HEATWAVE

Yellow mustard fields. 

The sun-baked earth

with it's mosaic cracks:

parched, barren, like

my thoughts - overheated.

Brain shorting out. Lazing

with the languor of the idle

below blue sky's great arc,

while white limbs turn red

then brown as last winter's leaf.

This could be idyllic, this choreless 

Sunday: ice lollies in the freezer,

Chardonnay cooling in the fridge -

oh if only I weren't too lethargic

to move - only a lover could rouse my senses!

High above the Swifts reel,

their cries piercing. On unseen thermals,

a Red kite glides then steeply dives -

some poor unsuspecting rodent dies -

and I, heat mellowed, detached, simply observe.

Now increasingly dazed

as sunstroke threatens, cognition

like scrambled egg, 

I drag myself from UV assault

and dive into ice cold pool.

Well, a girl can dream, can't she? 😉

I am taking a couple of weeks' much needed holiday, so will catch up with you all as soon as I possibly can. 😊

Have a great weekend guys  xxx

THE DRYAD'S REPOSE

No path leads to the copse

where the Dryad sleeps.

It has all grown in.

He stands as if carved in stone

in the dappled and shifting shade

beneath His canopy of oak,

attired in ivy's profusion.

Through the dense greenery

odours of moist earth rise.

A snail leaves silver track

over aged roots that penetrate the earth.

I take a forbidden glance:

amid bark gnarled by time

and asymmetrical boughs,

He sleeps on, His form barely discernable

within sacred wood and green leaf.

The small brown nostrils inhale

as He sighs in His slumber,

aware of my presence.

I am the hope he dreams of.

His anguish has drawn me here

to defend His kind with my life.

I chain myself to the living trunk

and defy the screeching saw...

THE COURAGE OF THE PAIN-WRACKED

The courage of the pain-wracked, in spite of the onslaught!

The smile forced for others. A convincing mask.

There is agony behind it, and the dread it will never end,

and the frustration of helplessness, the hopelessness of it.

The anxiety cuts deep, silently crying out for help -

loaded, as it is, with hidden self-pity.

Self-pity? Imbecile! Who cares how much you hurt?!

A red hot sword journeying through the nerves:

Hell's Imp, playing in brain with nervous system, 

prodding with pronged fork, a skilled torturer

inflicting agony upon the cursed Soul

with a glee that knows no bounds, 

supremely skilled in his favourite sport.

The Imp is resolute, there is no anaesthetic.

He has been ignored too long, now his presence is felt.

So the suffering radiates, like a fearful nuclear fallout,

and there is only the primitive tongue to express

such depth of pain. But it hasn't the words,

it is inadequate. Should it be cut out?

And the futile sobbing. So ineffective.

Sustenance, too, is rendered impossible - is stored 

in memory's archive with fellow outdated files,

while watching others tuck in. Starvation beckons.

It has become an obsession, food.

A substance more precious than diamonds.

But how about the eyes of the afflicted, the eyes?

Constantly dulled by the hidden curse

and often moist with tears. And the mirror -

that face in there is the face of a dead woman,

so drawn and pale with hollow cheeks,

a ghostly Seer, whose prophecies

bring such apprehension. A merciless judge

passing sentence upon the innocent:

a life sentence of neverending pain.

Courageous? No. I am scared...so scared.

My humblest apologies, dear friends, for taking so long to visit you all. I am currently awaiting a brain scan. In the meantime, I will visit you all as often as I possibly can. Thank you so, so much for all of your kind support😊

Been missing you all so much xxx

EULOGY

 For Michael Byrne...

I imagined I'd tracked you down

to one of those hellish concentration camps

in Hitler's nineteen-forties Germany. There,

in Nazi uniform, you stood observing

the mass genocide, your expression almost ecstatic.

Ice blue eyes, clear as the spring sky,

would perhaps meet mine. What then?

Would my blonde hair and pale complexion

save me from the inconceivable horror

inflicted upon my non Aryan contemporaries?

I'd assumed you'd be as brutal and inhumane

in real life too and therefore intensely disliked you.

So convincing you were up there on the screen

that I'd accepted as authentic a persona

well rehearsed - but then something else

in your eyes sent shivers of an altogether

different kind down my spine.

I'd inadvertently caught you unawares

before you'd had time to slip

into your chameleonic public image.

