Things Poetic

deep breath as calm descends filling my soul with what appears to be some form of calm maybe its torpor mental collapse exhaustion look forward to the feeling of the sheets on my skin as I go to bed and know I will not wake till the sun is up 

I wrote this in 1994 about our dog   Life of a Dog The birds are free, up in the sky, with the wind blowing through their wings searching for a place to navigate by or just to enjoy the feeling of freedom Ebbing, falling, they rise on air, currents which rise and fall, relaxing within the safety of those hands Behind the glass wall, the prison doors, designed to protect and keep safe behind the four walls reaching out, trying to reach the freedom of the grass Nothing I can do Nothing that I can do will help me reach it on my own The scent of something is in the air, drawing my nose and body what is it ? I try to hear, to sniff it out, to find where it is and the scent has gone... no garden to run in, no butterflies to catch, no stick, or ball to chase and catch no water to drink or splash, or mud to roll in only a human to follow no one hears me when I speak, or can feel what I feel When I want to run, the leash holds me back snares me to another, a slave who cannot leave I ca...

 The Small things Sitting, feeling the breeze swirling around, lifting the strands of hair in front of my eyes, Eyes lifted, seeing and yet, not feeling the heat mixed into the cooler air, seemingly disturbing the humid air around the woodland that blanketed everything,  only small insects and birds daring to emerge. "The forest must be really hard to be in at the moment" I thought, catching the  line of a plane heading for warmer and sunnier places, passengers dreaming of the delicious food, cocktails and the white, sandy beaches stretching far into the hazy horizon. Still, the sound of the beetles and, there... a small mouse flitting across, under the leaves ... the scope of their world was just the leaves, plants and trees their hazy beach, some up turned soil their cocktails, a small twinkling dewdrop on the end of a leaf

 escape The letter arrived this morning, telling me my fate "...report to ...." Hanging on every day, to find ways to avoid that destructive world, confused inside, hating the feeling of cowardice, but also feeling right not to want to "join up" to fight who ? My friend Pule ? My fellow students ? why ? They are me and I am them.  Human, equal, equally fighting for their lives as they should be not as they are  the beige or blue shapes on, in or alongside the trucks as they cause mayhem, crushing lives, destroying lives,  bringing the world down around them Grab the thread of a chance, and a week later, Im in a car off to the airport then in a plane a ferry a bus a taxi "get some sleep and lets catch up in the morning" a whole new world but my world was back there, the mountains, the crashing waves, pushing the bodies back to the beach feeling the southern sun on my face, shoulders thats my world and yet now, no longer escaped but now imprisoned in my mind...

Shrug That day I walked from my lovely home, along the small roads, onto the wide expanses of fields, just tilled, birds wheeling across the sky, hunting for food in between the clods of earth dipping, diving, down, deep into the soil finding insects, worms and left behind seeds crowing about their finds as I wandered along the verge, stomping down nettles and weeds, just out of control plants that the plough can't reach, and that lets walkers traipse alongside the birds, the deer and the swirling wind I look back at the crow nearest, and it looks back and shrugs nonchalant observing, considering, head turns away, and back, and lets out a 'caw' and lifts off the ground, in a hop landing a few feet further away,  and continues