Tag Archives: England

blog, Poetry

“Birds of a Feather” Poem by Sarah Das Gupta

Leave a comment 
The water dark and deep, 
strands of pond weed trail
the edge, like emerald hair.
Ducks dive down, searching-
worms, insects, seeds, snails.                    .
Feathered wedges emerge
above the surface, orange bills
and feet submerged.
Elegant, paddling effortlessly,
masters of their watery world.
In the farmyard, waddling, awkward
a distinctly middle-aged gait.

Aristocrats of the farm,
geese, dignified, regal.
No whiff of feminism here.
The gander, martial, proud,
leads his flock from the front.
It is no surprise that a gaggle
of geese saved the Roman citadel
from Barbarian attack.
The guards and watchdogs
of the farm, they noisily
announce the presence of
marauding strangers.
Eggs, large and ostrich-like,
the favourite of pastry cooks!

Chicken, the foolish, fluttering fools,
which rush from one pile of corn
to another, missing out on the feast.
The hens, flounce and dither
behind the dandy of a cockerel.
Vanity ‘chickenfied’, splendid
in a bright panoply of colours,
he leads his dowdy harem.
With no civic conscience, 
he crows at first light,
proudly, at full throttle,
an intrusive alarm clock of a bird!

Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK who has also lived and worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in twenty countries from Australia to Kazakhstan. It has appeared in over 200 literary magazines and anthologies including ‘The New English Review’, ‘ Moss Piglet’, ‘Songs of Eretz’, ‘Quail Bell’, ‘Waywords’, ‘Cosmic Daffodil’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Hooghly Review’, ‘Meat for Tea’, ‘Rural Fiction’ and many others. This year she has been nominated for Best of the Net’ and a Dwarf Star’.

If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. 

Please share this post to give it maximum distribution. Exposure is our contributors’ only compensation. Don’t forget to back link to this.

Image generated by AI

blog, Poetry

“The Shepherd’s Calendar” Poem by Sarah Das Gupta

Leave a comment 
On the small hill farms
it’s lambing time again.
Inside the barn it is
breathily warm.
The old smell of dung,
straw and birth returns,
hovering over the pens.
Outside the world is held
in the tight fists of ice and snow,
the lambing pens now islands
of steamy breath and anxious
motherly calls.
These ewes have stood here
for centuries past.
The same who stood on the Judean Hills,
on Lakeland Fells, 
in the vast Australian outback,
an ancient cycle of birth and death. 
A stillborn lamb lies discarded,
its twin totters unsteadily towards
the ewe and life.
Orphaned lambs feed hesitantly
from strange figures holding bottles.

It’s early Spring.
The flock grazes peacefully,
lost lambs bleat pitifully,
until they find the ewe.
The sheep recognise 
their public pastoral duty.
Artistically dotted over
rolling countryside,
they pose for photographs
which briefly reassure the world
that while sheep safely graze,
they can forget for a moment,
electric cars, greenhouse gas
and such imponderables.

The whirr of shearing blades
heralds a new phase.
Unshorn sheep protest noisily                                            
at the fate of their bald neighbours
who splashing through the sheep dip,
skip to freedom.
The shearers expertly grasp each animal.
Held sitting on their haunches, the sheep
are comic, cartoon figures, faintly
stupid looks fixed on their faces,
truly sheepish.
Fleeces, thick and greasy, roll away
like winter suits.

The high hills are deep in snow.
It drifts silently into a lunar landscape.
Sheep are driven down to winter
in the barn.
At first light, shepherds search for
lost sheep in the snowy uplands.
Dogs sniff out the buried animals.
Sheep, safe in the barn, it’s Christmas Eve.
Do they hear the voices singing again
on far off hills?

Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK who has also lived and worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in twenty countries from Australia to Kazakhstan. It has appeared in over 200 literary magazines and anthologies including ‘The New English Review’, ‘ Moss Piglet’, ‘Songs of Eretz’, ‘Quail Bell’, ‘Waywords’, ‘Cosmic Daffodil’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Hooghly Review’, ‘Meat for Tea’, ‘Rural Fiction’ and many others. This year she has been nominated for Best of the Net’ and a Dwarf Star’.

If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. 

Please share this post to give it maximum distribution.

Image generated by AI

blog, Poetry

“Baby Boomers Returning Home” Poem by Sarah Das Gupta

Leave a comment 
Piles of soft tissues, hidden layers of consciousness,
                                       shifting sands on a distant shore.
That picture of the sea, the path of reflected moonlight,
the boat on the horizon that never arrives.
An antique sword on the grey wall; forgotten wars,
unremembered dead, no echoing bugle call.
Hearths, grates, long cold – once crimson embers, dead,
                                        in half-forgotten places.
On dusty shelves, gilded volumes, lie unloved, unread,
Meredith, Disraeli, Carlyle, Macaulay, Chatterton, Gibbon,
confined to donnish chat in seminars or Senior Common Rooms.   
The kitchen range, smell of new bread, of Christmas cake
                                       stirred weeks before.
The kiss of warmth after wintry walks through snowy fields
                                        and icy lanes.
A back gate unlocked, for next door to borrow eggs, 
                                      a pinch of salt, a packet of tea.
Vague shapes of ornaments, brash trash, gifts from Brighton,
                                       Hastings and Winchelsea.
Fading in the shifting sands of time, those many dogs 
chasing rabbits through golden autumn woods.
Asleep, dreaming, perhaps still following the old habits
                                       across the fields of memory.
Music echoes, Mozart, Mahler, Chubby Checker, Conrad Twitty
                                        smoke, log fires, the smell of rain.


