Tree Thoughts

Take what you will

From this mood, or air

At first it is uplifting

Until further contemplation

Reveals an indiscriminate sky

And trees, bare without leaves

Yet wait, are not the hedgerows

Tinged with a purple maroon

As though life itself

Was reaching out to spring

When love may well again

Be found there on every corner

With the scents and the stimulations

Of roses in bloom, and

Skipped steps around the maypole

And did I not see a hint

Of light copper in that clutch

Of fine branches, set bright

Against the fading grey

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Driving The Self-Indulgent Imagination

I drive into the mist

The trees stand as silhouettes

Enticing me into their magical playground

I drive into the blue sky

The jet-trails evaporate

Encouraging me to think of restful vacations

The female singer's voice

Triggers my mind to send impulses

That then wildly stimulate my erogenous zones

It is as though her very rasp of timbre

Is as an expression of thigh on bare thigh

A simulation of those undressing steps to the love-ground

This time it was Tanita Tikaram

With Valentine Heart from her Ancient Heart Album

But it could just have easily been Liza Minnelli

With that album she had recorded by The Pet Shop Boys

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Dining Out

The darker shadow shows off the lighter shadow more distinctly. It suggests to me that the purpose is more to do with those around you, rather than it is to do with ourselves. And so I take the pan fried salmon, with rocket salad, in order to keep my health on the right track.

I am in the hotel where I have stayed before; they don't read John Ashberry here but I have brought a book by Doris Lessing. The barman does not stand well, though he his a youngish man, but obviously both bored and not well versed in etiquette or deportment. However if a brawl should ensue I would choose to be on his side, he might have played for the county at rugby, or been a bouncer for Billy Connolly.

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Truth & Friendship

We told each other stories:

He spoke of the petrified fell walker who was stuck on the precipice. Even though my friend was there with his thirteen year old son he took time to talk and coerce the climber who had frozen on the edge of the shear peak. Back at the hotel the climber told my friend’s wife that her husband had saved his life for certain.

My story had less depth of detail yet it also concerned the power of the mind. I was driving my son, who I was collecting after he had visited his friends at Hull university. From the very point of picking him up I gradually convinced myself that I was going to drive off the Humber Bridge.

I referred to Billy Joe McAllister and the Tallahassee bridge, my friend told me the name of the song and the singer. He also said the mind could be a particularly powerful beast. Let's hope it's not another two years until we meet again, in the Hall Garth hotel sauna. 

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Final Walk

Drawn from the words

How absurd still to reach out for you

Driving by kerbs aching to impeach the truth

You, my one love, so long in the making

You, my one heart, so strong in the braking

Ten years of loss to blame

On that the day of saddest of blue

Glad-rags packed away, off to bleach the blackest hue

The hurt is deep, although more so the longing

The ache goes on, increasing also the non-belonging

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