Ditto
I heard you and I wish I’d said ditto.
So often, hopeless leaves fell from your tree.
Your rustling heart paved Autumn, ditto.
I held your outstretched branches far from me.
To the night sky, to the starlight, ditto.
And to the breeze, to the wind, and the rain.
Whispers in silence cry loudest, ditto.
Longing to hear your sweet voice once again.
I root myself, right here, for you, ditto.
I will be here as you waited for me.
Intertwined branches await your ditto.
Let the moonlight never wane from your tree.
If there is someone you love, tell them.
Because love deserves to be heard while it still can be.
Two Plastic Bags | Refugee Week
Written for Worcester Refugee Week as the new Worcestershire Poet Laureate 2026-2027
Two Plastic Bags
by Jay Rose Ana
I live in St Johns, in Worcester, not far from here,
I have a neighbour from another land,
escaped from one form of fear,
whom I sometimes see, and greet, and hear.
To hear and see, to know their courage in the little things.
In the communal kitchen, planning to survive,
cooking little meals for a week on a meagre little budget.
When once, amidst their own,
in lands that thrived, they roared like a lion.
I think courage is less like a lion
and more like the weight of carrying two carrier bags
through a strange new place in the changing rain and heat,
of a strangers’ street, tired feet, nobody to meet,
measuring life in bread not meat.
I think courage is one of those bags
cutting into tired fingers,
whilst the other is full of everything
you could not bear to leave behind.
I think courage is standing at the bus stop
trying to stay small,
to pronounce the name of a place
that will always feel borrowed,
and never quite feel like yours at all.
I think courage is making sure to smile at the cashier,
a cashier smile, practiced, whilst counting coins twice,
nodding along to a joke you only half understand
and yet are, quite often, the butt of.
But my neighbour came HERE,
with two carrier bags and a photograph.
Now she knows which days the bins go out,
and how to go out and separate red from green,
which streets shrink her the least, and
which homemade biscuits to bring when somebody shares
bad news or questionable views.
The newspapers talk about borders.
But most of our lives are built from small courage at smaller crossings.
The first step into a food bank.
The nervous knock on a new front door.
The first time someone remembers your name.
And says it correctly.
And perhaps courage is simply this:
to arrive as a stranger,
and keep planting
pieces of yourself
into unfamiliar soil,
trusting that one day
your two plastic bags will become bags for life
and someone will point at a map in the street
that reads “you are here”
and say your name
whilst calling the place
you rest your feet
your home.
Hands Held Through the Turning Year
Hands Held Through the Turning Year
Let us lift our hearts where the frost has lain,
And whisper to the hours that have passed,
For even the lonely have a lantern flame,
And even cold streets hold shadows cast.
Let us bend toward the small and the dear,
The cup of tea, the soft sound of rain,
The hand that reaches when sensing fear,
The quiet pulse beneath sorrow and pain.
In this new turning of clock and sky,
Let us treasure the hours that quietly lie,
The laugh that trembles, the unshed tear,
The memory that hums when no one is near.
Reach out where the silence has thickened deep,
Touch the weight of a voice in the night,
For each fleeting soul has a vigil to keep,
And a longing that yearns for morning light.
We are leaves in the wind, in the storm, in the sun,
Fragile, yet fierce in our simple becoming,
The year ahead a thread, a song to be sung,
A chance to mend, to hold, to be human, to run.
Pause for the self, for the quiet within,
The breath and the heartbeat, the unseen skin,
Let the mind wander through soft candlelight,
And find in the stillness new reason to fight.
Call a friend, a stranger, a neighbour, a lost child,
For connection is warmth, wild and untamed,
Even a smile through deep dark reconciled
Can spark fire, can light, what once remained.
Let us walk slowly, yet boldly, this year,
With hope in our pockets, our eyes wide and clear,
For every hand held, every word softly said,
Is a balm, is a bridge, is a feathered thread.
- Jay Rose Ana
Mildred’s Window
Mildred’s Window
It is all softer now,
down Mildred Carter’s lane.
Not quiet, no, never quiet,
just worn thin with endless rain.
Her kettle ticks like an old dog’s heart,
steady, stubborn, slow.
And Mildred sits by the window ledge
watching a world she used to know.
She’s lived here since girlhood,
when the ginnels were full of shouts,
and Mrs Finch from number seven
would boss everyone about.
Mildred still mutters when she passes,
old habits don’t quite die,
“Oh there she goes, the queen of the street,
nose stuck halfway to the sky.”
Her own house, once butter-yellow,
is flaking at the eaves.
She keeps meaning to paint it,
but never quite believes
there’s any point in polishing
what time is set to keep.
So she simply dusts the mantel,
and sends her memories back to sleep.
She sips her tea with trembling hands,
milk this time, two drops,
and thinks of days before her heart
got chipped in little chops.
The day her son went running
down to the old canal,
and how the telegram followed
like a shadow at her back.
“I always knew,” she whispers,
“the golden days would end.”
Since that morning she’s carried grief
the way others carry friends.
Number two is sagging now,
its roofline bowed with years.
She tells herself she’ll fix it,
but the truth stands bright and clear,
some things decline no matter
how firm our hands may stay.
Some doors won’t open ever again
however much we pray.
Across the lane, the chapel bells
still ding their thin old tune.
But fewer feet go shuffling in,
and fewer still at noon.
She watches McGonagall shuffle past,
a tin of peas in hand,
“Still feeding ghosts their supper, dear?
Still running the whole damned land?”
They were friends once, long ago,
when the village children roared,
when Mildred stitched her wedding dress
and McGonagall lent a board
to hammer out the hemline,
straight and strong and proud,
before Reg went cold beneath the birch
and the world grew far too loud.
