Whispers of the wind,
Carry across chasms,
Leaving lines etched on folds of sand,
Marking out the relief of dunes,
Steps, carved out in the shape of sand-snakes,
Traversing vast deserts;
Bearing imprints of the echo,
Left by the cries of the earth,
Leaving their mark,
Like reverberations of experience,
Casting lines of wisdom to adorn your face,
Gradually increasing their relief,
As you age.
I feel myself inexplicably reaching for the stars,
The vast eternity that peppers the night sky,
Brightest petals of the celestial wilderness that lies beyond,
Everything has its season,
Theirs is measured in millennia;
Pick apart the petals,
Measure it to your soul – the very essence of your being,
Feel it resonate like a calling,
Draw solace to face the reality:
You are but a bee on a flower of blue,
In a vast garden stretching beyond imagining;
I cannot help but agree with the proposition, therefore:
We were never meant to dwell on this flower alone;
How about you?
Dream sequences,
And sequential dreams;
Floating at the periphery,
In a state of near inebriated ecstasy,
It’s almost like the penultimate scenes from interstellar,
Where ghosts walk out of the dream,
Perhaps consciousness is the journey,
And the body is temporary,
The bond between the two being:
The real estate we return to when we dream.
At a standstill,
Empty of thought,
A blank slate,
Like the moment before:
An artist creates,
Planer beholds,
A soldier engages,
Seeing in your mind’s eye what will be,
Before, engaging the body into action;
With competence,
Confidence and deftness,
Practised efficiency,
Innovation;
Channelling all your experiences,
What makes you unique in the cacophony,
Into one moment,
Faithful to the task at hand,
In pursuit of perfection,
For you (like I) owe it to justify your existence,
Even if it’s the one thing you truly believe in, or not.
First day,
I felt the warm sun on my face,
Didn’t have to wear a overcoat,
Heard more ‘g’d mornings’ than I had been accustomed to,
Saw that the flower buds were peaking, readying to flower ‘n’ bloom,
Heard the birdsong of the morning more vividly than ever,
Noticed that I could watch the female form walk in various stages of undress, all day long;
Had to remind myself to act my age and not stare, more than a handful of times;
Spring does literally put a spring in everyone’s step;
Absence, obviously, makes the heart grown fonder;
And now that the sun has returned home from its winter wars in the south (as it usually does this time of the year),
We have more than the solitary letters home that kept our spirits up through the long winter months;
The northern hemisphere is about to turn en mass into a cult of sun worshippers,
For the next five months at least, before this faithful soldier goes off to war yet again,
When we’ll have only it’s irregular letters to keep us company over the cold winter months once more;
So, enjoy the view while you can,
Get out there:
Play, be merry, and catch-up on all the to-dos;
For everything is temporary,
And in these unpredictably inclement times (termed variously, as el nino, climate change, et al),
You never know if and when the sun may be recalled to the war front early.
Do you remember the sun?
Walking on a sandy beach with warmth bearing down,
A glazed sea, glistening and reflecting light;
As the sea shimmers, with each wave gently rolling in and out;
Warm sands crunching between your toes,
As you and I walk along the shore hand-in-hand;
It’s a marmalade day dream;
And, the only thing bitter is:
It’s not here, and now!
Tendrils of cold,
Twisting, spiralling, around and over you,
In the wintery twilight;
Probing for weakness,
Delivering sharp chills at each fleeting touch;
Raising goose bumps to bursting,
And slowly attacking the feet with the onset of frostbite!
Mistress Winter,
You are a cruel and determined foe;
Insatiable in your pursuit of the living for their warmth,
With an age old repertoire of traps, tricks and feints at her disposal,
And, an abundance of patience-
Like a huntress, harrying her prey,
Until it’s found cornered and covering;
Before, finally, setting in for the kill:
In ruthless single-mindedness given a chance!
So, don’t fall victim to this Huntress Winter’s feints,
Wrap up warm and offer her only a passing shiver,
When what she longs for is something far more grievous,
To add to the growing collection of trophies from this season’s tally of kills.
Predators among us roam freely,
In search of ‘prey’:
Making lambs at mercy of wolves and hyenas of us all;
Suppressed instincts that never left us;
Corrosive tides and difficult lives,
Washing away disguises borne of lies;
Sated by voyeurism;
A precursor to a revival of barbarism;
Or, their modern equivalents:
A meditation of the withdrawn for some,
Known as ”Hikikomori’ in the East, and “Recluse” in the West;
Outlet for boredom and over-complications,
Morbid fascination turned perversion for others,
When, abnormal becomes the new normal,
And, drawn-out silences are shattered by blood-curdling shrill cries;
A chorus too frequent to be isolated,
Ineffectiveness prevails,
And, what justice there is:
Is delivered at the end of the barrel of a vigilante’s gun.
Home-spun wool, looped through fish bone, can’t sow your clothes now ;
A meal of suet and gristle stew, with hard bread, no longer makes your mouth water;
Chasing lambs, knocking cattle on their sides, tumbling down grassy hills ‘n’ vernes in fits of giggles;
Simple games of your youth and humble beginnings forgotten on the incline,
Uncomfortable truths give way to more comfortable prose, when the summit is in sight;
Never realising that the summit is a harsh, inhospitable and baron place;
With so many trampling over each other for a foothold, it’s home to none for too long;
And, courtesy and humility are not character flaws to be ashamed of, or embarrassed by;
For, a pioneer with the much-envied ‘ace gene’ once said of their corollary- humbleness:
‘There is no act too small, for a truly big man’.