Navigation - Sat-nav or Map?

“Navigation? Simple. There’s an app for that.”

I have my own ‘app’ in the form of an enlarged, easy to read road atlas. It is far better than the rude interruptions from the voice of the sat-nav in the middle of a conversation and making me lose my drift. It’s more reliable than the sat-nav, as well.

We used a sat-nav, or whatever it is on my husband’s phone when we were touring in our caravan last summer. Travelling from The Machars in Dumfries & Galloway to Maybole in Ayrshire, I wasn’t looking forward to the A77 and A78 which are always busy at any time of day. I wasn’t driving, but it’s still worrying as a passenger, ahem, back seat driver. I was saved the anxiety by the route the sat-nav chose to take. Miles and miles of single-track, harem scarem road, cutting through the lesser known depths of Galloway Forest Park, eventually releasing us into the freedom of rural Ayrshire. Not the best road for towing a caravan and we felt relieved to be unscathed, and alone. In all those miles we hadn’t encountered another vehicle. Drivers were either wise to avoid that way, or they knew we were out. It was a bad experience which made us wary of the sat-nav and we kept to the A roads after that.

On a visit to the Outer Hebrides – no caravan, just car and cottages – we travelled north from touring the Uists to base ourselves in the Isle of Harris to explore Harris and Lewis. We were in a hilly area. The highest mountain in the Outer Hebrides was near, The Clisham at 799 metres, standing majestically over our cottage. Out one day for a drive and a look around, I was navigating using an OS map. We were aiming for the west coast. I was struggling with reading the tiny details on the map and soon thought we’d – I’d – gone wrong somewhere and couldn’t find any landmarks matching the map. We were on the cliff-edge road of a mountain and I was so scared that I couldn’t speak. I was literally stunned into silence. There was relief eventually when we found ourselves descending towards a small beach, a couple of cars and a handful of people. With map in hand, I explained that we’d become lost and sought their help. This lovely family came to our aid, turned the map the right way up, and pointed to where we were. They set us back on the right track, which involved a return journey back up the mountain road, but at least we were on the inside lane this time. I hope they didn’t ridicule us too much when they went home to Scandinavia. Oops. Don’t trust me with a hard to read OS map in the Hebrides, or anywhere in the world.

When I was in junior school, probably aged nine or ten, we were tasked with doing a project on something of our own choice. Girls favoured pop music or fashion. Boys chose cars or the armed forces. There were other things picked, but looking back, how gender categorised we all must have been. Of all the things in the world, I picked compasses. This was because there was a picture of a mariner’s compass on the front of a world atlas at home, and it fascinated me. The project didn’t get beyond two items, the mariner’s compass and a Girl Guides one. Good drawings, though, even if I say so myself. We’ve come a long way since navigating by a compass was all we had, especially at sea. The digital era has taken us over in the name of progress.

I’ll stick with the easy to read road atlas, even if it does weigh a ton on my knee in the car. I’m about to navigate us to Scotland then to Warwickshire, so I’ll be missing, but hopefully not lost. Back soon.

 Navigation

Lost in South Harris
When the map was upside down
And we got mixed up.

Study the road map
Give confident directions
And have a Plan B.

Work out the distance,
Choose where to make cmfort stops
To break the journey.


Rude interruption,
Strict, assertive instructions.
Who needs a sat-nav?

PMW 2024

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

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Housework - Squeaky Clean, Not Quite

 

Housework, that never-ending project that always starts with good intentions, but there are so many distractions and a complete lack of interest. That’s just me, obviously. Some people (other women) can’t rest until everything sparkles, nothing is out of place and a mixed fragrance of polish, disinfectant and Shake’n’Vac fill the air, a little diluted by the open windows. This is the opposite of me. I once saw a quote on a fridge magnet or something, along the lines of “Boring women have tidy houses”. With that in mind, I can promise you I am not boring. My house isn’t a tip, not exactly, but looking around, there are areas of ‘a work in progress’, things just started or not quite finished. It is the multi-tasking that does it. For example, the laundry can be happening while I’m doing something else. A loaded washing machine, switched on, looks after itself. How helpful it might be to have the magical finger clicking skills of Mary Poppins when the grandchildren have been and left everything out.

