The Chain

Sometimes it seems the words hide there, waiting for us to come out to find them. The world waits too, behind the words, ready for us to use those words to describe it. It waits there for us to make up stories about it, fitting the words together around the world, making a chain of words to link us to the ground we walk upon.

We call those chains stories and some of them are true and some of them are not, but we have a tendency to believe stories as if they are true, as if despite what we see they do describe a world around us.

The closer we look at the world the more we should see that those ancient stories do not describe the world we live in. That does not matter, though, as long as we know those stories are just stories and no longer are about the world we live in.

The danger of stories is that we grow to believe in them, despite the fact that they no longer tell us about the world they are meant to describe. Their chain linking us to the world has been broken, some links shown to be poorly-made have rusted and snapped as they’ve grown older, breaking that link between us and the world. That does not matter, for we have found stronger chains that really do bind us to the world we live in. Therefore, we have no need any longer for those old rusted and broken chains, except to keep as story chains and admire the craftsmanship that created them. 

Monday Poem: Promises

Promises

I do not want to search the night's dark skies
just for the possibility of stars
when I can watch as you undress again
at this, another ending weary day.

The dreams we held in younger hands are gone
like dying flowers left to rot in bins
by dusty paths between the oldest graves
with headstones falling lost in deep long grass.

We walked together down that path one day
to find a cooler shaded shadowed spot
underneath an ancient horse chestnut tree,
but we were younger then and summer skies
held promises forever blue and ours.

Now we have crowded beaches, sitting here
to watch our children play in sand and build
these castles, knowing how the sea destroys
by creeping waves, and wipes it clean again
like promises once made, but never kept.

 

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PUBLISHED: Recursive Angel (09/2001)

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Seasons

[Walter Crane - The Masque of the Four Seasons]

Every season comes around to meet us out of the fading of the previous one. Sometimes we are taken by surprise by the first bright day of spring, or the taste of winter’s first snowflake on our lips, but mostly we are ready for the change, sometimes waiting for the colours of autumn after the long heavy heat of the summer has turned everything brittle and dusty. We are always ready for spring after February, the longest, slowest, month that holds tight to winter and refuses to let go, even while the plants are bursting to get into bloom and to feel the sun’s strength growing with each lengthening day. 

Friday Poem: Spaces

Spaces

I dream of narrow spaces between stars
and vast unspanable distances
between blades of grass.

The distance between words
and the soft touch
of hands on naked skin.

Words that say nothing
and the eloquence of gentle silence.

The precise speech of a fingertip
bringing into being a whole universe
with the force of a single touch.

The River That Feeds The Sea

How can we know all that we know when the day spreads out towards an horizon and we do not know what lies beyond, when all is distance and unknown? So many things lie out of reach, so many things beyond our outreaching hands. We would like to touch the world, take hold of it and keep it close, but it is forever just out of reach.

Whenever we think we have a grasp of it, it slithers free with a careless flick of its tail and glides away down the stream, leaving us with empty hands, grasping nothing as the mud eddies up around us, obscuring all that we thought we had seen.

We sit on the bank watching the river flow past us and out into that infinite sea that spreads far beyond the horizons of our knowing. We have walked along that shore picking out bright pebbles, interesting shells and the flotsam left stranded by the tide. We have walked the banks of the river that feeds that sea, watching it flow, learning its moods and seasons. We have learnt so much; even that praying to the gods of rivers and seas is not what we ought to do. We sit and watch the river flow and the seas changing tides.

We sit here and think that we know. 

Headland

We have held the shapes of our lonely days in our hands for far too long, and now we walk away together from all the things we need to leave behind.

Those memories of all the lonely days tumble around you as we walk away from our pasts, and there seems no route you can trace on all the maps of your few small remaining dreams that will take you to anywhere but here and now.

The path winds slowly across the very edge of these cliffs, leaving the sea murmuring to itself far below. Up here, the cries of the gulls are louder as they wheel into the sky.

The beach below is crowded under the sun, the breeze occasionally throwing the sounds of holiday at us. But we are alone up here and you have that look that knows it. We both know what will happen next, even as your clothes pool all around us.

Sometimes it is the simple things that matter. A gesture, a word, can sometimes be enough. Sometimes it is the complicated things that can only get close, and - it seems - almost touch that vague nebulous mass of possibility that seems to lie just out of reach. Something you can almost trace with stretched–out tips of your fingers in the air around it. Sometimes, only silence matters. Sometimes it seems as though there is no other sound but silence.

Sometimes there is only one thing to do, take the moment by the hand, lead it to a place like this, and seal that silence with a kiss. 

Skin Against The Rough World

There is a place, not too far from here, where we go when the night closes this all down. There is a place there where we can hide under sheets and keep each other living.

Now is the time we can go on from here and look for new places, new times. This is not the place we used to dream of on those long slow summer mornings lying skin against skin as the sun shone through closed curtains in that small room. Here is everything we needed, we thought, here is all we could want. Later it seemed so foolish to believe those things, but now, even later, we realise just how true it was.

This is about shape. This is about form. This is about taking these raw materials in your hand and carving something from them. This is about taking the rough world and turning it slowly in the hand until something grows; until something is formed and made.

Here we are then, take it and hold it. It is yours to keep; to use as you desire. It is there to keep you warm at night and to cool that heat when it grows inside you. Take it and hold it, feel its heartbeat against your palm, let it grow until it is enough to fill the heart of you.