Let there be Peace

Let there be Peace
Let there be peace but not at any price
So games of chance, rolls of the dice
Do not disdainfully dictate like all the rest
That some should rule, some be repressed.
Let lives be counted for their proper worth;
Let no human being brought to birth
Be sacrificed in vain for wounded pride.
Let not a single man, who died
In conflict, be dismissed as second-rate.
Even the enemy deserves a better fate
Than mere obliteration; it's a fact.
Let politicians show a bit of tact
When they, too quick to blame the other
For the mess, forget their brother
Man; for they should have the grace
To recognise each member of the human race
Is just like them, so fallible and weak.
Instead of being rash, they should be meek,
Try to say sorry and apologise

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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City Fox, Country Fox

The city fox envies his soft, rural kin:
They don’t have to watch out for lorries and cars.
The sleek village vixen just lazes away
In wide-open fields, underneath sparkling stars.

The city fox has to go out in the light
When rustical Reynard sleeps safe in his bed.
He only pops out in the midst of the night
To pilfer some poultry from his chickenshed.

The city fox struggles to keep himself fed;
A diet of leftovers doesn’t go far.
Whilst eking a living is all he can do,
Arcadian diets are like caviare.

The city fox scratches in bins for his food
But, out in the country, his cousin lives well
On rabbit and pheasant and other fine game
Whilst rough, tatty townie recoils from the smell.

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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I’m Dreaming Of A White Easter

I’m dreaming of a white Easter,
Just like the ones we soon will feel
Now that global warming
Has given us warning
That climate change is now for real.
I’m dreaming of a white Easter
Now nature’s come and dealt a fright
Armageddon beckons
And boffins reckon
That all our Easters may be white.

I’m dreaming of a stark future
When ozone layers start to thin.
What with sunbeams scorching
Just like blowtorching
We’ll end up with fried and frazzled skin.
I’m dreaming of a stark future
When we’ll have all forgotten snow.
There’ll be mass extinctions
As we fail to shrink sun’s

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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Thoughts Of A Goldfish

I am a goldfish; I am swimming around this bowl. It is getting dizzy.

A goldfish I am; It is getting dizzy. Swimming around this bowl I am.
Am I a goldfish? I am swimming around this bowl. It is getting dizzy.
It is getting dizzy, swimming around this bowl, I am a goldfish. I am.
Around this bowl I am swimming. It is getting dizzy. I am a goldfish
I am a goldfish. It is getting dizzy around this bowl, I am swimming.
I am swimming around this bowl; I am a goldfish. It is getting dizzy.
Around this bowl, it is getting dizzy. I am a goldfish; I am swimming.
I am a goldfish. It is getting dizzy. I am swimming around this bowl.
I am a goldfish. Bowl this around: it is getting dizzy. I am swimming.
I am swimming around this bowl. Am I a goldfish? It is getting dizzy.
Am I a goldfish bowl? It is getting dizzy. Am I swimming around this?
It is getting dizzy. I am a goldfish. Am I swimming around this bowl?
Am I a goldfish? Around this bowl am I swimming? It is getting dizzy.
Am I a goldfish? I am. It is getting dizzy, swimming around this bowl.
Am I a goldfish? It is getting dizzy. I am swimming around this bowl.
Am I a goldfish swimming? Around this bowl, I am. It is getting dizzy.
Am I a goldfish? It is getting dizzy. Around this bowl I am swimming.
Am I swimming? I am a goldfish around this bowl. It is getting dizzy.

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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Round The Compass Twice With The Wind

The wind’s in a whirl
In a cyclonic spin,
A mischievous girl
With intentions to sin.
With sharp cloven hoofs,
This she-devil conspires
To tear from our roofs
All the chimneys and tiles.

The wind’s in the north,
A philosopher’s stone,
For all that it’s worth,
Turning water to bone.
It’s longing to tell
Bedtime stories at night
To earth, in its spell,
Tucked in blankets of white.

The wind’s in the south,
Bringing soothing, warm balm

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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Salt Marsh Survivors

Turning tides reveal mysteries of moist marsh,
As salt creek’s crazy-paving parquet surfaces,
When brackish brine seeps and slurps seawards,
Revealing seemingly lifeless deserts of dearth.
Marooned in the mouldering mudbank’s mire,
Flounder five-fingered starfish, stolid survivors
Of attack from glaucous gulls wheeling overhead
In quest of cheap offerings of unworldly worth.

Tantalised by wriggling titbits tendered to them,
Seagulls scream and squabble in early excitement,
Stealing the riches of the saltmarsh from the grasp
Of the gloopy, saturated, sucking, saline earth.
Whilst sunbathing, stranded on the new, exposed shore,
Squads of seals quibble and fight over disputed territory
Overlooked proprietorially by the head, alpha bull
Gathering his veilless harem in awe of his great girth.

Writhing lugworms lift lugubrious, heedful heads
From the gluey gunge, peering for a mere moment

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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The Shy Christmas Tree And The Hundred Fairy Lights

Now the Christmas tree sits shyly
In the corner of the room,
Like a shining beam of brightness
In the dismal winter gloom,
All aglow with tiny twinkles
Of a hundred fairy lights
Dancing round shy, trembling branches
In the dark December nights.

Shiny tinsel shimmers sparkling,
Twined around like silver string,
While the multicoloured baubles
Turn around and gently swing,
All reflecting light and glitter
From the hundred fairy lights
Dancing round shy, trembling branches
In the dark December nights.

Stuck tight to the top’s a fairy
In her ballerina dress;

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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London’s Water

Under London’s busy streets forgotten rivers run:
Westbourne. Holbourne and the Fleet, all shielded from the sun,
Springing from the ancient fonts, which once the city took
To succour thirsty thousands, who built beside the brook.

Our bold forefathers drank their fill from sparkling, rippling rills
That flowed from Hampstead’s teeming ponds upon North London’s hills.
From Tyburn grim to Hackney Brook they savoured, crystal clear,
The purest water in the South, no need for mead or beer.

But, as the population grew, the bubbling brooks grew rank.
With sewage, muck and garbage filled, the streamlets stalled and stank
And, as the mediaeval folk were felled by plague from fleas,
Our rancid rat-filled rivers ran with danger and disease.

As good King Henry Third obtained new water from the marsh
That stood by Tyburn’s grassy fields, now under Marble Arch,
The poorer peasants supped, unstopped, from foetid Father Thames
All risking death from cholera, those sickly citizens.

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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Sing Along To The Song Of The Sea

Sing along, sing along to the song of the sea
In the wash of white, wild weather’s wave,
As it gushes galore
Onto strand’s silver shore,
Like a ghost from a galleon’s grave.

Sing along, sing along to the song of the sea
In the shout of coarse cannon’s rough roar
That rang round Britain’s bays
In Drake’s drum’s finest days,
When England and Spain went to war.

Sing along, sing along to the song of the sea
In the piping aboard of massed men,
As brave sailors set sail,
Swearing never to fail
If England is threatened again.

Sing along, sing along to the song of the sea
In the murmur of muttering crew

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poem by C. Richard Miles
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