Sheena Blackhall Poems

Every funeral's different. Angus Calder
Poet and historian's was eco-green
With woodland pipe, songs, poems to mark his passing
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Nostradamus (1503-66)is famous for his cryptic prophesies that have supposedly forecast major world events. He also had expertise as a pharmacist and a jam-maker. His most notorious formulation is a "love jam" that was based on mandrake fruits and other reputed aphrodisiacs. The recipe can be found in his 1555 ‘Treatise on cosmetics and jams'.

Here is a magic potion of great power
Go dawn-pick mandrake apples if you will
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Birch is for new beginnings.
Birch is the nursery tree
Birch celebrates sweet Beltane
Source of fertility
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Brown madder, burnt umber, bronze, sienna
Flake white hue, flesh tint, French ultramarine
Manganese blue, cobalt violet, magenta
Davy's grey, lamp black and rich olive green
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When I'd a cold, my granny said
Soak your feet in a mustard bath.
With a spoon of mustard powder stirred
In warm water to ease your cough
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A Very Expensive Lamb
(£367,000 sheep is world's most expensive)

A Pedigree Texel wee lamb
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I am old. I have lost six teeth
From my shrunkengums
My breasts are shrivelled gourds
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1. A Walk in the Desert

I seldom speak of this
And not to strangers
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One girl, private school-pupil, made a stand,
The bus was full, no one gave up a seat
But her, a gesture kindly and unplanned
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Fatima thrust her breasts out, shoulders back
Her chin's held high, hand on her hip
She could be a Queen of the Nile
The Niger, the Zambesi
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