I retire to bed, close my eyes,
am suffused by white light.
I realise I have read
of this phenomenon;
people see the light
on their way to the other side
and I find I have no fear.
But I awake this morning,
so clearly
this is not my time
and I must go on.
Whether I am grateful or not
it is difficult to decide.
I walk into the supermarket,
pick up the groceries I want,
take them to a machine,
pay my money into the machine,
pack my shopping into bags and leave.
I walk into the library,
put my returned books into a machine,
pick up the books I want to borrow,
put them into a machine,
put my library card into the machine,
pick up my books and leave.
There is a trend it seems
towards reducing person to person
contact to a minimum.
So I am grateful this morning
when I go visit my hairdresser.
I sit back,
close my eyes,
free my mind,
reach out my hand
to touch whatever’s there.
Sometimes soft sand upon a beach,
sometimes rippling water of the sea,
sometimes grass growing on a cliff top,
sometimes naked flesh of inner thigh
above a stocking top.
But every now and then
I reach
and nothing’s there.
I search and search.
I need to find
and touch again
familiar things I love –
the mug from which I drink my tea,
a book with well-read pages,
my favourite teddy bear,
your hand.
“Every ocean” he said
“has a different rhythm”
and I see no reason
to disbelieve him.
Experience tells me this is so.
But you have to listen,
really listen,
listen hard
and listen long,
for while tide and time and season
may alter cadence
the basic beat
remains the same.
So I will aim
to spend my days,
sitting beside the ocean,
sitting silent,
sitting long.
Allow my body
to attune
to the rhythm which is there,
allow that rhythm
to soothe my mind,
to calm my soul.
Browsing through a second-hand bookshop
I come across a novel
by one of my favourite authors,
written back in the 1960s
when he was beginning his career.
It describes a world
much different from today,
yet very familiar to me
and I wonder what happened
to the intervening fifty years.
Fifty years! Bloody hell!
How did that happen?
My father did not even live that long.
I must have been present
through all that time.
So much has happened.
I can pick out highlights
but so much is haze.
The world has changed around me
and whilst I have adapted
to the new, it seems
I never really noticed
at the time.
Maybe I should pay more attention
or, then again,
maybe not.
She sat down opposite me
at a table in the coffee shop.
We chatted, as you do.
She asked what I did,
I said I was a poet.
She asked my name,
keyed something into her iPhone,
brought up a picture,
turned the phone towards me
and said “That is you”.
Well I knew that!!!
But perhaps she thought I was more real
as an image on her iPhone
than sitting opposite her in the flesh.
“She will want a selfie next” I thought
to prove that both of us exist!!
🙂
I watch the man,
running down the street
outside my window,
and wonder whether
he is running to, or running from.
It echoes with my nightmares
when I am either
running after
or running from
but never running to.
I guess running to
would be a dream
and not a nightmare,
but I never
have that dream.
As I walked
through the door
of my local supermarket
The man in front of me
gently caressed
his partner’s bum.
She said
“I don’t think
its warm enough
to have a barbeque.”
Pondering on how
the world looks
from a dog’s point of view,
I lay down on the path,
cupped my chin in my hands,
and looked through
the bars of the gate.
The dog stood beside me,
looked at me quizzically.
We both began to bark.
I feel uncomfortable
in this place,
as I do often
in the presence
of beauty;
a feeling
I do not belong.
It is a witch
who tells me that.
She lives inside,
mutters to me,
feeds my insecurities.
A beautiful fairy
lives there too.
It is her
I must talk to now.
She will reassure me,
remind me that I
have a particular beauty too.
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