One evening, over Christmas, we had rain seeping in through the lounge bay window, dripping from the blinds on to the sill. It wasn’t much, just an annoying drip, with no obvious point of entry. I had to squeeze myself behind the Christmas tree to place a folded towel to soak up the water and silence the drip. It had rained constantly for days, so there must be a weak spot somewhere. We never found it, inside or out, and it hasn’t happened since. Watch this space. We noticed loose wallpaper, hidden by furniture, needing further investigation after Christmas, and when I had recovered from whatever virus plagued me for about a week.

The time came. The tree and everything festive, removed, boxed and returned to the attic. Spring cleaning can commence, but first, the wall needs checking. It was simple enough, remove the contents of the small bookcase, move bookcase out of the way – note to self for next time, the shelves are not fixed – I squeal in pain, but mind my language because I’m a lady. Examine the wall. The wallpaper has come off because the plaster is crumbling. A slight tap and lots of powdery plaster comes away building a pyramid shape on the edge of the carpet. All is dry, bone dry. A few spoken thoughts, then dustpan and brush followed by the vacuum cleaner. There’s nowhere else for the bookcase and contents to go, so it is put back to where it was. The post-Christmas cleaning and tidying continued, until I found something more appealing to do. Someone who knows about walls and plaster crumbling has been sent for. This might mean that the purchase of new chairs has to wait.

Housework is summed up perfectly in this poem by Pam Ayres, followed by one of mine,

Dust If You Must

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
To paint a picture or write a letter,
Bake a cake or plant a seed,
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim and mountains to climb,
Music to hear and books to read,
Friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world’s out there,
With the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair,
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain.
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it’s not kind.
And when you go – and go you must –
You yourself will make more dust.

                                                            Pam Ayres

I’m With These 2018 Heroes

The kitchen floor needs mopping
And the beds are left unmade
But I’m not doing housework
While there’s matches being played.

The perfect football pitches,
Neatly mowed and lush and green,
Ready for the world’s finest
To give us the best we’ve seen.

So bring it on, DeBruyne,
Ronaldo and Messi, too.
Fellaini and Suarez
I’ll be watching all of you.

A huge shout out for England,
For Harry Kane and the boys,
I’ve taught my grandkids to cheer
And to fill my house with noise.

Fav’rites Rashford and Lingard,
The skilful Eric Dier,
I’m loving every moment,
Applauding Harry Macguire.

The crumbs stay on the carpet
While the football frenzy flows
And the pots wait in the sink
‘Til the final whistle blows.

Pamela Winning 2018 (edited 2024)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Silence - It's Not Always Golden

Like most people I guess I’m a bit of a mixture when it comes to silence. Some might say I have no idea what the word means. I’m rarely quiet for very long when in company. I’ve seen my companions’ eyes glaze over as I enter the tenth minute of a story that should have been completed in seconds. In fact, even my daughter, who I thought relished my tales, admitted recently that she can’t listen to anybody for more than a couple of minutes: she becomes irritated and restless. That got me told, and also explained a lot about her school reports. But I digress. I love to chat, I also love to hear other people’s tales. I’m curious - sit me down, give me a brew and then tell me everything about yourself.  Don’t pause though, or I’ll fill that void. Silences in conversation make me anxious, and I just can’t let that happen. Feel free to interrupt and continue. Hesitate and the floor’s all mine. 

I was thinking about this chatting lark. I know exactly where it came from: my grandma, who could talk for England. Her favourite subject was, ‘The Aunts at Yarmouth,’ who were her sisters. Two nasty, selfish, mean old spinsters, according to grandma. She could reel off a long list of ways in which she had been slighted by them over the years. My uncle once got her onto the subject and recorded the diatribe, whist my granddad tried desperately to steer the conversation away from the aunts. I still have the recording and it continues to make me laugh. As she got older and her hearing and health began to deteriorate, she became much quieter, just sitting on the sofa and looking rather puzzled as conversations swirled around her. 

I said I’m a bit of a mixture where silence is concerned. There are specific situations where I relish the silence and others where I can’t bear it, not just within conversations, but also inside the home. I’ve suffered with depression for many years and when it was at its worst I couldn’t bear a silent house. Maybe it was the fact that I had three young children and constant noise was the result, but if I was ever in alone at home the first thing I did was switch on the radio. I still do it now. I also realised, quite recently, that I hum and whistle constantly, my mum and dad did the same.  I think it’s just another way of filling that void and blocking out the silence.

