All we are saying

The League of Poets are producing a giant anthology on peace, widely published and available, my contribution here, slender as it is, charity starts at home:

Helen’s day bed

How calmly she lies among the olive trees
above the bay, on her mattress, 
eyes closed against the tranquil day oblivious
to canopied white fishing boats below
that ply their way through fields of rippled blue,

and all around this drift of velvet butterflies – 

unorganised in midday flight – and lizards in the sun:
an excavator’s drill’s clamour in the valley down
seems further off than it can be.

Somewhere undisturbed, she’s cushioned, sheltered,
brown body bared in quiet calm, Helen
in her peaceful mind sinks in the sand,
warm sand, on the shores of the world.