Now I know

By Sil (13th of November, Hereford)

This morning I stood on the door step and trimmed Scully's hair 

I thought of my husband mowing lawn in late autumn 

When grass blades have lost their exuberant thrust

A chore I will never have to do again

I remember touching Mia's fur a week before we put her down 

It was dry, greying and lifeless; she looked like a stuffed animal displayed in the natural history museum

Scully's fur, now a death shroud 

Is how how I know that it's time

I took the dogs for a walk along the river

Luna darted all over the place

Scully trotted gingerly along the narrow path, 

falling further and further behind 

And for some reason it felt like he was moving in real time

whereas I was caught up in the sped-up funeral march a the edge of the universe, 

where matter falls away from matter faster and faster 

Unravelling,

as if it were the fraying seam of a sweater when a child catches the loose end of a thread,

and keeps tugging at it

I stared right into the eye of the sun 

And said: 

This is my future

And yours, too, star

We're just riding biological trains that are moving at a slower pace

Watching my dogs die is how I know the destination

Is how I know the perfect darkness at the end of time

Route 66

By Gub (24th of January)

Life is a box of dirty tricks,

An old red can

So many things have kicked.

Rust on the outside

Bright tin within

It can carry fuel

But the cap leaks.

If we knew the road, 

knew which way

It lay,

The stops would be longer

The rush would cease.

More time to pray.

But our eyes are fixed on the 

Car in front 

Horizons' un risen

Prizes ahead 

Rewards on the side 

Are lay-by's 

Of delay

So many Miradors and 

Vistas unseen,  

Another time we tell ourselves; 

Another place 

Not today

Someone else's

Dream.

That's the case with

'route 66'

A journey that seems infinite 

Is but a short stretch 

Soon the carriageway narrows; 

To a single lane 

The distance ahead 

a fraction of what behind us

Lay...

Smiles, tears 

The laughter; shed,

Either remembered 

Or forever

Unfound

Hills,  valleys,

Snow capped peaks 

Blue sky ;

Clouds

Beaming

Or

Un glimpsed

Become part of eternity's sleep 

The red can's

paint, flakes of rust ..

Life's stains are miasma; 

Vital blemishes 

We now crave; 

Cling to the slightest 

Furrows in dust 

feverish searches for footprints 

in sand 

Seconds  to evidence 

That moment of being; 

Any sign 

We were here 

Shaping light 

and shadow 

The sun, dunes, a vulture rising above the castellations of the  Red Fort 

Another day

 - spared

Knowing 

What we cannot see...

And seeing what we

Could never know ; 

The world in a grain of sand

an eternity lost 

       and found 

In the palm of 

a hand .

Death did not..

By Gub (the 6th of May)

Death 

Did not do 

What death could, 

And extinguish all

Life in one blow.

He takes what he wants, 

In one’s or threes,

And sure; amidst occasional human battles

Multiples of these.

Over time 

Well all eternity, the 

Score he fells will run a trillion or more 

But these in aggregate 

Sound excessively dramatic 

In the fullness of infinity, they are but the gentle popping of candle wax around a universal wick.

A slow flow

Back into the tallow…

That feeds a continual flame

The prospector

By Gub (the 16th of May, Eden Holme)

The day 

Is overfull

Uncompleted

Tasks abound

I pull at rocks 

A Palaeolithic sifting

through time’s rubble 

Lowing like a bull 

From side to side 

My pendulum 

Moves nothing 

Forward 

The edge of each swing

Shapes a  parentheses

Between which my body and 

Mind rock 

Marking hours 

But without progress

The prospector

With no prospect 

Other than

To prospect

Then true treasure is not buried 

In the find 

But in the search?

An empty house

By Gub (4th of June, Hanging Bank Cottage) 

Every other day

I return

Here 

To this stone grey shell

And scrape another 

Tile from 

Its mosaic

Undoing 

30 years

Of history

A cleaner fish, 

Skirting around the behemoth’s

Body

Zig-zagging amidst the shadows of a leaf dappled carcass

Beams not bones

Holding the sky aloft

Walls withstanding 

Wailing winds

This small stoned

Sanctuary 

With all the wants and wishes 

Of a world 

It’s weeping joys

And cosmic sadness 

Empty now

As a life un-spun

Here the soul of time

Feels exposed 

As if each door

Were both and opening 

And closing 

Of pathways 

The whole house a stilled heart

Through which lives once flowed 

Like blood 

And love 

Followed a rhythmic 

Pump, 

Dilating 

In time with the rise and 

Fall of the day

It’s hard to stay 

hard to leave 

The past is a prisoner 

In the present 

Captive to being unchanged

Every second is a threshold 

To a future 

Un-forged

A house that was a home 

Becomes a house once more 

Yet the life it held, spills forth 

The leaves above, the fields 

Below

Gyrations of shifting greens, 

Dark greys, brilliant blues 

Canopies of light 

Through which swallows

Dip, 

And hedges shelter the trill whistles

Of the wren.

We are not where we think we are,

We are not what we think 

We are

This

unlocked 

Moment

An empty house 

In late spring …

E-human

By Gub (15th of July) 

We can’t trade  happiness 

Nor purchase time 

Love is the only measure of  

Sanity 

Yet to define it

You need a sharp quill

To  draw something so soft, 

From such an abstract 

Mire of ego, need, 

And counterfeit reasoning

Love isn’t pure, 

It’s complex.

A molecular chemistry

That can poison, or save, 

Like a serpents venom. 

unique in its efficacy, 

On each one

Of us 

What we gift

What we take 

Is distinct.

This  precision in DNA 

Ensures 

No duplication in distribution 

Nor exchange 

Rilke’s sharing of 

‘Protected solitude’ 

Or Keats’ ‘selfish love

Which cannot breath’ 

IS the difference 

 

The echo of my call

In the darkness

The owl’s cant, or is it a

Nightingale or a jay?

What you reply in song

And what notes you choose 

Divides and unites

No love is the same

 

It is forever so

No single day 

comes again.

Beach snapshot of the apocalypse

By Sil (Hereford, 3rd of July)

the waves will polish

boulders into pebbles, pebbles into sand

then backyards, deckchairs, mould-strewn walls

will be sucked into the grinder 

the Holy Spirit will descend 

and you'll speak in tongues 

all human languages 

and the language of seagulls 

dogs 

and fish too

but on each day

God will erase what he hath created the night before 

He'll take Adam first, then all the animals

so you'll have no one to talk to 

And you, Eve, 

will lie naked on the wooden deck of the beach pub in Borth

watching the last sunset alone

What you get

By Gub (Borth, 29th of June)

What you get …

On an beach in June in Wales 

Is a mosaic of stories 

Laid out 

wide 

Against an opaque 

Slate Sky 

Of Green and blue

marine

The sand leaks

shimmers of light

That mirror the skin

Of an Atlantic seal

And elsewhere 

Miniature feet mark

Steps that fade

With each

Hop forward; 

Seconds in life lines

That run hap hazard

In abandonment 

Of worry

Time’s face has no dial

On a beach in June in Wales.

The curve of the dolphin’s

Back rising above the rollers

Matches the zeppelin boards of a  school of surfers 

The sea swells with cries 

Of Terns, undistinguished from the yelps 

Of children’s rompings

 

The gyre and gimble

Of evolution’s tug,

back and forth 

Between land’s beckoning 

purpose

And the ineluctable 

And Eternal

Draft of the sea ….