Immersed in a poem, I was a lovelorn mermaid enchanted by vampire squid in fluorescent coral glades. Raised from the deep by the ring of the telephone, I looked out at the garden, dappled green and overgrown. I spotted it suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, the unexpected flash of an electric blue […]
Tag: Weekly Scribblings
When all else fails…
there is the shade of the willow tree the stone gnome sleeping peacefully the deer that chew its healing leaves the green light shifting in a gentle breeze the piebald magpie with its chatter about things that do not really matter the cat that climbs its crooked branches the scraps of sun in rays and […]
Tingle
Ice-cold loneliness numbed her body and soul, shielded her heart, with starry snowflakes. With her eyes the colour of slush after snow, embrangled in winter’s undertow, her personal winter drifted into spring, hoar frost still sparkled on everything like a silver Midas touch, until she found a crow, ebony black, stiff on the ground. She […]
One Step at a Time
The first weeks of interior life were hard: only one real person with whom to share my troubling thoughts, my hope, my fear. I spent weekdays with me, myself and I, those dubious sisters of doom and gloom who haunted my pandemic room. The silence outside was as deafening as my twisted sisters’ chattering, and […]
Raven Rain
Ravens sweep the sky, wheeling and tumbling stringless black kites, until the sky weeps with impudent little tikes, whose sooty wings stir up a storm like dust, each curious eye a piercing stud of black diamante, until the clouds break. By afternoon, the earth is damp and green and lush, and somewhere a blackbird in […]
Rossetti’s Harp Player
The harp is made to play laments, and her fingers pluck its strings mournfully in mellifluous torment. Notes spill like dawn birdsong from the instrument she clings, as if it were the first song the harp had learnt to sing. Her velvet gown is black as night, the harp of ebony made, but light shimmers […]
Confession
Around the village green, May blossom turns hedges into rich swags of cream, cow parsley frothing at the edges. As I walk (or trudge) alone, birds and daisies cheer me on, panting through the second lap, by the village hall, past empty goalposts, along sidelines vanishing in rampant grass. When someone asks how I keep […]
Without Lips
The fabric’s stale and hot with breath, slightly damp and beginning to chafe, but alluring with its pattern of pink, full-petalled and sensitive to touch. The eyes do it, dark depths above the matching mask. In a moment of pandemic madness they come together, flower on flower, blossom into a kiss without lips, and he […]
Almost (a love story)
almost burned her fingers as she watched a flame consume a match almost to its end almost cried at the pain that didn’t come but the tears were welcome anyway almost fell in love with the man who struck the match that lit her (almost) last cigarette almost kissed him on the lips before the […]
Rediscovering the Night
Lying smug and snug in the arms of the countryside, I can’t recall the sound of the city’s background song, but hope, in this shutdown pandemic, that worldwide respect spreads like galaxies of stars for the long- forgotten night noises: the whirring wings of geese returning and the owls’ reviewing the day in the trees. […]
