Monday 25 August 2014


Here is some news for those who have been asking whether I've ever had a poem published!  Not one, but two poems have appeared in a magazine called "The Dawntreader", Issue 26,  Summer 2014.

As you can imagine, I am really pleased about this............................. Here they are.


6 Acre Meadow
 
Lush meadow grass grows
hustled by warm spring air;     
buttercups, sun bright, beckon –
dandelions disperse seconds,
clocking up time.
Crows in low gear, lift
cast on the may-scented breeze,
their wings ebony, flight fluid as the brook.


©Sue Burley



Above Ringmore


At Ringmore, All Hallows stands proud
above the deep-cut Devon lanes.
A tractor, fat tyres higher than a man
pulls silage uphill between steep hedges.
 
Sheep drift clouding the falling fields.
From the churchyard the sea glints pewter
in the cleft of the valley, the soft air full
of  sweet mown grass; a faint taste of salt.

Above Ringmore, cornflowers bunch in jars,
guard headstones with epitaphs in curlicue script,
mourn dead babies and wives gone too soon.
“The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.”

At noon sea mist curls in drenching our faces                   
wrapping the ships out of Plymouth, sinuous
between the laurel’s salt-scoured leaves;
summer seems past yet this is only June.

Bells ring from a distant tower,
the air so still for once, the birds silent.
The earth moves through us; we turn our backs
for the last time, fearful that it might stop

 


Sue Burley

Wednesday 13 August 2014


Tsunami


Aceh, Sumatra – 26th December 2004

There is always
calm before a storm.

This day dawns fine,
but six miles deep
the sea floor heaves.

Divers near the rocks
see fevered shoals
burst in disarray

and those who watch
the sea recede
just stand and stare,

their thin cries seized
by rearing cliffs
of foaming surf.

  * * * *

Among the lost,
a tiny girl dragged
by waves,

half drowned;
tossed as debris
on to remote shores...

then ten years on,
found; a gift held fast            
in her mother’s arms –

and grief  is quenched by joy.

 

© Sue Burley


On 10th August, 2014, it was reported that Raudhatul Jannah (now aged 14) was returned to her parents, after being recognised on Banyak Island, approx 25 miles from the West Aceh coast.