However, when my children were babies I craved peace from their crying, shouting, screaming and whiny demands. With my first born I was obsessed with silence when he went to bed.  Woe betide anybody knocking at the door or phoning on the big loud landline.  By the time it got to baby number three I was much more relaxed.  They'd have to sleep through dinner parties (which were all the rage in the 80s), loud music, frantic hoovering, and food mixers going full blast. They either slept through or I didn't hear them due to the above.  Either way, we all survived.

Alone in nature, silence is my preference.  No music, no audiobooks, no distractions, just tiny natural noises in the background; birds, trees, gentle seas, a light breeze. Just perfect.  Everything slows down, my heart beat, my breathing, my thoughts.  It's just one way to recharge the batteries - a cliche, but true.

Silence - In Its Place  by Jill Reidy

Silence is golden 

So they say

But when you have a head 

Full of buzzing

Of thoughts that swirl and repeat 

And do it all again  

Bore into your brain

To tell you things to you didn’t want to hear

Then chase them out

With mindless music

Numbing News 

And puerile comments 

From presenters who know 

Nothing of your pain 

But will fill your head with noise 

And solve the problem for a while.

Emerge from that, and venture out

Where you have to strain your ears 

To hear the slightest sound

Nature, pure and simple

Gentle cooing of a pair of birds

Leaves like butterflies in a lazy breeze

Slow the heart and soothe the soul

And sometimes, not often

Total Silence

Bliss

Thanks for reading.....Jill 

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Silence - I'll Settle for Quiet

“Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”  (From Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, 1927)

How refreshing it feels just to be quiet with no distraction. I like to have the radio or a CD on, but sometimes it’s good not to bother and go about my housework duties in silent prayer or lost in my thoughts. My thoughts are bordering on torturous at the moment. A mini crisis which I needn’t bore you with and I’m sure it will blow over with some self-counselling and a quiet word above.

The place that offers the most silence is our favourite lodge in Dumfries & Galloway. Off the beaten track, hidden by trees and foliage, any sounds come from nature – and the fridge thermostat kicking in – owls, foxes, deer and the ripple of the nearby stream. Dare I believe that we’ll be there in just a few short weeks? Recently arranged and neatly in line with my retirement, we will sample summer time at the lodge. Very rare, we’re usually out of season visitors, but very welcome after lockdown.

The back garden offers tranquillity, depending on the day or time. The sheltered side, nice for a quiet read, never on a Sunday, though. Someone in the neighbourhood will fire up their lawn mower, strimmer or electric hedge cutter and kill the moment. No one around here has a massive garden, so what takes hours with some extra loud machine, I do not know. Someone else nearby likes to entertain outside and after winter and lockdown, it is clearly back on the agenda. Raucous laughter, which we hadn’t missed, and, I am told, the smell of a barbecue was apparent at the weekend. The best time to sit out is on a week day during school hours, until the boy across the back comes home and starts kicking his football against their wooden fence. They have to start somewhere, bless him.

At work, we hear the sound of silence at the end of the day when the fluorescent lights are switched off and the high-speed drills stop buzzing in our ears.  It isn’t my domain but there is something I find peaceful about a spotless, empty surgery, prepared for the next day. I accept that I’m a strange one. Somewhere a phone will ring and an answer-phone will take a message. I won’t miss much of this.

I am happy to fill my house with the noise of four lively grandchildren coming to tea, make sure they have fun and enough to eat and enjoy the peace and quiet when they’ve gone home.

My Haikus:

My washing machine
Is torture to all ear-drums
When it’s in a spin.

Stressed and troubled, then,
When dental drills stop whining
Serenity calms.

When the noise has gone
And there’s a moment to think
About what makes peace.

Hushed in the darkness
The unsettled baby girl
Loved and nursed by me.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, keep well. Pam x

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Dance This Silence Down Through The Morning

I hosted an Easter Music Lyrics Quiz on Facebook last week-end and the title of today's blog was one of several clues that the hive mind failed to solve, to my considerable surprise. It's a line from what I'd previously considered was a well-known song, 'Mr Jones'  - a big hit for the band Counting Crows in the mid 1990s, from their debut LP. I find it an arresting lyric because it sounds poetic: "Dance this silence down through the morning". What does that mean? (to quote a particularly annoying earworm from a current TV advertisement for a range of vacuum cleaners). And does it really matter?  I shall discuss...