There’s gossip still, in scraps and threads,
though the voices now are thin,
Ethel muttering at number five,
and the Peaks who “moved” but didn’t.
Mildred hears them sometimes,
as she folds her washing neat:
“Do you remember the Smiths?” one says,
“Or how the feud began, way back, in that nearby street?”
At night she sits with slippers on,
counting years like beads.
She pretends she doesn’t notice
how the town no longer breathes.
But when dawn breaks pale and early,
she steps outside the door,
and feels the village sighing
in her bones forevermore.
So let the days lean forward,
and let the years recline.
Mildred’s window keeps it all,
the laughter, loss, and lines
of a place that’s slowly slipping
back into the clay.
Still she holds it, thread by thread,
in her quiet, stubborn way.
And when they speak of this place
long after Mildred passes through,
they’ll say the village lived its last
through Mildred’s curtain view.
- Jay Rose Ana
(a partner piece to McGonagall’s Eyes)
Somehow, Still Here
Somehow, Still Here
I have lived too long between the stars,
half-weightless, half-wanting to land.
The pull of the world is a quiet thing.
A hum beneath my feet, a hand I
almost take, then let go again.
Some days I burn bright, breaking free,
sailing past reason into blue;
some days I ache for the simple gravity
of tea, of laughter, of someone I once knew.
And yet, I think the sky forgives
the wanderers who drift and spin.
It holds us close in its quiet grace,
whispering: falling is how we begin.
So here I am, circling softly,
tethered by light, unbound by fear,
not quite home, but close enough,
and somehow, somehow, still here.
- Jay Rose Ana
In the Small Things, the Light
In the Small Things, the Light
In the hush between heartbeats, hush,
the kettle begins its hymn, a soft and shining shush,
steam rising like morning’s ghosted grace,
and all the dim world brightens, face by face.
Beneath the burdened sky’s grey weight,
the sparrow flares, the leaves translate
the wind’s wide whisper into prayer;
in all the small things, there, there, there.
The bread is breaking, browning, born anew,
and laughter spills its sunlight through
the narrow cracks of weary days,
how marvellous, the simplest ways.
Through storm and sorrow, hold, hold fast,
each moment’s spark, each breath that lasts.
For love is found in what is near,
the cup, the hand, the listening ear.
And when your courage seems to fade,
remember how the dawn is made,
from quiet hands and steadfast hearts,
the day begins, the dark departs.
And though the world may wheel and wail,
be still, be steady, set your sail,
the tide will turn, the light renew,
in the small things, sings the light of you.
- Jay Rose Ana
When Morning Found Me on the Shore
When Morning Found Me on the Shore
And I, by dawns first breath, am born again,
Out of the hollow dark that held my name;
The sea unshackles silver from its chain,
And every wave remembers from where it came.
The gulls cry bright, their echoes braid the air,
Through salt and song my scattered heart takes flight;
The wind unthreads despair with tender care,
And hums: walk on, walk on, into the light.
Now, foot of flame upon the waking sand,
Step soft, though storms still shoulder in the bay;
The world will hold your trembling hand,
And teach your pulse the promise of day.
Rise, my soul, where foam meets endless blue,
Each breath a birth, each heartbeat something true.
The tide returns, forgiving every scar,
And whispers back: remember who you are.
- Jay Rose Ana
Kindled Once More
Kindled Once More
Do not the ashes dream of flame again,
Though rain has sung their silence sorely through?
The buried coal beneath the sodden plain
Still hums of suns it knew.
The heart, long-hollowed, hums that tune of old,
Where embers whisper names through ash and rain;
And in its dark the crimson breath takes hold,
And beats the night from flame.
Rise, little spark, from marrowed dust and grief,
The dawn shall learn your hopeful tongue anew;
The dead leaf turns, branch remembers leaf,
And root remembers dew.
For light begets its echo, flame its kin,
And grief, once named, grows gentle in the throat;
So burns the soul, reborn beneath the skin,
Alive, alight, afloat.
- Jay Rose Ana
She Was the Sky, All Along
She Was the Sky, All Along
Not fleeing now but flying still, through light that burns and bends the will, through hum of heart and engine’s hymn, she climbs where cloud and courage thin.
No map to name, no ground to keep, no past to wake, no self to sleep; for every fear becomes a star, and every doubt a door ajar.
She fights the quiet, flights the storm, she finds new air in altered form; the world below dissolves in blue, the weight of old unthreads to new.
Between the lungs and cosmic sound, she learns her true shape is unbound; a shimmered self of breath and flame, no borders left, no blame, no name.
And still she soars, though skies may ache, through silver dusk, through dawn’s awake; the hollow hums, the heavens long, you were the sky, all along.
No earth remains, no name, no ground; the stars reply, her soul resounds. Through flame of self and vast unknown, she joins the song that is her own.
- Jay Rose Ana
The Tide that Dares the Dark
The Tide that Dares the Dark
I dreamed the wind unlatched the sea,
And whispered, come, come, follow me.
Through salt-kissed dark and silver foam,
I sailed the hush that called me home.
My heart once anchored, heavy, still,
Has borne the hush of winter’s will;
But love’s a tide no frost can chain,
It dreams its way through ache and rain.
So dream, my soul, though dawn be far,
Though memory marks loves’ mortal scar;
For even night, when all seems done,
Still hums the hymn of the rising sun.
And if I wake to love once more,
Let courage knock upon that door;
For dreams are winds the brave unchain,
And I may dare to dream again.
- Jay Rose Ana
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