Corfu Blues and Global Views: William Barnes Society: Some Dorset Poems, Jim Potts

Monday 4 November 2019

William Barnes Society: Some Dorset Poems, Jim Potts

Some of my Dorset poems - with thanks to Mark North for the excellent layout and links!

Click link above to read a selection of my Dorset poems.

I forgot to include the following five Dorset poems.

St. Wite and the Writer: Strange Pilgrimage

If Markov had had

The luck of Havel,

I wouldn't be here

In this Dorset churchyard

In Whitchurch Canonicorum,

Sensing that I'm not alone

Searching for a stranger's gravestone,

For the writer they murdered on Waterloo Bridge,

Who died for a Europe

Reunited, freed,

In seventy-eight, not eighty-nine.

I say thanks to the Saint,

St. Wite, in her shrine.

Whitchurch Canonicorum,

May Day Bank Holiday, 1992.
In Memoriam Georgi Ivanov Markov, born Sofia, Bulgaria 1.3.1929, died London, England, 11.9.1978.

Václav Havel, the former dissident, playwright and essay-writer, became President of Czechoslovakia on 29th December, 1989

With President Havel

If you're attentive...

Early bluebells

Ring out in the woods,

Muffle the shots from the firing range.

(April, near the Lulworth Ranges, Dorset)

West Saxon Nap

From Alfred’s Tower to Golden Cap

I’ll tie our silken hammock

And there I’ll lie

With you my love

My head upon your lap.

Maze of Straw

We built a maze of straw-bales

In a Dorset farmer's field;

We crawled through on our bellies

But we found the exit sealed.

The way was dark and prickly,

We were lost, enclosed and scared;

With our backs we raised a roof-bale,

To face the farm-boy's sickle, bared.