Here's what I think. At that end of the scale of expression closest to pure sound (music), there exist forms of words which are incantations, almost spell-like, where the meaning of the words (if indeed they have a logical meaning) is of secondary importance to the sound and sensation they produce. Slide just a little way from there in the direction of the prosaic and you have phrases like the one I've quoted, in lyrics or poems where a certain mystique resides, where language and imagery are allusive, where meaning may be hard to grasp, and where the sounds and sensations the words evoke are more powerful, more important than any concerns of realism or logical sense. That's the beauty and appeal of a line like "Dance this silence down through the morning". It means whatever you want it to mean. It's seductive in the way it allows, even demands, that the reader should engage his or her imagination in making something of it. May I rest my case there?

What I do know, from re-listening to that first Counting Crows album on my daily walks along the promenade this week, is that a new layer of strong impressions has been laid upon 'August And Everything After ', such that every time I hear it in future, it will not only take me back to the Shire of Herts circa 1993 but also to Blackpool's glorious sun-drenched though largely deserted seafront in the weird Covid spring of 2020.

For a poem this week, I've done something a little ekphrastic, based on the photograph above, related to the lyric title of the blog, with a nod to Tchaikovsky and in recognition of the weight of social distancing that is pressing all our lives out of their customary shapes. This may not be its final form, but I put it out as is... I hope you like it.

Duende*
Black swan pirouettes in slow emotion
to the score in her head, a slender isolate
dancing in silence down through the morning,
rehearsing the roles to which she's been bred,
this Odette/Odile, entrancing no one, soundlessly.

No curtain call as she curtseys breathless,
just the iron walls of the cavernous hangar
where by force of will day after day she pushes
body and soul through a repertoire missing its king,
bereft of its cast of supporting wings. But better is this

unobserved balletic routine, this exacting,
inspiring, quietly beautiful dance of defiance
while she has power in her young lungs; far better
than those long hours of worry each night, reverted
to human form, wondering fearful if her turn might come.

* a Spanish word meaning (ambiguously and appropriately): inspiration or evil spirit.

As an uplifting musical bonus, here's a link to  Mr Jones  (Just click on the song title to play it.)

Thanks for reading. Stay sprightly,  S ;-)

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Silence

Silence comes naturally to me. Suffering from hearing problems since birth, silence is a life-long companion. After my hearing was first fixed in late adolescence the world seemed extraordinarily loud to me and admittedly I struggled to acclimatise for the first few years, preferring to bury my right ear into my shoulder (still do) whilst reading so I can concentrate. I found the inane trivia of public conversation hard to take, also I couldn’t quite comprehend why everyone was shouting at each other all the time.

But here’s the thing. For the first few years after the operation I thought my hearing was comparable to everyone else’s. In fact I was/am still classed as deaf. At that time it was 50 - 60 percent diminished compared to my peers (it has gradually worsened over the years to 30-40), which was a complete shock because it meant the world is a lot louder than I perceived it to be and this scared me no end.

It still makes me wonder how people can get anything done and why isn’t everyone else bleeding from their ears. Even now I can’t go outside wearing my hearing aid because the sensations of life are just way too much. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, things being in the ear of the beholder and all.  Being deaf makes me conversely more perceptible to noise because I am naturally inclined to silence. I have never identified as being a deaf person because it has never prevented me from living my life, and in some ways has enhanced it.

One day as sure as anything my hearing will revert back to its original state and the air will be still once again. There’s a lot of stuff I’m surely going to miss, music being number one, the myriad of voices in my life of family and friends, but overall I’m not that worried. Like something repeated I’ve been through it before and moreover I will still have poetry. Rhythm has always been internal in that regard, I can always count the beat with my feet, and even though I won’t be able to hear the thud, I can in my bones.

When the barbaric gawp of the world has died               

I still have the solace of the rhythm in my mind.            

Jamie Field

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Silence - The Snort

I’m responsible for one of those family stories that might get passed down in history, creating mirth amongst future generations. Or, the whole thing might just disappear into oblivion and never be mentioned again, no chance. Whatever the future holds, I will tell the truthful story now and I will call it The Time I Broke the Silence, or The Snort, for short. It happened about ten years ago.

