Glenis Moore has been writing poetry since the beginning of the first Covid lockdown.

She does most of her writing at night as she suffers from severe insomnia.

When she is not writing poetry she makes beaded jewellery, reads, cycles and sometimes runs 10K races slowly.

She lives with her partner and three cats in the flat lands of the Fens just outside Cambridge.

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Pretence

The sun is shining silhouetting the trees,
forming shadows on the tired lawn
but the air is sharp. Its coldness stabs down
to the bone shaking and rattling
this old skeleton which is me.
I seek the bright light of a blue sky
but there is no warmth there for it is late
November and the monster that may be
eating my body plans to complete its meal
before the summer heat returns. While I wait
I snuggle down the bed in the glow
of the electric blanket and an old cat,
cocooned enough to pretend that I love the winter.

---

Tidelands

The Norfolk coast is haunted by the sea
as many towns have fallen in its path,
their houses buried deep within the sand,
the lives they held now broken by the waves.
Now earth-bound spirits stalk the flooded land
where once their spectres lived and laughed for free.

The wind upon the Wash blows hard and free,
it often howls like wolves across the sea
and savages its way onto the land.
There are no trees that can stand in its path
as it is just as brutal as the waves
that crash way out upon the waiting sand.

On mornings when the tide is out the sand
can glisten like the light of stars set free
and those walking the beach can’t hear the waves
as there’s at least a mile before the sea.
But if you’re quick you’ll maybe find a path
that leads you out onto the stark tideland.

It pays to watch your step though on this land,
as there are some who’ve witnessed the quicksand
attempt to claim all those who leave the path
and wander seeking rock pools wild and free.
And do not loiter long out near the sea
as the tide turn may catch you with its waves.

You may be looking out at rippling waves
and have no thought behind you of the land,
but there’s none so deceitful as the sea,
which rises up from underneath the sand.
Then when you turn you’ll see that you’re not free
as waves are flowing over all the path.

The locals are the ones who know which path
can save all the unwary from the waves,
as they must cross the tidelands to be free
of all the tide has taken from the land.
Their past is like each grain of shifting sand,
which owes its mere existence to the sea.

So those who follow paths across tidelands
to watch the waves caress the gleaming sand,
may find that death comes free beside the sea.

---

Just a towel

There is an old blue towel in our bathroom.
It is almost worn through in places
and its edges are frayed but it is
the one Mum gave me forty years ago
when I left home and she had given up
trying to persuade me to stay. It is
the towel I wrapped around my hot water
bottle the night I lost Mark’s baby
and the one that my first cat Mogsy was sick
on the day we brought her home. I had to
wash it three times to get rid of the smell.

I used it to wipe away the tears for Steve
and Dad, but not for Mum as we fought right
through to the end and seasoned warriors
rarely cry. When Raz went blind we put it
in his bed so that he could find it by smell
and we used it to dry Teaza when Mungo
pushed her into the pond in play.
I also used it the day I tried to dye
my hair back to the red it had once been.
I ended up looking like I was wearing
an orange on my head and the red dye
stain has still not been washed out.

That towel has seen many different cats
and many different mes so, although
it is just a towel, when Nick tries to
throw it out, I quietly put it back
as who knows when I might need those
old blue memories.