Lynn White

Lest We Forget

We think you can see us,

you know who we are 

behind our masks

Not everything is hidden.

We are not hidden.

We are out 

in the open

in plain sight

even if masked.

So join us for a pie,

a glass of wine,

a coffee.

Enjoy!

Take a sip with us

lest we forget

what to do

when we go outside.

Step back in time

one taste at a time,

one sip at a time.

Remember 

the first time 

is always challenging

and won’t ever be forgotten.

Remember!

As we will remember

the ones behind the masks

and the ones in hiding,

the ones we know are there

but cannot see.

We know who you are.

No one is forgotten.

Nothing is forgotten.

That’s our promise

one sip at a time.

First published in Praxis, August 2020

Priorities

She pursed her lips and struck a pose.

“Look at them,” she thought,

“one black, one white

but under the skin they’re the same.

Colourless.

Empty.

No substance.”

Each of them looked towards her

more in hope than expectation

perhaps.

She sighed as she shrugged her shoulders.

“Spare my blushes, please,” she said

as she went back inside the bar

and bought herself a drink

and a piece of pie.

Pie In The Sky

Souls would be saved,

and little girls re-born as angels,

that’s what they taught her in Sunday School

when they’d sung ‘In The Sweet Bye and Bye’.

She loved the tune, the melody

and sang a snatch to her father.

“That’s pie in the sky,” her father laughed.

He sang the same tune to her

but with different words.

“Joe Hill wrote these” her father said

and she liked those words better

she was a child of life after all

and didn’t want to wait for death to eat her pie.

So she learned them all and sang them on the next Sunday.

That was the last time she went to Sunday School.

She was a bad influence, they had said.

Her father laughed when she told him.

She sighed and looked up at the sky.

She knew there was no pie there,

only on earth for the lucky ones.