Gas bills, health insurance, disabled badges, pensions, funerals
New York, London, Sydney, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Vancouver
Tissues tear, sand shifts, 
the tide retreats again -

Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK who has also lived and worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in twenty countries from Australia to Kazakhstan. It has appeared in over 200 literary magazines and anthologies including ‘The New English Review’, ‘ Moss Piglet’, ‘Songs of Eretz’, ‘Quail Bell’, ‘Waywords’, ‘Cosmic Daffodil’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Hooghly Review’, ‘Meat for Tea’, ‘Rural Fiction’ and many others. This year she has been nominated for Best of the Net’ and a Dwarf Star’.

Please share this to give it maximum distribution. 

If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines.

blog, Poetry

“Haymaking” Poem by Sarah Das Gupta

Leave a comment 
In the meadows, grass grows tall.
Poppies, vetch and clover
caught in the summer light
paint a canvas worthy of
Monet, Cezanne, van Gogh.
Flies and gnats drifting in clouds,
rise and sink as the breeze
strengthens, then dies away.

The mower relentlessly scythes
through the swaying grass,
with all its flowery jewels.
A lark’s nest falls victim 
to the executioner’s blade.
Field mice flee before
the flashing metal fangs.
Butterflies hover, mesmerised
by the magnetic power
of certain death.
That impossibly blue sky
throws its airy net
over distant valleys 
and far hills.
Haymakers’ weather
at last!  

In the heat of midsummer,
the swathes are slowly drying.
The hay bob’s been busy
tossing and turning 
the sleepy clumps.
Soon dry grass is neatly raked
in military ranks, under 
the machine’s strident orders.
In the shade of a wood,
the tractor driver snatches
a hasty snack, a sneaky beer.
Looks at a job well done.

All week the weather holds,
The morning mist drifts away.
An officious red baler disturbs
the lark’s song high above
in the endless blue.
Neat bales of new hay
form into rigid lines.
Brash binder twine
strangles the dying poppies.

As evening falls,
swallows fly low, over 
the twilight fields.
Breasting the waves of darkness,
they fish the shoals of insects.
The bales of hay stand sentinels
over a deepening silence.


Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK who has also lived and worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in twenty countries from Australia to Kazakhstan. It has appeared in over 200 literary magazines and anthologies including ‘The New English Review’, ‘ Moss Piglet’, ‘Songs of Eretz’, ‘Quail Bell’, ‘Waywords’, ‘Cosmic Daffodil’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Hooghly Review’, ‘Meat for Tea’, ‘Rural Fiction’ and many others. This year she has been nominated for Best of the Net’ and a Dwarf Star’.

If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. 

Please share this poem with as many as possible.

Image generated by AI

blog, Updates

Update: More Stories Coming

Leave a comment

More wonderful stories are going up all the time. Right now, four have been scheduled starting January 21st.

On January 21, “Rowan” a supernatural fantasy by Naomi Elster will appear. Naomi Elster’s writing has been published and performed almost 30 times, including in Imprint, Crannóg, and Meniscus, and at the Smock Alley Theatre. She has campaigned for reproductive justice and pay equality. She has a PhD in cancer and leads the research department of a medical charity. Originally from Laois, in the Irish midlands, she now lives in London. 

On January 22, the story will be “Water Pump” Fiction by Yuan Changming. Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. Credits include 16 chapbooks, 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 2 for fiction besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2109 other publications across 51 countries. Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022, with his debut (hybrid) novel Detaching just released by Alien Buddha Press.

January 23 will feature “Flamenco” a fantasy love story by Mehreen Ahmed, Mehreen Ahmed is Bangladeshi-born Australian novelist. She has published ten books to date and works in Litro, BlazeVox, Chiron Review, Centaur Literature. While her novels have been acclaimed by Midwest Book Review, Drunken Druid Editor’s Choice, shorts have won contests, Pushcart, James Tait, and five botN nominations.

On January 24, you will find “The Spike Buck” a flash memoir by Maxwell Adamowski, Maxwell Adamowski is a Canadian survivalist and woodsman who lived alone for a year in the wilderness performing a series of rite of passage rituals. “The Spike Buck” is one of the first stories in his book, CarQuest.

Check back frequently to find out what’s happening, or, better yet, subscribe!

If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines.