Thanks Merril, that’s great to hear

That’s very kind Jen, thank you

Thanks for those comments

Reckoning (Ocean's Version) The tides do not whisper. Through kelp, through wreckage, they drag the remains of your ambitions. Salt splits steel. The sea, no longer silent, swells with hunger, buckling ships beneath its breath. Its currents choke on oil and myth, It spits back your offerings: plastic gods, fractured hulls, your silence. Coral does not forgive. It withdraws its colour, to bone and glare. Anemones close in slow refusal, their soft mouths. Fishermen cast their nets and draw up ghosts. Whales sing elegies you never learned to hear. This is not vengeance. This is recoil. Each hull that cuts passage etches grief deeper into the deep. The ocean does not forget. It heaves, remembers the first salt, the pull of the moon, the cold before light. Before you. Now the reckoning comes not as stillness but as swell, waves rising like verdicts, currents remaking coastlines. You thought the sea was yours. It was only waiting.

For today’s #vss365

High praise, thank you very much

He’d be a good judge as he wrote a lot of poetry

Must be something in the air or gravity 😉

Thanks for those generous comments Dave

Thanks Jen

Einstein's Daydream I lose the hour before it's mine, the second hand begins to stray. I follow light's unbroken line, I lose the hour before it's mine. The clock arrives before its time, or held a while in slight delay. I lose the hour before it's mine, the second hand begins to stray.

Here’s one about a famous daydreamer for #PoetsofDoom #daydreams #triolet

The Greatest Trick It wasn't done all at once. Not a flourish, not a hand quicker than the eye. A morning given for an afternoon's living. You didn't notice what went missing. Only that things had prices and that seemed fair enough. Milk. Rent. Time. Later, you learned to measure your day in what it returned. And somewhere, third floor, lights still on, someone finishing their own day by entering yours, adjusting the figures as they were taught, until what remained was added to someone else's account. You kept the day. Someone else kept the rest. And still nothing was hidden. No secret compartment, no false bottom. Only this: that everything you had learned to speak in numbers, and that seemed fair enough.

Many of us will experience the trick of money/ capital on a daily basis #vss365

Not sure, it would be more relevant if there was some debate around papal and political authority currently 😉

Canossa He stands barefoot. The snow does not recognise him. It takes the shape of what presses into it heel, bone, the slow insistence of weight. His cloak is wet through. Cold settled in the seams. The gate not refusing, not yielding simply there. Inside, a man decides what repentance looks like. Outside, repentance waits and does not know if it is being seen. Time passes without measure only the body keeps it: numbness, the return of pain, numbness again. The crown is no use here. It cannot be worn against this. He feels it then, not forgiveness, not yet but the weight of needing it. And somewhere beneath the act, something unsettled, like an answer to someone else's question

In 1077, amid the struggle between imperial and papal authority known as the Investiture Controversy, Henry IV waited outside Canossa for three days, seeking absolution from Pope Gregory VII, an act remembered as both penance and political necessity.
#vss365

Thanks. You’re not missing much

Thanks Sue

Thanks for that Jen, I’m so pleased you liked it

A beautifully reflective poem that turns an ordinary object into a vessel of memory and continuity.

A playful and intelligent poem that uses physics as a metaphor for attraction and intimacy.

A powerful piece about hubris, consequence, and the moment gravity finally asserts itself.

A concise and effective piece that challenges surface-level achievement with deeper emotional insight.

Thank you

Thanks so much for that Jan

Very true!

An ambitious and imaginative poem that blends cosmology, philosophy, and satire with real confidence. I like how the figure of Emanuel Swedenborg anchors the piece, giving its speculative scope a historical and intellectual grounding.

A poignant and powerful poem that turns admiration into quiet tragedy with great control.

There’s a gentle tension between urgency and surrender that gives the piece depth.

The Metaphysics of Air Travel The aircraft does not conquer gravity. It bargains. A long argument of thrust and burn, aluminium insisting it has somewhere else to be. Time loses grip of distance And speed is no more than thoughts crossing a face, only a faint delay before meaning catches up. The body stays loyal to gravity, even at thirty-five thousand feet. Blood still settles. Sleep still negotiates. Hunger is dulled in tinfoil and plastic Yet something else shifts. A future is reached before it is lived Night is misplaced. Morning arrives early, apologising. The engines burn ancient light sun stored in oil, released to move us against the pull of the planet that made us. Energy hums everywhere, spent lavishly to hold us in this thin parenthesis: a pause written between departure and arrival, where being is neither here nor there but briefly, astonishingly, afloat.

inspired by some recent travel, here’s one for #PoemsAbout #Gravity many thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Just Words Just words, bubbling up like spring water, their syllables romping, skittering, a choreography of sound. How astonishing, serendipity spills like sunlight, efflorescence bursts like laughter, vowels hum, sweet and mellifluous, slipping through thought like a river running toward joy. Even the quietest word dazzles: a whisper becomes a lantern, casting its aureate glow where silence dared to linger. All art has a language: a cello sighs, shadow dances with light, and a sonnet turns, its volta swinging wide, a sudden gust of light. Each stroke, each note, each word translates what the heart cannot name.

This #vss365 is a celebration of words

Tax Loophole They call it cleverness, a way of seeing what others miss. Not theft, no nothing so crude. Just structure, interpretation, the elegance of absence of something owed I scheme for what's allowed, so nothing's owed if it isn't written down, it's mine. And somewhere in the quiet subtraction of their signatures, a ward closes early, a waiting list lengthens, a light flickers twice betore going out. But these are abstractions, numbers without faces, costs without names. The ledger balances. The conscience, too, if one learns what not to count. They call it cleverness, a way of seeing what others miss,

For today’s #vss365

Mere Terms Self seeks self less. Trees heed selves. pressures renew never left. Self meets self, never left. terms recede, verbs bleed. then less sense. dense text, mere terms, tense next, next never sense. self seeks, gets less, less. the self meets less self. mercy when where nets enmesh emptiness settles.

Renewed