confessions #1, #2 and #3

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message in a bottle

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to have and to hold

Sometimes I know what I want to say - I have my target clearly in sight, I take aim and fire my words home. But sometimes I like to roam - around the houses and through endless dictionaries. To let whatever comes come.

I like to keep up with the tales of the albatross girl. I see a little of me in her, a little of her in me. Me back when I still had a flicker of faith in something more than this, more than me. A time before my heart turned to gilded jade.

And she prompts me to return to questions long overgrown with the dust of incomprehension. And so I ponder what is truly worth its weight in gilded jade? Only something that you can carry in your hand. That you can find in a smoke filled room with your eyes closed. Or swim across a channel with it tight beneath your tongue. Only if its still there on a rainy morning after an endless night. Something no-one can steal, break or turn to dust. A thing that can carry on after you have turned the page, turned off the lights and gone home. If not all this and more then what?

midnight rambler

[with photographic thanks to dandelion]

No need to mourn. No need to shed idle tears. She is not gone. She is just forgotten. By others and lately by herself. Even time has moved on without her.

by her bed
the glass of water
gathers dust

No longer keen to rise from the nest she builds each night. Within this haven she can roam where she likes.

sheets become sea -
pillows billow
as sky

And with dreams like these who would ask her to wake?

tidal persuasion

Sometimes its like I have so many thoughts - one at least for every stone on this, my favourite, beach. Each unique and coloured to suit and begging to be picked up and cherished, taken home and kept on the mantelpiece for a week or two. But they never stay still, they rattle and sway. The waves sweep in and reorganise, deliver a few new, wash one or two away.

And as I gaze at these words that seem to make their own way across my page, out of the corner of my eye the waves come and go. And I start to feel a little dizzy. As if I am the one swaying - ebbing and flowing, coming and going.

And from up here - standing firm on concrete and painted iron, jutting out over water and stone. From up here the gulls rise from beneath me - leaping from shredded surf to intermittent blue. Sea to sky in one breath. And it feels like I am conducting them - directing a never-ending symphony of feather and beaded eye. Until a wing winks across the sun to remind me. Who am I to pretend to command something so supremely free?

filed notes #3

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