Lynda O’Neill was born and brought up in Portsmouth, where many of her poems are based. She started writing when she went to a creative writing class at a local arts centre twenty years ago and began to be published and placed in competitions two years later. Lynda writes mostly about childhood, school, war and package holidays, mixing pathos with humour whenever possible. Writing has given Lynda self expression – and many friends.
Urban Spring
I smile as I pass blowsy pink tulips,
sore thumbs in a street of shrubs and heathers
in soldier battalions. Small trees brave it out
in allotted circles on square sterile plots where
low maintenance means none: waste grounds
of orange paving stones, graded pebbles.
Yobs eff and blind in the sunlit cul-de-sac.
After winter’s tumble dryer rumblings
in a junk-stacked garage, my sheets crack and whip
on the whirligig line: bolshie birds who long to be
free, migrate to a garden with tennis court and pony.
Blossom, marshmallow pink as the
pillow-soft mouthfuls of childhood is
opulent against the bricks of my Legoland house.
Lynda O’Neill
