Poems by Sheila Aldous
One day all this
will be a play space
just like woods
with trees and ferns,
and filled with foxes and cubs
and deer running free,
and badgers will dig burrows,
and it will be a place for you to catch
the smile in the sun,
to speak quietly to the bumble bees
as you see them collect the nectar,
to wonder at the snails as they
slowly, so slowly leave silver
trails on leaves,
and it will be a
a hubble bubble place,
a running, jumping about place,
sparkling in the fizz of laughter,
a place where play
is free and memories are dear,
and when there is a rainbow,
a quiet place to remember
how we have all of this.
Following the tragic death of their young grandson Reuben in a car accident, Susan Taylor and Simon Williams put together a selection of poems and pictures on the theme of PLAY.
The proceeds from the sale of this book were put towards the creation of a children’s playground on Vire Island, in the River Dart at Totnes.
One day all this
was first published in
PLAY
poems and pictures selected by
Susan Taylor and Simon Williams
published by Paper Dart Press 2018
February 2026
The last sister was published in 2023 in Dreich Season 7 Issue 6 (no. 78).
The last sister
The last sister piled high the ashtrays with cigarette
stubs, outcasts like people she could never
quite take. They too burned her throat
raw from the smoke and drag.
She poured a gin and kept it flowing, danced
in the living room to an Irish jig. For ninety-five
years she kept family tears in a jar, penance
for the Hunger: a bird ate more.
The washing was laundered and pressed,
the windows sparkled, the curtains taken down
every month for a spring clean,
whatever the time of year.
And if you were troubled she listened:
never gave advice, anointed your tongue
with martinis, lighted up again, laughed
and sang till the music ran out.
December 2025
Counting Blossoms
The apple tree outside
my world is full of blossom,
my window is full of blossom.
It is a good year for blossom.
I count the years
the silent years.
I count the blossoms
and they are the days
since you were taken.
I try to remember
your face, what you
might look like now.
The days fall away
litter the ground:
I see you, I see you.
Counting Blossoms is part of the story told in While I Was Sleeping, Sheila’s third collection. It is one expression of the mother’s feelings about the daughter who was taken from her while the mother was dangerously ill in hospital.
About this poem Maggie Butt said: “… I admired your poem Counting Blossoms in the Enfield Poets anthology. It’s vivid, understated and heartbreaking.”
Counting Blossoms is also published in the Second Anthology from Enfield Poets.
November 2025
Dust Dance
Jerdone Coleman-McGhee, author of The Secrets of Stone Skipping, said ‘When it all goes right a stone seems to dance across the water forever.’
He had said it was physics, a collision process -–
stones with water; a parallel throw takes less
energy, the aim was for the stones to go on forever,
let them fly to the sun, do it right
and they would seem to dance.
He had told her it was his childhood game,
skimming stones: choosing flat stones
that would fit neatly into his palm;
perfecting bounces, counting skips
before they sank without trace.
He is with her in that joining place; where grits
of coral press between thighs, into arms,
flesh of fingers, between bare toes, where wine
is sweet on their lips, its august blush
colouring the dark shadow of his steps.
Today stones sleep undisturbed on the beach,
just stones unaware of her tilting world.
She shades her eyes from the glare
sees the curve of his soul next to hers.
She wants to hold the print of him in flecks of sand.
With regret she leaves shifting pools of light,
the stones he would have picked,
takes what she has of him: lets his ashes blow.
His dust collides on a hiss of wind to dance forever,
bouncing with the sea in the physics of it.
Dust Dance
was shortlisted in
the Bridport Prize 2018
Impression
At first light take this carved path, catch
a whistle of the past from lost strata, tread quietly
in man’s footprints, carved on hillside valleys,
where lifetimes’ cloaks of blood were worn.
Tors weep for man’s absence through slated rock;
noses of clitter, shale, of litter, the only proof of a
lifetimes’ spoil, of lift and drop of picks and shovels,
breaking harsh backs old with bitter rage.
Like toppled statues drowned and chained,
masters of greed walk oblivious to others’ pain,
their feet buried in Devon’s silt of history,
too late now to save their souls.
Impression
was first published in
La Piccioletta Barca October 2025
https://www.picciolettabarca.com/posts/impression
The Light in Rembrandt’s Mother
Eyes too difficult to read have seen it all;
she stares from a knowing dark space.
The folds of glow and shade settle in her lines
and she shines in his illumination.
She could be anybody’s mother:
one who would scold at a misplaced collar,
at yellowed lace in need of a dash and splash
of lye, one who would tenderly admonish the dim,
spend her life with sheets on bleaching grounds,
whose heart would be spread with pride,
who would guide the brush she made
as it swelled with the trembling water of life
so hers would not diminish in a shrinking
multiverse, but would sparkle in furrowed light.
Portrait of an Old Woman (believed to be Rembrandt’s Mother) is on display at Hampton Court Palace, London
The Light in Rembrandt’s Mother
was first published in
ACUMEN issue 94 May 2019