A 10 MINUTE EXERCISE. Pick a word from the dictionary, at random, without looking and write something about it. I picked MENOPAUSE. Hence the following piece:-

I wonder if the menopause
could possibly have been the cause
of the parting of the way
for Bill and me, as just today
he said, “I can’t take any more,”
and went off with the man next door.

It’s true I’d thrown the cat at him,
followed by the Kit-Kat tin.
He’d only said that I looked tired
and my new hat he’d not admired.
His parting shot, as he went out
was, “Women, I can do without.”
He had decided, from that day,
it would be safer to be ‘gay’.

© Marion Sharville

The open gates of book
and verse and speech and glance
invite us just inside to chase
the butterflies of thought
that light upon our ignorance;

to gaze upon soft vistas,
pearl-covered with the dew
of age-old wisdom nourishing
the frail hypothesis, the struggling
seeds of something new.

We are free to wander
each new-found path that winds,
to crush the weeds of prejudice
and pluck the buds of truth
from the magic gardens of our minds.

© Marion Sharville