Some days there is no time for anything but still snatches of sunlight cross my borders and connections and ideas leak and seep into my subconscious and I think, how long can it take to write it down. This poem came to me via Edinburgh and its called 'George Square', which is indeed in Edinburgh and I duly pass it on for I love it and while you read it listen to the equally lovely Toumani Diabate playing 'Cantelowes' because it is equally astonishing:George Square
put his reading glasses on
to help my mother do the buttons
on the back of her dress.
'What a pair the two of us are!'
my mother said, 'Me with my sore wrists,
you with your bad eyes, your soft thumbs!'
And off they went, my two parents
to march against the war in Iraq,
him with his plastic hips, her with he arthritis,
to congregate at George Square where the banners
waved at each other like old friends, flapping, where they'd met for so many marches over the years,
for peace on earth, for pity's sake, for peace, for peace.
Jackie Katy