We travelled to London for a family wedding. Money was a bit tight at the time, but this was my eldest nephew getting married, the first born of the next generation and I would have moved heaven and earth to be there. I found ‘budget’ bed and breakfast accommodation at Tufnell Park which was close enough to Islington Town Hall where the ceremony was taking place. We only needed somewhere to sleep for a couple of nights. I had to keep reminding myself of that every time something was wrong. It was the worst place I’ve ever stayed. The fact that builders were on site, working inside with power drills and goodness knows what at all times of day was bad enough. No chance for some quiet time.  Light bulbs missing, wash-basin plug missing, electric sockets not working, leaky shower and mouldy toast at breakfast and no one wanted to listen to our complaints.  Dressed in our wedding finery, we had to pick our way across a semi-dark landing and reception area strewn with power cables and joinery tools. The only saving grace, there was just one, our car was safely parked in their enclosed yard.  I won’t name and shame, it was a long time ago and it might be different now.

     Islington Town Hall was bathed in warm sunshine. We mingled with everyone else gathered outside, embracing family and friends and happy to be part of this special occasion.  When summoned, we filed into the Council Chamber, silently taking our seats in the horseshoe shape that surrounded two ornate chairs for the bride and groom and a table full of flowers. Quite out of the blue, I started to feel emotional. The Council Chamber looked and felt like a cathedral. I looked up at the domed ceiling, blinking away tears. My head was full of memories, the baby boy who brought such joy into our bereaved family had grown into this handsome young man and was now about to be married.  I was not going to burst into tears, I really wasn’t. There was quiet music as the bride and groom took their places, then silence. I was overwhelmed and held my breath for fear of sobbing. I think I held it too long. I tried to calm down and breathe gently, but instead I let out a loud, massive snort.

     The noise seemed to echo round the circular building. I heard mutterings from the opposite side of the chamber. The lady next to me, who was the mother of the best man, turned herself right round to stare at me, nose nearly touching mine. I think she whispered her concern.  My husband was on my other side, but I don’t remember him speaking. My horrified daughter, a few seats along, was mouthing ‘God, Mum, was that you?’

     There was far too much laughter about it, later on. Bursting into tears might have been less embarrassing.

     Anyway, there it is, from the source, before anyone says ‘You’ll never guess what Nanna did…’

 

   Here is Desiderata, as true for today as ever,

 

 

Desiderata

 Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

By Max Ehrmann © 1927

 

Thanks for reading, take care and stay safe, Pam x

    

 

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The Romantics - So Glad I Found You

It had been a decade of uncertainty, feeling lost and out of my depth. I’d been riding an emotional roller-coaster that got faster and faster and would not stop. I jumped off, brushed myself down and wondered why I hadn’t done it sooner.

I lived alone, quietly. I had my job, my home, my car and I think I had my sanity, though others might have doubted it, I didn’t question it much. I enjoyed the silence of my own company. There had been too much noise before. I read book after book, Irwin Shaw, Colleen McCullough and Edna O'Brien amongst others. I unpacked the collection of Marshall Cavendish Mind Alive magazines that my father had subscribed to for me, which had remained untouched throughout my teens. I learned a lot from the articles that interested me and took pride in fixing the magazines into the binders that made it into an encyclopaedia.  If I wasn’t reading, I was writing. No television at this time, but I had a radio if I fancied ‘Saturday Night Theatre’ or ‘Play for Today’ and I had my record player.

My English Literature studies were far behind me, but I found myself revisiting the Bronte’s, some Dickens and my favourite stories from Joyce’s Dubliners. From somewhere into this mix came poetry and those poems familiar to me were taking on new meaning, or perhaps I’d missed something  before. It was the poets, the ones we call The Romantics and I latched on to something that I felt I belonged to.  I had (still have, my photo) The Penguin Book of Love Poetry and I read bits of it every day. It probably wasn’t the best poetry to throw myself headlong into. Death, separation and desolation were subjects perhaps best avoided, but difficult to do so when words were reaching out to me, especially those of Byron and Shelley.

I wish I could have been in the party or at least a fly on the wall in the summer of 1816 when Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (later Shelley), and others were having fun at Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva. It must have been a tremendous storm to keep them indoors for three days, if what I read is true. They wrote horror stories to scare each other, which might have been the beginnings of Mary’s novel, Frankenstein.  I imagine that writing was not their only past-time. Their lives were forever intertwined.  I love to read about their bohemian lifestyle and their freedom, but I wonder, were they really happy?

Somewhere buried in the archives of our house, I will still have the framed poems that once adorned the walls of my house. I liked to do calligraphy, back in the day when my eyes still worked, and one of the first I made for myself was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet XLIII, from the Portuguese.

 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!- and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 - 1861)

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Pantoum Challenge

I wonder if you are a person who likes a challenge?

Do you like to test yourself and extend the range of what you can do or achieve?

