Rain and Imagination

The day darkens. Charcoal clouds hustle the blue across the sky, corral it into a far corner of the universe. The first drops fall, heavy as berries. In minutes the world is a blur. The sharp edges of landscape now diffuse; what was clear is now obscure. Imagination is released.

Monet. Cliffs of  Pourville, Rain

And then there is the rain in which thoughts come clear and perfectly defined.  Each having its own orbit; delicacy its beauty, still sharp as a bullet hole.

Gustave Caillebotte. The Yerres, Effect of Rain

Seeing

Inside yourself. In the space of yourself. Watching your feelings flying, litter in a gale, down the main strip. Seeing it all with that 'accident moment' acuity. A curious distance between you and your emotions, as close to being two as is possible. 

Seeing

discarded matches on the pub floor,

reflections in gutters,

cobwebs in the corners of ceilings,

petals shed and shriveling,

railings’ wrought iron curlicues,

broken windows, tattered curtains,

carrier bags snagged on branches,

the moon running along beside me,

heron one-legged by the pond,

a glove on the footpath;

each fleck, speck, flaw in your argument;

every minute branded, second burned

as thoroughly as a pipe smoker’s match.

A Nightmare

As a  child I had the nightmare of being lost in a forest, wandering blindly among alien-looking plant-life and slithering skulking animals. That universe is huge, and cluttered with unthinkable possibilities, almost none of them pleasant.

Where Are You.

Where are you.

Where are you child.

Among the spring green leaves

Naked as a lizard;

I hear your airy lilt,

Why are you humming.

From what remote well

Do these grotesque sounds come;

Dispatched, bleak cirrus

In the high skies of a child's voice,

Freezing all the forest

Into fairy-tale stillness.

Where are you,

Where are you child.

In what empty paradise;

Where's the tower that emits your eccentric song;

Against the frozen wings of which birds of paradise

Do you rub.