The February Featured Poet is Ed Blundell

Please feel free to email Ed at: edblundell12@gmail.com

TIDE LINES

Here where the ocean sees the land,
Where ever-changing, shifting sands
Meet ancient rhythms of the waves,
Rocking the shore, pebbling the beach.
Here solid ends and water worlds
Different, deep and dangerous swirl.
Here’s where the world that we now know
Crawled from a slimed, primeval place.
Here is where dreamers stand and gaze
At the horizon’s misty edge.

THE LADY BY THE LAKE

A watery, winter sun wept down,
Through a thin, grey veil of cloud,
Over the lake the morning mist,
Hung like a cold, white shroud.
She shivered in the morning chill,
As she waited by the lake,
Shivered from fear as well as cold
Knowing the risks they would take.
For the man she loved was lowly,
A humble, simple squire.
If her father should discover them
His vengeance would be dire
For he was a mighty baron
And she was his only child
She knew that if he discovered their plans
He would rage uncontrollably wild.
He had promised her in wedlock,
He had shown her the golden ring,
That she would wear when married
To the nephew of the king.
So, with her handsome, loving squire,
She planned to elope that day 
Regardless of the danger,
They’d be lovers come what may.
Then, riding out of the forest,
The sight that she most feared,
A band of her father’s retainers
Suddenly appeared.
They mock her and they taunt her,
Ask, “Is this who you came to meet?”
Then, red with blood, they throw the head
Of her lover down at her feet.
That night, late, after a banquet,
As the baron took the air,
He went to visit his daughter’s room
But could not find her there.
They found her in the morning light,
As the dawn began to break.
They found her drowned among the reeds,
In the mist, at the side of the lake. 

STRANDS

Snail, sea snail, curled, frozen in stone,
Fossil found on a pebble beach.
How far now from those tropic seas
You lived and died in long ago.
For countless years you slid through time
To meet me in a different world,
To rendezvous here on this strand.
Is that how time will treat us all?
After we’ve gone to slip through years
And meet again on other shores             

Ed Blundell worked as a teacher of English, a school inspector and as Director of Education for the town of Stockport. He has had short stories and poetry published in over thirty magazines in the U.K. and the U.S. including Popshot, Orbis, Psychopoetica, Carillon and Purple Patch and has had a collection of his poems, “Sweet Nothings,” published by Atlantean Press. He gave up searching for the meaning of life after discovering there wasn’t one.