Or are you content with what you can do and keep on familiar paths?

In poetry, there are many different forms and types to be explored. We have already had the villanelle form in a previous blog and this week is an even more obscure and difficult form of poetry called a pantoum.

A pantoum is a poem which has repeated lines from stanza to stanza in a set structure and the final stanza uses two lines from the first stanza, but in a different order!

All this repetition must make sense and hopefully not sound too forced or ‘wooden’.

It is a real challenge; why not step out of the comfort zone and give it a try?

Here is my attempt; you can decide if it hangs together without being too forced or wooden.

 

Silence

Two forces rule the way we use breath;

one is silence and one is speech;

their jurisdiction is birth to death;

there is nothing beyond their reach. 

One is silence and one is speech.

When the young ones come to stay,

there is nothing beyond their reach,

with throbbing noise, all and every day. 

When the young ones come to stay,

their necessary sound is like a backing track,

with throbbing noise, all and every day.

But silence, there’s a disconcerting lack. 

Their necessary sound is like a backing track.

The house is quiet when the children are gone.

But silence, there’s a disconcerting lack,

as unrelentingly, the clock ticks on. 

The house is quiet when the children are gone,

it’s not silent, for cities never are,

as unrelentingly, the clock ticks on

between what lies ahead and went before. 

It’s not silent, for cities never are.

Imagine a silence, it can embolden

between what lies ahead and went before,

drawing out truth, for silence is golden. 

Imagine a silence, it can embolden

the opening of a creaking church door,

drawing out truth, for silence is golden.

Is there a voice to be heard through awe? 

The opening of a creaking church door;

their jurisdiction is birth to death.

Is there a voice to be heard through awe?

Two forces rule the way we use breath. 

Why not take up the challenge? Thanks for reading.

 

David Wilkinson

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Gloaming

A fine word 'gloaming'. It expresses the hue, light and atmosphere of dusk, twilight, sunset...whatever you wish to call it. Most people can quote "Roaming in the gloaming by the bonnie banks o' Clyde." So that's what gloaming is.

Camping holidays always meant sitting outside, having a cuppa, sitting quietly watching the sunset. Watching gloaming develop. For it does develop. Like watching a time lapse movie. The subtle change of colours and atmosphere. Not only a visual experience, but also an audible one. Birds return to roost, small mammals scurry for cover, bats flit among the fir trees, larger animals settle down for the night, flying insects emerge as it gets a bit cooler, moths flutter round the lights by  the tent and a calmness pervades the scene.

As I write I am recalling June evenings spent at a remote lochside in the mountains . A place called Lochindorb. However I am sure that as you read you too might recall a seaside, a lake, a stream or the like where you too experienced 'gloaming'.

This morning I woke early with an idea for a poem. Arose, found an old envelope and scribbled this down. Enjoy.

     Gloaming at Lochindorb

     Gloaming. That time of day when sky and mountains unite in purple hue.
     The whimbrel calls as it crosses the moor, making for it's nest on the hill.
     The loch grows mirror calm only rippled by rising trout.
     Clouds of midges, seeking mates,  rise from the heather.
     The female irritatingly bites and annoys sheep sleeping by the shore.
     An owl hoots in the distance.
     A lamb calls.
     Two woodcock flit over  the myrtle.
     Noisy oystercatchers come home late.
     Yet there is a silence, a calm, a closing of day.
     Gloaming, sunset, twilight, dusk...
     That golden, purple, pink light
     'Twixt day and night.

      Thanks for reading, Kath

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Interruptions & Love

Dear Boy Poet,

Last night, after you'd returned from work, you dropped your backpack

in the middle of my writing space. You pulled off your shoes,

and began to retell your day with a loudness I'm still not used to.

The ideas and half-formed lines (from an afternoon of silence)

fell like glass marbles.

Later, on the computer, you typed a new poem. I listen

to the speed of the tapping and know you've found that zone

which so often seems to evade me.

And, for a moment, I am jealous and resenting...   

This morning, I eased myself away from your warmth, quietly

made black coffee and settled back into thinking.

At seven your alarm began to cycle through those sounds

(specifically chosen to force you from our bed).

By half past, you've pressed the snooze button six times

and I'm forced to leave my thoughts behind

to wake you.

Our differences sometimes cause us to clash,

but our similarities always bring resolution.

For every time you have made a picnic, coaxed me

into the car and taken me to a place that allows my mind

to breath - I thank you.

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