beauty

lost voice weekend

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

Exhaustion?
A sneaky virus on yet another train?
A cold morning run, who knows.
Silence overtakes me;
A sign.

Patience, patience,

Unexpected space
among commitments,
parting a to-do list thicket.
Stillness;
the beech trees hold their
breath too.

Patience dans l’azur.

Aside from life,
days slide into blur.
Voiceless, those with me
whisper back.

Chaque atôme de silence

I give into mystery,
tumble into poetry.

Est la chance d’un fruit mûr.

Wait.

Note: The lines in italics are taken from ‘Palme’ by Paul Valéry,

happy birthday extraplorer

~ extraplorer ~ 1 Comment

Well!  Having been away for a week or so with work, I peeked in on extraplorer today and guess what? A trophy was there to say ‘happy one year anniversary’ to extraplorer blog.  And of course it put me in reflective mode…

One year of extraplorer has brought so much richness to my life.  The little ‘likes’ to my poems have given me so much more confidence about my writing.  The encouragement of poet-eye-view that the possibility of posting creates has caused me to be more intentional about how I see beauty in the world – this has genuinely shaped me to ‘discover more beauty through writing’.

One sadness is not posting as often as I would like.  Today I was thinking about it and wondering if it is even OK to have a blog if your posts are not super-frequent.  The image that came to mind was one of the sea… there are swells and sets and gaps between sets and choppy little waves, and flat calms, but no one says that we should not bother having a sea because it is not consistent.  I think this image is going to help me be more peaceful about posting when I can, and not worrying when I can’t.  This is especially important for me this year of finishing an academic book project, developing my other daily work, often involving traveling overseas, and continuing to pioneer some unique projects (as well as hoping to find love…).

One thing that I sometimes wonder about is whether extraplorer should grow to be about creative living, as well as just my own creative work.  I am not sure?  I am a bit concerned that things which are about ‘how to’ can become restrictive… I like mystery, and don’t want to flatten out the mystery of living too much.  Still not sure…

My hopes for this coming year are to continue to discover even more beauty through writing, to have a poem published, to write more poetry based in the workplace, and to generally explore some of the themes I have already been looking at like ‘things I want to tell my children but might forget’.  I want to create more found poetry in different ways and to just daydream and see what happens.

I want to keep on extraploring…

moonlight conker

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

In the blackness
scuff leaves searching
for autumn treasure,
crouch down
nearer to the ground.
(Risk of being run over.)
Is that a gleam
of brown sheen?
Tipsy with delight,
I dart and seize
a conker.

Note to poem: As a child, conkers were highly prized.  The nearest chestnut tree to our school was inevitably frequented by children who lived nearby, leaving me and my brothers with a much-diminished chance of finding our own unblemished fruit. As an adult, I live near a horse-chestnut tree myself and still feel the wonder of a continual abundance of conkers at all times of day, but especially night.

back to school

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

a nip in the air
that by half past two
will have disappeared leaving
a winter uniform
radiating polyester
heat.

new bag, new pencil case,
new pen, new ruler,
all rigid with first day nerves,
soon will have stories
written all over them.

a freshly made packed lunch
two sandwiches, crisps, an apple,
will not be fully eaten
til day three.

I’ll never be this early for the bus again.

the double

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

The girl who lives
in the house like mine
with the sitting room like mine
and the coffee cup like mine
and the cat like mine
(in my imagination)
and the carpets like mine
and the sofa like mine
(Ercol, again, slight wishful thinking)
and whose presence I have
every time I ran past
her house found
strangely reassuring
(you could see straight in the window
until she frosted the glass)
for the last eight years
has moved.

I am bereft.
Who am I?