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    A Small Book of Poems
    A Small Book of Poems
    A Small Book of Poems
    Ebook45 pages19 minutes

    A Small Book of Poems

    By Alan Norris

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    About this ebook

    A small book of contemporary poems, some humourous, some serious and some to bring a tear. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlan Norris
    Release dateOct 28, 2016
    ISBN9781386021513
    A Small Book of Poems
    Author

    Alan Norris

    Alan was born in Poole, Dorset, England on October 1st 1948. As a child, he lived in Canada for a few years in what was then a tiny settlement village called Malton in Ontario. He went to his first school in the village, a one-room school that was quite basic but typical of the time in those outlying areas of the Canadian countryside. Later in life he travelled to Western Australia where he worked as a design draughtsman and played drums in his spare time with a very active band called “Unicorn”. Eventually, Alan returned to England, where he found a winter season of high unemployment and a frosty cold that he’d forgotten about. After a couple of dead-end jobs he joined the Royal Navy and quickly worked his way up to become an engine room Chief Petty Officer. His first ship was involved in the brief skirmish of the mid 1970s that they called the “Cod War”. He should have seen the trend, because ten years later he was involved in the Falklands Conflict while serving on the frigate, HMS Argonaut. They were hit by two enormous bombs within minutes of the first day of action. One landed in the boiler room and the other became lodged in an ammunition magazine. Luckily neither of these devices exploded, but unfortunately two of our gunners were killed. One of them was just twenty-one years old that day. Alan’s writing began some years later when, as part of a team producing Technical Handbooks, he began to experiment with fiction and wrote a bag-full of short stories. The experiments continued until 2010 when he set out to use his new-found skills in a second career. Alan now lives with his wife Stella in a quiet part of central Brittany, surrounded by books, forests, fields and their precious dogs, Elsa, Jester and Monty. He still plays drums occasionally too.

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      Book preview

      A Small Book of Poems - Alan Norris

      A Small Book of Poems

      ––––––––

      Copyright © A. F. Norris (2016). All rights reserved.

      For Stella, my lovely wife

      ––––––––

      And for Mum & Dad

      who didn’t read my poems

      Contents

      The Wordmill

      The Gardeners

      The Gallery

      A Corkscrew

      The Phone Call

      If Only Walls could Talk

      Just me?

      Places

      Good day Mistress Mole

      Morning

      What’s New?

      A Dance of Starlings

      The North Wind

      A fear of Spiders

      The Battle of Windy Corner

      The Storm

      Through the Forest

      Autumn Beckons

      The Hunter

      New Year (Carpe diem)

      Driftwood

      The Library

      Hello Master Robin

      This Wind

      April

      Sunday Afternoon

      Snow Dance

      The Wordmill

      It seems quite an ordinary summer house,

      a chalet or a hideaway for a mouse.

      It sits quite sheltered under sycamore trees,

      with a view from its small window to please.

      But this little house is a haven for a writer,

      a place where his thoughts seem so much brighter.

      Inside are vivid stories that have been written,

      and ghostly dreams of more that are yet hidden.

      Stories of fun, love, mystery and war,

      some quite short, some only for the drawer.

      Waiting in every corner and niche

      sit the people with their tales to pitch.

      Folks that I know and some that I don't,

      some of them nice - but some of them not.

      Perhaps inside each, it's just me,

      using another's eyes to see.

      My imagination sometimes finds a poem.

      Often I don't know where it discovers them,

      but line by line it will struggle to appear

      shaping the words and rhyme ‘til it's clear.

      So if you come to visit, please take special care,

      quickly

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