the calm before the storm

Two collared doves rest.  One on the arm, one on the back of the flaking bench.  Like two balls of pale clay they seem to melt a little in the late afternoon sun.  They retract their legs and lower slowly - wrapping wood in soft balled feather.  Their white rimmed eyes blink slower blinks, their beaks mutter soundlessly.  The privilege of watching animals sleep.

A small cyclone of black fur panic.  A cat trapped in our conservatory.  It throws itself to the four corners trying to find escape.  Windows appear the correct shape but don’t work the same in this house.  They are closed.  A double glazed cage surrounds cat and drives it crazy.  Clinging with front paws and climbing claws cat abandons floor and heads higher.  Shimmies sideways along the top of the door - a four legged spider.  Black face gets lightly draped in cobwebs.  Foolish home-owner has now noticed cat and is beckoning and rubbing empty fingers together and repeating clickety sounds of ‘kittykittykitty’.  Foolish person disappears and reappears outside looking in at cat.  Person is where cat wants to be.  Cat investigates, tentatively exits conservatory, through kitchen, through hall where daylight smell gets stronger, into lounge where fool is pointing at open doorway.  Cat pauses then exits as if rebounding on invisible elastic.  A shriek of teeth and feet across the lawn, flying over the low wall without the slightest jump, up the tree, barely shifting the leaves.  And gone.

[It felt improper to photograph the doves as they slept, but I took the above with their permission, moments after they awoke.  The cat declined the offer to pose for me.]

our favourite stranger, revisited

Brimful of love with endless time on his hands he ponders mornings and tilts his head to better view an afternoon. He makes friends with all the little things most of us overlook.  Greets fruit and vegetables like he’s known them all his life and is relieved to see holes in their travelling bags and boxes through which to enjoy the view.  And he mourns every empty shell he finds - already missing the departed resident he never got to meet.

the fall

She brings home a handful of windfalls. Smaller than shop bought apples but far more sincere. Their skins a darker green - almost mossy, almost velvet. If apples were thunderclouds they would be this green. If apples were the eyes of a girl who never forgives ...

She slices them into uneven fans and scatters them on a square white dish. They are a funny colour and I eye her offering with a little suspicion. They look more like pieces of potato. But they taste like the summer that never arrived. Like listening to stories while sat on heaps of your mother’s skirt under the tree we never grew.

I bite into their uneven landings - the flavour of a tumble that follows a long cling. I taste their bruises and learn that sometimes bruises taste good.

the urban jungle

In the news this week - a lion on the loose in Belfast, in a park, near the zoo - where all lions counted and accounted for - all cages closed and locked - yet enough sightings for police to advise to approach with caution.

The thought lion. The one that got away. The one on the tip of your tongue. The eternal complaint, the silent roar the caged ones never make. The dream lion they send out to roam on their behalf. Conjured from sand and dropped lolly sticks. Brought to life by midnight incantations breathed through soft whiskered lips under Irish skies where anything is possible. A new king of Ireland with a leafy crown - sent to battle for sun and savannah and meals to eat on the go. Treading grass carpets under blue sky roofs - the lion that comes and goes while your eyes are closed. Golden shadows, wild wishes, sun ghosts. A myth to keep you on your toes.

Postscript - another false alarm - the big cat turned out to be a big dog, sandy coloured but otherwise harmless.

Cu & Ocimum basilicum

Two observations, from either end of an otherwise unremarkable day -

I am washing up. My fingers absorb the heat until they translate the feeling to one of coldness. I’ll never understand the mystery of nerves. I hear the rain growing more committed against the plastic roof. And then another sound, a different tinkle, more metallic, more tuneful. In another room she is counting coppers to give to the birds.

I hear her chopping basil and trying not to cry. There will be tears lying in wait behind her eyes. Her throat will catch, words are hooked there. Any that escape will waver a little in the air as if released from underwater. And from now when I smell basil, metallic and fresh, I will remember these words, both the said and the unsaid.

feng shui for the paranoid

a single unmade bed. in the corner of a room. always a corner. important to limit the ways they can come at you. a couple of inches out from the wall. you never know what could be crawling there. sheets only in white or mixed-wash grey. nothing too bold to stimulate vivid dreams. only checks or stripes on blankets or duvets. never spots or swirls. nothing to remind you of her.

a broken rainbow

[click to view detail]

it's the end of the world...

…as I know it. It’s three minutes of footsteps laid on wood. It’s metal suspended and sending me out over the sand, over the water, away from the land.

A place where old women slump, deckchairs moulding their spines into perfect curves. Heads eaten by floppy cloth sunhats. Arms at rest on polyester laps. Each a mess of veins, a blue knotted net thrown over their bones to stop them from blowing away.

A place where men line the pier sides. Arms crossed on the top bar of the railings. Never content to sit, they always pace or stand or lean. Silent and staring down to the water below. So blue today. Parallel bars of colour that deepen as they leave the sand behind.

And down below gulls dot the border water. Walking in and out of the fluffy ripples. Pecking and poking. And almost looking like they might grab the edge with their beaks and with a little teamwork fight the tide and drag the blue back up the beach.

all in all

(further impressions of my Friday night friend)

She loved men as if they were walls. Dressed in shades of height and presence, when they dreamed they dreamed of solidity and dimension. They promised welcome containment - offered boundaries to stop her drifting apart and away. She’d tried ones made of glass in the past but they always broke too soon. The best ones cast shade and gave her something to lean against. Always welcome to someone so prone to sunburn. Their mood could turn unstable with little warning but their conversation was something to graze her knuckles or her forehead against if the mood took her. The ones she fell for were usually well built and fairly logical - made up of little repetitive parts that she could count and measure, take apart and put back together at her leisure. Which was something, and better than nothing.

gathering dust

Just for one day I scare the skeletons away and reclaim the cupboards from no-mans-land. I sort through accumulated books and letters and cards. I dust off forgotten histories and polish flat packed promises.

