Walking by the shore instead

Someone on the radio is banging on,
reportage of truths and alternative truths,
falsehood and fantasy

When I was a kid it was the six o’clock news
We’d sit and watch smart men in suits
tell us how BBC it was

Now I am straight-jacketed by sharp opinion
These quarrels fly at me from crossbows
aimed right at my head

I want to duck and weave, get out of range
before the bowman reaches again into
his quiver of news

Then the man on the radio says how a walk
on the shores of the Bosphorus always
seems to re-energise him

I worry that, if I walk away now, the fortunes
of the world will be in the hands of archers,
firing arrows and bolts

not from out the blue, but with arrow heads
dipped in outrageous, deadlier poison
no shoreline walk can cleanse

Pat Edwards is a writer, teacher and performer living in Mid Wales. She has been published on line, such as in Picaroon, The Rat’s Ass, Amaryllis and Ink Pantry, and in some anthologies including Wenlock Poetry Festival Anthology 2016. She runs Verbatim open mic nights in Welshpool and Montgomery and is curating this year’s Welshpool Poetry Festival.