and salt, and honey wild?

Murmuring skin that speaks
To mine, and in a tongue
I love to learn?

An Inconspicuous Man, by Peter Morford.

It was raining hard and the few people on Oxford Street pushed past each other for shelter in shops and cafes. Nobody had time to notice the small man in a hoodie as he walked hurriedly east towards Tottenham Court Road underground station. He felt the dampness seeping onto his shoulders and knew he should have brought his umbrella. But, he thought, who in a hoodie would carry an umbrella? He would have been noticed and Walter did not
want that. Or be remembered until…
   He sheltered in the entrance to a department store and on a whim, went in. He found himself in the Men’s Department where he wandered for a few moments. He had no wish to spend any money now, for what would have been the point? He went back into the street. He felt disorientated. Should he turn left or right? He always lost his sense of direction when he came out of shops or cinemas.
   “Excuse me, could you direct me to Tottenham Court Road?” he asked a plump woman, laden with shopping bags.
   “No I can’t. I’m a visitor. I go by taxi.”
He stopped a man. “Get yerself a map,” he said, rushing away. The man in the hoodie felt a surge of anger. One useless woman, one rude boar of a man; that’s the sort of people he had to deal with. He gently pressed his midriff and felt something firm and reassuring there.
   He suddenly remembered the way and carried on walking. And when he got to Tottenham Court Road, he turned back because his real destination was to be Oxford Circus. He knew it would be crowded by hundreds of people who would soon know his secret. And a few, perhaps many, who would never know. He smiled to himself, feeling the power.
   Arriving, he stood still, just watching. Inconspicuous. A man minding his own business.
   Those going out to the street dithered with their umbrellas and got in the way of the crowd coming in. A big man under a golf umbrella shouted, “Make way, make way,” and people actually did stand aside for him as he shook the water over anyone close enough to deserve it.
   Walter sneered at the spectacle. These people would have something else to worry about very soon. He would show no mercy as he waited for the right moment to show them who had the real power. He was checking his belt again when he felt the vibration over his heart. He unzipped his parka, then his cardigan, and got to the phone just as it started to ring loudly.
   A shrill voice. “Where are you Walter? Have you lost your way again? I’ve been waiting here ten minutes. You’re supposed to meet me here for afternoon tea!”
   “Coming mother!” he said as he lost his signal and searched for his Oyster Card to scan at the barrier.
   Mrs Mitty hated her son to be late on his birthday.

Tribute to Stephen Hawking, by Michael Carding

A BRIEF HISTORY IN RHYME     (in three parts) by Michael Carding

Solar Sonnet

Aristotle’s nested spheres

Described the universe for years;

Copernicus, in middle age,

Set the sun at centre stage;

Galileo, Kepler too,

Confirmed through telescopic view;

Newton drilled right to the core,

Motion kept within the law.

God and man, creative tension,

Somewhere in the fourth dimension.

Then Einstein steps onto the line

Challenging both Space and Time,

Urging light and thoughts to bend:

When did it start? Where will it end?

Epitaph for Hawking

Time and Space freed from linear finity,

Philosophers and mathematicians out of the box,

Poets break the bonds of metre and rhyme:

Absolute expansion!

If not constrained by wheelchair and communication

Then not constrained.

Insignificant, yet each new thought,

As if from a big bang, ripples and radiates

Into a universe of ideas.

Wave upon wave, increasing energy, ever expanding.

The holy grail of

Relativity reconciled to quantum:

The Treaty of Creation between God and man

Signed in a heavenly black hole.

Coda

Philosophy and physics blend

With poetry, where will it end?

Here and now.

    (Stephen Hawking died 14^th March 2018)

                                   .

The Grail, by Justin Roberts

When I heard a rumour that one of the knights who undertook the quest for the Holy Grail was still living, I felt I could not rest until I had spoken with him. Many had heard the story, but few had any notion of where he lived, and even his name seemed to be in dispute. It was only after many tedious journeyings I discovered him. His name was Bors, and he lived a solitary hermit in a desolate forest. He was now an extremely old man, and it was immediately clear that for many years he had cared nothing for his appearance or the condition of his clothes. For a long time he met my queries with immovable silence, but at length, either out of pity or wearied by my endless importunities, he began to talk, like one who had almost forgotten the use of his mother-tongue or the sound of his own voice.

He began to tell the long story of how the company of knights set forth to find the Grail, through dark and trackless forests and over perilous mountains, how they battled monsters and giants, how they endured endless traps and temptations laid before them by devils, how the faint-hearted abandoned the quest as one year followed another, though the valiant few pressed onward, sustained by the vision ……  But all these stories I had already heard, so I cut short his account with impatient questions.

What did your companions propose to do with the Grail when they found it? This question for the first time appeared to animate him.

- You do not DO anything with the Grail. It is not for USE. The Grail IS, and always will be: that is all. It exists, beyond all time and all space. Nothing more is required. He who has seen the Grail has beheld all the secrets of the universe: of life, of death, and of the life to come.

And these secrets are?

- They cannot be expressed in words.

I felt that little was being learnt, so I moved to a new line of questioning.

How did you find it?

- Not through any effort or merit of ours. The Grail is not to be ferreted out or dug for, like some sack of buried gold. It may permit itself to be found. Only one who is wholly without sin can find the Grail. He must not only be pure and undefiled in his actions, but in his words too, and even in his thoughts. As a sinful man, I could not come near it, but as an act of grace far beyond my deserts, I was permitted to glimpse it, from a distance, for an instant. That momentary vision I have held in my mind ever since, and I desire nothing but to continue to meditate upon it.

What did the Grail look like?

- It is beyond any description.

But it must have had a shape, a colour?

- It has all colours, many of which human eyes cannot perceive, and at the same time it has no colour. It is not confined in a single fixed shape, as mortal objects are: it embodies in itself all the shapes that ever are, or were, or could be.

By this time, I was beginning to wonder whether my journey had been wasted. Either he was simply a fraud, or he was a deluded old man lost in a dense fog of impenetrable mysticism, and unable to convey any useful information. In anger I said, I do not believe you found the Grail at all: in fact, I begin to doubt whether the Grail even exists.

- No matter, he said, for I know I saw the Grail. That is sufficient. I am at peace.

Flight, by Catherine Redfern

“Most of man’s ills come from his inability to sit quietly in a room.” Blaise Pascal.

But Blaise, your countrymen ignored you.
Look, look at the balloon.
That was the beginning,
man getting above himself.
Balloon, bi-plane,
Channel hops.
Aces high, slaughter figures rising.
And a second time, dog fights, night raids,
Dresden demolished, the East End flattened.
But all quite neatly finished
In a distant land,
the quiet tea ceremony shattered
with some new equipment.
And still the restlessness.
How can a room
contain this flight,
this longing for the stars?
Space, the moon. The moon?
He's on his way to Mars!
Blaise, you are alone
In that quiet room.
Man has been chasing other worlds,
but soon enough, surely soon enough?
He will return to Earth,
his neglected home -
It needs his cherishing..