• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
The Friday Poem

The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

  • The Frip
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Contributors
  • FAQ
  • Archive
    • Search the archive
    • Friday Poems
    • Reviews
    • Features
  • Subscribe
  • Submit a poem

Primary Colours – Twickenham Early Morning

Poets have always responded to war by writing poetry — it’s what we do. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24th February this year people started sending The Friday Poem their poems about the war — poems about resistance, poems of protest, and poems about specific individuals affected by the fighting. These are stories of courage, grief and hope. We decided to publish some every week as Friday Poems for Ukraine. Here’s ‘Primary Colours – Twickenham Early Morning’ by Simon Rees-Roberts. Slava Ukraini!

Primary Colours – Twickenham Early Morning

The tree tops fill with crows … after the early warmth
as the yellow sun climbs a cobalt sky.

The mist thins then vanishes and all is pin-sharp. 
Two Canada geese quell the wail of an ambulance 

as they swerve across the river where thought drifts 
then land where the breeze puckers the surface to ruched satin

and ripples the blue and yellow flag on the boathouse. 
There is no red in this landscape. It has to be imagined.

Simon Rees-Roberts is an artist and writer living in Teddington. He has had work published in Magma, Poetry London and Stanzas, and in the anthologies Sounds of the Front Bell (Stonewood Press, 2014) and The Like of It (Eland, 2005). He is currently spending a lot of time on two wheels.

Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Email

Read this next

Pathé News Visits the Ace of Spades

Pathé News Visits the Ace of Spades

by Matthew Paul — our Friday Poem on 26/11/21

Site Footer

MENU

  • About us
  • FAQ
  • Submit a poem
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Mentions Légales
  • THE FRIP

    The Frip is The Friday Poem’s reviews and features magazine. We run book reviews, profiles, interviews, essays, lyric essays and other features of interest to poets and readers of poetry. Read the Frip here.

    NEWSLETTER

    Why not sign up for our weekly newsletter and never miss a Friday Poem again? Pop your email address in the box and click the button.

    Copyright © 2023 · The Friday Poem · All Rights Reserved · follow the Friday Poem on Twitter · follow the Friday Poem on Facebook