Real Toads: photos by Scriptor Senex

The blogger known as Scriptor Senex is an excellent Liverpool photographer named John Edwards. He has offered some of his photos for the online writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads to use as inspiration for a poem on Kerry's Sunday Mini-Challenge.

I haven't spent much time in Liverpool, but I liked what I did see, and John's photo called Liverpool Sky spoke to me this weekend.

Liverpool Sky

© John Edwards

LIVERPOOL SKY

by Kay L. Davies, August, 2012

  

Liverpool sky

I do wonder why

this glorious hue

happens so few

times in one human life...

*

Liverpool skies

have seen eight hundred years

of human lifetimes...

from the time of King John

through generations

of Liverpudlians.

*  

Yes, fans, Liverpool was there

before the Beatles were,

and is still there today.

*  

From the Atlantic

and the Irish Sea,

up the Mersey

and out again,

shipping has gone on

for hundreds of years.

No one speaks now

of Liverpool’s part

in the slave trade

but isn’t it odd

that it has Britain’s

largest African population?

If my ancestors

had been slaves,

I’d avoid the place

like the plague.

*

Liverpool sky,

the things it has seen,

we might not want

to dream of.

But Beatlemaniacs

will dream of John and George,

and hope to see Paul or Ringo.