Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Light Journal and So It Goes.

Eggshells

Make a hole in the eggshell
so the witches won’t steal them.
They’ll sail them away like a boat
and take you with them.

That’s what her granny said
when she was growing up.
So that’s what she did
as an obedient child.

But now she leaves the shells whole,
unpunctured
splendidly ovoid
as she always thought they should be.
She was not afraid of witches.
She was not afraid

and she would never walk on eggshells.


First published in As It Ought To Be, April 2022

Whistler And The Butterfly

It was a small exhibition
but it stayed in my memory.
I had never encountered Whistler
but the butterfly signature did it for me.
“The Company of the Butterfly”,
what a wonderful concept!
It really spoke to me,
I even wrote a poem
about the company of butterflies.
The title trips off my tongue so easily.

And now I am put in mind of it again
as I look at this image
and see her
now
in the company of butterflies
ready to whistle up the wind
again.

First published in Visual Verse, February 2022

Same Difference

The rain was torrential,
the ground so waterlogged 
that we had to put boards
under the tent.
They had a big stack of them
ready
for such an eventuality.
And this was Innsbruck
in August.
It was more like the English
Lake District.
We had expected better!
And we were kept awake
all night
by partying Scots
in the nearby tents.
It was just like the English
Lake District.
We had expected better!



First published in Literary Yard, August 2018