I find his picture folded into a secret six - still tacky at the corners from where it used to cling to my wall. And I’ll never not be surprised at how quickly newspaper grows yellow and brittle with so little age. And on a paperback of the best known road trip I find a tea ring. The caffeine fingerprint of someone happy to deface. And then that battered Salinger - the one she left behind amid the heap of less obvious mess. Lost in her secretary chic and Friday night tangles, I wonder if she ever missed it?

I find French greetings and New York incoming flight numbers. Heavy goodbyes and fading Valentines. I read indistinct sentiment laid in bold black ink in a handwriting that used to be more familiar than my own. I discover teenage poems written ten years too late on airmail paper as if the words themselves carried too little weight. And a long gone song riddled with spelling mistakes and that is the least of its crimes.

just jack

Jack came out of the box. He cursed in fluent Russian and bit me on the nose. He said he is claustrophobic, asthmatic and scared of the dark. All of which I should have known. He said he’ll never forgive me. Swore he’d never let me go. Threatened to tie me up with second-hand parcel string. Stick on an obsolete stamp. And post me to a country that no longer exits.

when

When we’re aged angels. With these words written in the creases of our well-read faces. When our hair has fallen through too many shades of autumn and lies heaped beneath us, a knotted nest for our belated bones. When our gaze has cracked like china teacup sheen and all we see is sepia dreams. Of crosswords and washing machines. Then and only then.

baggage control

A Case of Mistaken Identity

I look in the mirror and don’t like what I see. My eyes chipped, a handful of overplayed marbles. My lips ragged from caging criticism. My brows tangled, a magic forest keeping the princess in her tower. My upwardly mobile nose, ever sniffing for the next suspicion. I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see. I don’t know you, do you know me?

A Case of Lost Property

I forgot to pick up my smile. I’d taken it off when I sat down to rest. I had a lot on my mind, if not on my face. It was starting to rain. I’d lost my shopping list, or it had lost me. Someone found the smile under the bench. A dog walking an old man. He handed it in to the police station. They noted it looked well used and a little worn. I never claimed it.

my favourite things

Repetition comforts me. It always has. As a child I would gain hours of pleasure sorting beads or Lego bricks into piles according to colour and type. Then mixing them up and starting again. Far more fun than anything I might actually make from them. I’m the same now I’m nearly grown up. I think about some things over and over again. There are certain memory lanes that I never tire of visiting. And there are certain themes that reappear regularly in my writing. Because each time, I think I’ve spotted a new angle, a slant to the light that will throw sharper shadows and show me something I missed before.

After the rain I was pleased to see that our garden had made the most of the downpour. Each leaf had sorted the raindrops in its own unique way. Each greened backdrop displayed a different raindrop style. The ravenous arum encouraging every drop to slide toward its centre taking our gaze with it. The vibrant little fir who set up ladders for playful raindrops to tumble down. The nurturing sedum, cupping her hands to gather remote drops into pure glass chunks. And not forgetting the dark velvet garrya letting the shyest raindrops sit quiet in the shade.

- NOTICE -

in parenthesis

When I’m writing I put brackets around words I might omit. Those that might later disappear, or fall from the page. Those that add little to meaning, but take up precious ink in the process. Sometimes they prove themselves worthy and get to stay but mostly they fall by the wayside onto unfertile verges. I think it’s true that less is more.

And these days I wonder if I should bracket my spoken word too? Perhaps I should take a vow of silence. Perhaps I’d make more sense if I communicate in broken sign language and obscure charades. Perhaps people would listen more carefully, or take me more seriously.

artificial thistles

Some days she feels she’s filled with thistles. A prickly mouthful of mispronounced words. Meaning comes last, sensation first.

Some days he’s looks like broken glass and smells like barbed wire. A bloody perimeter, and no-one gets in.

Some days she’s packed full of autumns. Boots tramping brittle leaves. Bonfires flicker and snap and crack.

Some days he’s a walking spelling mistake. Well intended but poorly translated.

Some days I taste like pins but sing a song of threadless needles.

the final countdown

Time flies. Day follows day. Each the same shape. Each the same taste. My days are numbered. So are yours. But I won’t bow down to calendar convention. I choose to rename and reclaim my days. (I’m humming ‘My Way’). I recreate days of meaning and mayhem. Each stand a little taller this way.

one is company

Recent sunshine has lured me to the seafront. Surrounded by my pens and papers I am content to while away a quiet afternoon. Others would not have it so. On my next seaside afternoon I intend to erect the following sign beside me…

outward bound

Books. I don’t just read them, I think about them too. I fantasise and criticise and fall a little in or out of love each time. I wonder what it means that the bedroom is where the bookshelves live whereas the study is wall to wall music. One wakes me up and while the other keeps me warm at night. Sleeping soundly beneath a blanket of words and waking to a concentration of sound.

I think about the books I part with, sent on their way, to travel to another pair of waiting hands, who welcome them, and give them a roof over their papery heads. I wonder what they leave behind once they’re gone. Not so many new words these days, not so many new ideas. But perhaps a few new questions and a clearer idea about the kind of book I don’t want to write.

And with them they take my fingerprints and my dust. Perhaps a hair caught between their pages, a scent of certain soap or sunlight from time spent on table or lawn. Maybe the footprints of a money spider that passed by. Or the aftertaste of a dream from where the book lay by the bed on a darker than average night. A nail mark on a page where I gripped too tight or a tiny tear on one turned too fast. Or a heavy breath sunk into a sentence that I had to stop and read again. And again.

If books could speak, the stories they would tell.