Saturday 28 April 2012

The other week, the Frosts...

... got the magnolia tree that shares its world with mine...

For over a week the flames of its blossom danced at the end of each slender branch; little heart-shaped cups of soft, ice-cream coloured fire. Those passing by, stopped to see this tree that flamed but did not burn and remark, "Your magnolia [as if it ever could belong to anyone but itself] is looking wonderful this year." I would smile, but could take no credit or glory for its beauty.

Then, the other week, the frosts got the magnolia tree and the petals of its blooms became burnt and brown. The slender branches have now become draped in the slimy, brown, wreckage of seaweed wrack; its little fiery hearts, torn and mildewed prayer flags. And now no-one stops to look upon this magnolia tree that shares its world with mine...

... but it doesn't seem to bear the frost any malice. It still stands, holding its broken, rotting flowers up to the sky. Whether pristine or 'spoilt', it makes no odds and so it casts its dead and dying blooms to the wind with as much pride as it  flamed its tight new buds of spring. It appears that it is only humans who privilege the 'perfection' of the unblemished over the scratched and soiled, the tattered and the torn. For few of us find the beauty in the imperfect, the half-formed and the spoiled... and so we hide the marks of our precious lives - those etched lines of time and worry and all those scars (inside and out) - with scarves and make-up and a hundred hurried words that have never touched our hearts and make strangers of friends...

Today, the rain falls on a soft easterly wind. Spheres of water run down each beautiful, burnt, heart-shaped fire. New leaf-growth buds green and glistening as I look up into the raining sky... and I too will bear my frosts no malice.

Monday 23 April 2012

The WILLOWS stand...

... beside the brown churned Avon where Shakespeare sleeps; lime green WATERFALLS of dripping light. Almost overnight, the bare LIMBS of the chestnuts, beloved by rook and crow, fill out with new LEAVES. They flap and  flutter, hanging low like SLEEPING bats... emerald, fluttering, sleeping, bats.

Down the lanes, blossom FROSTS the blackthorn bushes; white and honey sweet.

But here, the COLOURS of spring are waterfalls of lime... and EMERALD sleeping bats..

Friday 20 April 2012

Have YOU ever touched a LEAF...

... that buds full of SPRING upon a tree? A flame of emerald FIRE on the tip of your finger. It has waited all WINTER ... through those long nights of FROST and starlight and the aching RIBS of foxes... through those burning WINDS and sloughing rains and MISTS as brown as they are grey... It KNEW one day that this DAY would come... when it will burst with LIFE... a flame of emerald fire....


.... and for what day are YOU waiting ?

Thursday 19 April 2012

SOMEONE tore the CLOUDS today....

.... and the SKY .... 
... wept WATER and...
  .... blackthorn  BLOSSOM...
      ... UPON the shining street...

Tuesday 17 April 2012

Some HEAVEN spilt by gulls



Old Hunstanton, Norfolk, where a childhood heaven touches the sea with sandy feet... and the smell of seaweed... and a bluster of kites... and the clink of bucket against spade....

.....  It is a dog's paradise; this land of dunes and sands and retreating waters... We throw the ball, arcing through the sea-salted air, and time pauses....
           
  ... the sky is painted thickly in Prussian blue and the towering clouds, of smudged greys and whites, build and pile upon the cutting north-easterly wind. The marram grass whistles; coarse and leathery, and as parched as a camel's dream...   

  ... among the dunes and the younger lovers, my parents lie, asleep in each other's arms, under the gull crying sky. 

Slowly the bird arises above the silvered mists of dawn...

Listen, my heart... be brave and soar into this DAY of days...     .... for it is your destiny to walk footloose among the shards of broken  wonder   ...        ... to fill your lungs with air (doesn't it feel good...     this taste of LIFE that dances upon the tip of your tongue?)   ...                                        ....
        ... and to touch the preciousness of life     ...     that is drowning in a stranger's sad and SILENT smile...