Tuesday, A Slow Walk With An Old Dog

I had a poem boosted on Medium!

I still can’t believe it. Getting boosted on Medium is a huge deal because it brings far more readers to your work which translates nicely to more earnings. I have been extremely lucky to have been boosted many times since I joined Medium over eighteen months ago, but I never, ever expected to get boosted for a poem! Poems and short form writing don’t do so well on Medium because they are so short, but it’s still a lot of fun to write them and in particular, I love responding to writing prompts.

I was thrilled to bits to have this poem boosted as it is my favourite one at the moment. It was written in response to a prompt from the Promptly Written publication which suggested keeping a gratitude journal and writing a poem a day from it.

I’ve been thinking about gratitude a lot lately so this was really timely for me and immediately caught my interest.

I wrote a poem for Monday which got a few reads and earned me a few pence, then posted the following poem for Tuesday, which was about walking my elderly dog Tinks down the lane. Getting boosted for this really means a lot as we all know she is on her last doddery legs and every moment with her is precious. For her poem to get boosted and seen by more people is just lovely.

Anyway, here it is, alongside a photo I took of her on the day in question.

image is mine

Just for while
we had the world to ourselves
in a moody silence
just the buzzard on the oak tree
looking over its shoulder
to follow our slow progress
just the fast flit of tiny birds
from one hedgerow to another
just the crows taking off lazily
and the pheasant on the fence post
just wandering alongside you
matching your feeble pace
and the age it takes
to get from here to there
and back again
is the time it takes
for everything to fall silent
for this beauty to breathe so slowly
that I can breathe with it
in, out, in, out
with the time to see, hear, taste and smell
the lonely land falling asleep
as winter creeps into
your old bones


Would It Be Okay To Watch The Last Sunset Alone? – poem

Hi folks! I have got so much content now on Medium – a lovely mix of essays, articles, poems and stories, so I thought for this week on the blog I would share a poem that recently did quite well for me there. I still can’t get my head around getting paid to write my poems!!

Image by Giani Pralea from Pixabay

Would it be okay
to not do anything
to leave today
and maybe tomorrow too
whatever, however long it takes
for the feeling to pass
of the world ending
of disaster
and death
and my decay
and the transition into bones
and dust
would it be okay
if I said not today?
I can’t do it today
my mind is a trap
a battlefield I can’t escape from
and your silence was too loud
when I tried to talk
if the world lets me
I’ll cancel today
bury myself in bed
find comfort in words instead
get lost and sad inside my own head
feel myself dissipate in the dark
embrace my bones
knowing it’s okay
to watch the last sunset alone

Thank you for reading! I am in the process of compiling all my Medium poems and pieces of fiction into a new book I’ll publish at some point. I’ll keep you posted on that but I already know it will be called Dirty Little Feet and Other Tales and Poems.

See you next week!