running

flat christmas moment

~ extraplorer ~ 1 Comment

The parents are out.
The nephews and nieces
play elsewhere.
The presents are opened.
The lunch has been eaten.
The papers have been read.
The presents have been
perused.
The calls have been made.
The texts have been sent.
The run has been run.
The sales have been scouted.

It’s not quite dinner.
Etiquette does not yet
demand thank you notes.
No decisions are pending.
No-one else is in the office.
It is silent
beside the fire hush.

Time flattens out,
contours settle and
knots of muddle
unravel into
ordinary peace.
Tea goes cold,
expectation hovers,
then concedes.

Life drifts.

Front door scuffle;
they’re back.

wild night run

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We were wild women
that night, when the
trees waved, whistled
and wove their spectral
shadows in the night.

Howling, a gale
streamed past our
spindly lines. We called
out to each other, another
runner shrieked in my ear.
I jumped higher than you
might think.

Dark, though only
early, but blackest
winter made the
lamplight dim. A
late-walked dog a tripping
hazard that might prove fatal;
the head-torch glare
seared my night-sight.

‘Whole trees in motion,
effort needed to walk
against the wind.’  All
ordinary cares cast
sideways; office politics,
lacklustre lovers, let
loose and hurled about.

An eye, a calm, a
freedom borne of
drama outside the
domestic sphere.
We were wild and
free, we ran faster,
we ran
like the wind.

 

Note: The quotation in the third stanza is the description of ‘land conditions’ for number 7 on the Beaufort scale.  This scale has captivated me since I learnt it as a little girl.  Now I realise this is because it is all poetry:  ‘Large branches in motion. Whistling heard in overhead wires. Umbrella use becomes difficult. Empty plastic bins tip over.’ (number 6, but it wasn’t dramatic enough for the poem).

the double

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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?

routine poetry

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I woke in my bed
voile curtains adrift
at the open window.
Perfect tea.
Absorbed in a magazine
that never disappoints.

I sat in the garden
to eat breakfast –
a courtyard really,
five metres by three,
maximum, all my
flowers are blooming.

I swept; faint scent
of rose petals,
of sweet peas,
which I picked.

I ran at the seaside.
It was easy on the way out,
due to the wind, but I didn’t realise
this at first and thought I
could run faster.

I wrote my journal with
tea in a thermal cup that
tasted – just – of washing up liquid.
I’d used too-old cherries
for the rock bun.

I bathed in the
bath that used to have an
uninterrupted view of sky,
until my neighbour
moved the television aerial.
I try to pretend it is a bird’s
perch.
It’s not often.

I dealt with email;
at the garden table, to
an old friend, after ten years
distance, at least.
His children are grown up.
Clouds sniffed past
cool breezes.

I ironed sheets and
pastel clothes that
wafted comfort,
listening to Chopin.

I wrote a poem.

missed you

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

Dear extraplorer,

I’m home. You may not realised it but I have been away a long time.  I have to tell you that everything I have been doing while I have been away has been very important. I have been working all over the world, helping people to grow. I have been writing at home for weeks, finishing off a book I hope will make a difference to the world, and bring more courage and joy and delight (but will anyone ever read it, I’m not sure). And I’ve been keeping hope alive wondering what someone else is doing in a far away place. I have been cooking and eating and seeing friends and doing pilates and running and sleeping. Sometimes I have crept in here to see you and I have wished that I had something to write here. But all my thoughts have been in my book and all my energy has been on planes and trains and in classrooms, and I have wandered around in my heart but not been ready to share what is in there, not yet.

extraplorer, I miss you, but I am here now, and I will be back. Be patient.

x