Bridging

Day blows cold - autumn . We cling to the idea of autumn, faking a belief in rioutously coloured leaves;
felled , bleeding orange russet browns, spewing their nutrient into gulping earth.
But, really, it is winter.


I watched you walking.. there.. far, far in the distance. The early morning mists giving me only the shape of your back as you walked ahead.
An unknown entity- on the same path.
It was only as I drew closer, to overtake you, that I heard your voice.
It was different to any other sound I had heard before.
The before voices, were caged in sharp wire, barbs dropped like petals of suffocation.


Small cruelties.


As we smile our greetings - two walkers in the forest of green, gently bathed in the not-yet sunlight of early morning,
I sense a kindness behind the eyes I cannot touch. A place of safety, a place to be in and feel without fear.


I take the lead, but I am in shock. I have walked for so long on this familiar path every morning and I have never encountered another hood clad walker, whose spirit was gentle enough to hear.


The tears burn warm on frozen cheeks, breath spurts in billows of white cloud and I am walking faster.


The desire to be alone in my forest again is very strong, but still,I turn round to see if you are still there- the sound of crunched footfall has disappeared.
I catch a glimpse of your face as you turn to take another path, for the hood has fallen away.


It is then, that I see your smile.
I panic. I look away, look forward, keep walking


afraid


that perhaps you were seeing me.

Time and the Dwarf

The grandfather clock seems overgrown.

A blackness on its roof, unfurls

yawningly,

into the shape of a cat.

Its ticking, has two tones

( it's  marched breathing echoes in marbled floor room )

 loud, loud, soft rhythm

nectar of sound shaping vision.

My body is half its length

have measured its growth against this ticking cylinder,for years

waiting

for the green uniform to return.

Always, an expectation

in the daughter half body

that he would not arrive back.

Sat in the marble dome, back straight against it's wooden embrace,

the ticking timekeeper

helped me decipher his spidery script

laid out in letters from lands unseen.

But he did not die.

Fathers have no right to death

while children wait.

Gifts came from the strange places he protected.

No blood on the green uniform

it was fresh

and smelled shiny.

About this poem:

An exploration of heightened anxiety.  Time moving forward ( represented by the clock,)  are vehicles which give picture to worry , very often - a hopeless feeling towards something over which we have no control- the moving forward of our moments.

Here, the child lacks knowledge about her father's whereabouts. It is an adult 's reminiscing about a vacuum of absence; in this case, the child's mother had died when it was two years old, so the anxiety is coupled with latent questions about loss

The time Is.

Dip shod.

waxing and waning.

Twisted to a beat which shocks
and pacifies.

lying.

Down to sleep.

awaiting the dreams
which

never speak.

Sap

It shambled in - the morning.
Writhing, dextrous, it willed wakefulness
out of the nest, which spewed blackness.

We rose. The sun and the sleeper - slashing eyes
with light and therefore, pain.

The sore of seeing.

Outside, we touched leaves, reminiscing a time
when they felt pale, cool, living, to the hand.
Land, which once was, Birthplace.
Screamingly, high priest of tribal song,
grabs gluttonously - rapes gleefully.

Sleeper moves slowly through chilling chorus
of choking time.
Weaving breath of lifeless hope-
waiving...

Sun is blistered high now and hot. Day is middling
and water needs rush to fill wanting veins.
Ah, the life bloodiness of its giving is thirsty.

We are all, deafeningly parched.

Lil Cook