Closed up

 

Here is time,

a jacket hanging on a nail.

And here is sunlight,

dumped on the disused counter.

Here is its shadow

slashed down a wall.

And here silence

in the amnesia of unstirred air.

Here is an eternity

even ghosts have abandoned.

In Thrall

 

A tree, choreographing its own movements,

has curled back on itself, the better to see:

its veins have made a map of the sky

and are draining it region by region.

In thrall to the honey-lush-sweetness of light;

and its dance standing complete on the pedestal of its trunk.

On the Water

 

So small a boat

atop so wide a water,

seeing myself reflected two-dimensional

over so vast a depth,

and afraid.

So vast the depth,

so flimsy the timbers,

so frail the hand drawing a ripple,

so transient the ripple,

so insignificant.

Unfamiliar that face

below the hand

dumbly observing

the passing moment; 

I let my finger's ripple break it.

.

What is a Kingfisher?

 

Kingfisher:

an emission of blue light

resulting from

the discharge of electricity

following the path

of shortest distance

between two trees

along a river

and flaring momentarily

at the tip of the cathodic branch

before termination of the event;

a shy bird.

“Making Peace with Nature is the Defining Task of the 21st century”, UN Secretary-General

It seems no government is going to take the necessary steps for environmental or climate change. And until they do, private individuals will feel taking steps is pointless. Change will only occur when there is an atmosphere of emergency as during the Covid lock-downs, right now it’s life as usual for the most part.

It’s not as though the steps are unknown. The production of plastics must be curtailed immediately;

it seems appalling to me that, for one example, that plastic packaging as is used for putting butter and jam on individual slices of bread in the catering industry is a gross overuse that could easily be better managed. Why don’t we go back to re-usable bottles of milk? Why isn’t there a rationing system on air travel for holidaying purposes, on the consumption of meat, on the amount of packaging used in retail, on the unnecessary use of water? Why is their space travel for the pleasure of a wealthy few?

And how mad is prosecuting war, as Modi told Putin now “is not an era of war”. He knowing better than most as catastrophic conditions become ever more prevalent and temperature records continue to be broken.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently warned that the world is “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe.” Who, in twenty years time, will thank their parents and grandparents for caring so little about them and their planet that they over-looked such clear warnings and such clear evidence?

In nearly all the lists of what individuals can most usefully do, lobbying representatives comes near the top; they need to feel the fire. Talking about it is also considered vital to build the sense of imperative; the emergency is here, but we’re not all feeling the urgency yet.

About our children.

 

Inside the fog of adult worries,

her terrors hulk;

fears beyond comprehension

remain unspoken,

she lacks the words;

her child’s face has the countenance

of a sixty-year-old

with eyes gazing out

from shattered innocence.

She stands as though alone

among the other children

and appears not to know

how to play.

Under the Stairs

 

That blackness, beyond the storage boxes,

tins of polish, hoover and copper kettle

was, in the beginning, a solid-looking barrier;

I had no intention of going near it.

Time passed, I ventured further. On my knees

into the space, discovering shadowy discards,

dismantled appliances, things unknown to me, perhaps

from an earlier time and still that pitch unknown ahead of me.

A cave, a bottomless shaft to Australia, to Hell?

Eventually I breached the darkness and found it stopped

right there, wood; a prosaic end to my fantasies,

a step out of childhood.

Irreversible Nature

 

We walk among ghosts, they are our ether.

Switched to electronics,

we no longer feel their breaths.

Though Earth’s warnings crackle around us,

we stumble onward in science;

tumble backward in empathy to nature.

coming into ourseves

 

slowly

our lives become

our own;

as streams,

eddies and runs

settle

into their channels,

we find

our ways

 

My eyes without the glasses

make trping doffichlt;

memotu becmes sp much more

ompirtant wirh age

A snowfall in Harold’s Cross Park in May

 

I stop to gaze upwards into the falling petals,

filling my eyes with their gentle movement,

ears with the silence that descends with snow

and am for those moments lost to this world;

and wishing to share with another that silence,

notes played by petals that just shimmer down;

someone to share an enchantment; not just the fall

but the precariousness of so beautiful a moment.

In my head

 you and I

a billion times

the starburst

of our lives

brighter

a trillion times

multiplied

the lips fingers

and dangled words

gentler

a thousand times

one trillion

love

Details of Poetry and Flash Fiction Competition

 

The Allingham Festival is an annual festival in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal. This year it takes place from Nov 2nd to Nov 6th. The competition closing dates are coming up pretty soon though. Check out the entry details  at https://www.allinghamfestival.com/fiction-poetry-competitions

Schools would be more useful if they supported students' passions

 

His mind sparks explosions in four cylinders, maybe six,

pistons rise and fall, connecting rods turn the crankshaft,

clutch flywheel disengaged a moment, gears shifted and

torque in the wheels altered. His engine purrs; he mulls

turbo with or without variable compression, and always

finds quadratic equations and poetry hinder performance.

Now

 

1. Juggling splintered sunlight

     head lost in that globe

2. Walking on a sea of fallen leaves

     kicking up happy days

3. Stringing them along a daisy-chain

    seeing them wink as they pass

4. Tuning into starlings

    up and down the short-wave.