work

overheard joys

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‘Oooooh!’ ‘wooosh!’
‘Look at you!’ A
grandmother neighbour
greets her family
in the street outside
my house.
Laughter percolates
towards my bedroom
window. I hear the pause
of hugs exchanged.

On the café table
next to me, two
cashmere women
discuss a favourite
dancing show, the merits
of the ‘last man standing’,
the northern darling, the
East end lass, the tinkling
delight of little girls
let loose in dressing up
clothes. I feel their
inner twirling.

Returning from a
conference, three women
(unusual in Eurostar
Standard Premier class)
tease a colleague. Tall
tales, tender taunting,
their warm laughter
embraces the whole
carriage, washes me
with gladness.

We are a humanity of
constant hopes and tears,
and yet in streets, and
trains and
public places, there is,
it seems,
for a moment,
more than enough
joy to go round.

 

 

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…

back to school

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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 schedule

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my day was
scheduled to death.
every slot too small to
fit a human.
I had to hope
that no-one had any
curiosity left in them.
or everything would
fall apart.

I was lucky;
they had all forgotten
what life was –
if they ever knew.
obediently they toed the
schedule line,
retrieved themselves from
exuberance.
someone had bad news from from home,
regrouped in a
coffee break,
swallowed sadness and
cappuccino straight down,
got back in the game.

all around us autumn beauty
unfolded steady as a
queen.
we had four point five minutes
in which to walk to the river and back;
by then numb to it all,
I can see it like a photo,
feel nothing.

I don’t know if I can
do this anymore.

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