And the discovery was intoxicating:

a clean slate with your face on -

a smile so unexpectedly warm

that it took my breath away,

initiating an inexplicable infatuation.

Tell me, does it really matter

that I'm unknown to you, because

isn't absence claimed to be the heart's inspiration?

Observing your every role

has been the perfect antidote

to the isolation of life in lockdown, 

vastly expanding my restricted world.

In the sleepless hours, I think of you

and search the darkness

for your face...😉

THE HOWLING

Trekking over Dartmoor

through air heavy, moisture laden;

passing stone farms, long abandoned, ruinous;

bleak hills, heather clad and darkening

within gathering mist that blurs

the boundary between reality and fiction;

our faces strangely luminous, like

those of ghosts - but somehow not.

Such transfiguring disturbs and hastens

the duo of adventurers onward

toward the great mystery, oft sought,

elusive and otherworldly - yet

simultaneously perceived

on hill top, on river bank;

recognisable only by the howling

other than that of dog or fox:

a blood-curdling, long drawn out cry

that spikes terror through the Soul.

Ominous panting nearby.

We break into a run. Padding footfalls follow.

Mist so dense now. Stumbling into rock,

now prickly gorse that plucks

at our clothing. Blood red eyes within

gigantic black dog shape

looms up out of the gloom.

Desperately trying to out run it,

pulses racing, fear all-consuming.

Hope fading, as it's relentless pursuit

drives us onto narrow path

between treacherous bog pools.

Gutteral howl closer now and we run

even faster, lungs almost bursting.

The path turning dark, liquifying

into black ink, flowing from Sir Arthur's pen

as it skims across the page,

defining our fate...

Mentally beseeching him to deliver us

from the frightful curse 

of his dark imagination.

Only he can lift it.

Baskerville Hall appears before us.

But nearing means distancing

from all we've sought so long.

Pages flutter in sudden breeze. 

The book closes.

Sunlight pierces the gloom.

STUDENT'S LAMENT

From my rented postage stamp with no garden

to call my own except my window box,

I observe the dreary perspective

of colossal concrete tenement -

grey roof tiles, scuffed dun-coloured doors -

and perceive my first symbol of independence

as if between mirrors, forming an extensive

column of shabby replicas

anonymously occupied.

                                              But professors 

own their stately bricks and mortar, 

and the land upon which it stands. 

Such substance makes

my visual observation a peasant's eyeful

that inferiority defines as cruelly taunting - a

pointless squandering of youthful years -

and all for what? 

A futile attempt to ape possessor

                                              of ancestral silver spoon.

                      

FERNS

What is the significance

of aromatic ferns?

That boy and girl have discovered a secret paradise:

rolling around in the earthy scent,

their clothes staining green

from the moist spiky fronds,

seizing stolen moments,

pretending to be grown-ups. My

envious stare meets them head-on,

awakening passions

of a deeply mourned youth.

Emotional backlash. Bees

lead me back to the open road.

Hunger of the Soul

has to be assuaged. Clear sky -

boundless, infinite - isolation's antidote.

Inhaling it's deep blue.

Freed, calmed, lifted - by meditation

on such unbroken expanse. So open.

Probing possibilities, like 

the famous mind of Einstein:

aware of the planet's spinning,

it's suspension in outer space,

mind clinging 

to invisible shooting stars

and ascending like a rocket - the state 

of metamorphosis, Nature's miracle,

that lump-in-the-throat moment

that renders the Soul wholly open.

I am suddenly

catapulted through time:

a retro journey back

to before the Dolorous Stroke -

to the meaning of Fate itself.

Devoid of shade,

sun beating down mercilessly,

as the ether magnifies it's rays.

Here is my Akashic Record,

the Prophet's transformative madness.

Observing myself blunder through youth

and into the mouth of the abyss.

Witnessing a sacrificial burning

and the Phoenix arising from the ash - not I,

yet somehow the same being.

Sudden denial:

the lashing out nothing more

than immature retaliation

for perceived rejections and betrayals

inflicted upon me by other damaged Souls.

What happens to the heart has consequences.

Retracing my steps. The boy and girl

have gone, but the aroma of damp ferns

still permeates the air. Pure rapture

enters my pores, infusing my being

with a startling revelation...

reabsorption of a juvenile self

accelerates emotional evolution.

I am suddenly light, weightless as a feather.

Nothing can harm me now, not even death.

The ferns rustle in a gentle breeze...