AUTUMN SUNSHINE

We had the courtyard to ourselves

our shoes scrunched on pebbles

as we moved to a sun bleached table

shaded by exuberant honeysuckle .

We shared a blue water jug,

talked of friends we shared,

books we had enjoyed, places

we loved  and problems we could not solve.

‘Humans are a pestilential species,’

the poet began, ‘We not only have

problems, we are problems, we

can’t tell the difference between

development and destruction.’

‘It’s not their ignorance that appals me,’

the teacher said, ‘It’s the extent of it.’

He smiled at the pretty waitress who brought

him soup du jour and garlic bread.

Over coffee the poet talked fishing

of catching a ten pound trout

with a smaller trout inside, A spray

of honeysuckle crept across

his shoulder as if listening.

downstream

by Jim Bennett

the rainwater from last nights storm

swells the river

and brings the blood brown topsoil

to mud the water

a  fisherman watches from the bank

his eyes fixed on a float

nestling in the quieter shallows

its rise and fall hidden

in cracked light

and breeze blown ripples

here on the common path

we stand and talk about

butterflies and summer

watch the clambering clouds

in their rush to the North

and debate our futile opposition

to the fisherman’s barbed hooks

further along the rising path

the river left below

we can see the water stain

slick like oil spread out

across the bay

until finally diluted

it  disappears into

the sky mirror surface

of the sea

sinking to the land below

where a new world

is being built