Not Warming,

My first piece of writing on here for a while, I have stopped travelling so much, and time is full of work and commute. I am trying to keep all my time together and use it well.

Storm Classification

What happens when we use up all the names
for storms that whipcrack race to us
across the Atlantic?

Ready to lift trees, roots and most of our life.
We weather the storm, the ground opened
and the push pull vacuum.

We weather the clawing at the windows,
scoured walls, pock-marked by debris
as the dust settles to a silence, a wait.

Here now the milk moon is clear sky bright
and full to drag the tides high, to drag us all
into pitiless grayscale light.

We are such poor shadows without the sun,
in the new silence of un-named storms.
We stand and watch on opened ground,

waiting for rain that clears the sky,
breaks the shadow hold on watchers
hidden in the doorways. Waiting for spring

and the tidal race we find the world 
has turned her back on us. The weather is coming,
and the world turns with the coming storm.

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There’s a Storm in the Air

Storm Eunice is heading our way, so we are bracing ourselves for the windiest day of the year. I know, it’s only February but hey. It’s going to be a big one. I took advantage of finishing early today to go get some images of an abandoned caravan on my way home. Just a few shots but I like them.

I’ve been slowly getting back to writing over the last few months and on Saturday we will be holding the first in person meeting of our poetry group since lockdown began two years ago, it will I hope be successful. I am struggling with my current piece, part the end of something, part cathartic, it comes and goes. Each change brings ideas and fears. Do I want to write this? Can I finish it to make it work for others as well as myself. We’ll see.

I hope no-one has any problems with Eunice. Stay safe out there.

Torquay Dark

A walk around the back streets of any town can be moody and atmospheric, some places though seem to have it in spades. Torquay here and now, from the South of the USA in Miami last time, to the South coast of England this time. Just a few images, hand-held at night but the High ISO works the effect well I think.

Passageway to the cliffs.

A haven of light.

Closed, go the other way.

Timetables vary.

Behind the High Street.

The light just emphasises the dark.

A way out perhaps.

Some places just need a little love.

Going where?

A cold and lonely pier.

The lights are on, but…

When you see these places, slanted by my vision to match some style I am trying to create, you might wonder about the place. The reality is we create the mood as we explore, the editing, the crops and pulling the image into some sort of notion. That’s us, me as the photographer, just because it’s digital now doesn’t mean it is different to how it was in some halcyon day of film and darkroom. The image has always been manipulated by the creator or designer to fit some idea we have in our minds eye.

A Fragment of How It Is

That physical skin to skin touch of a hand,
only the ghost of it in a call.
An empty chair in a restaurant,
willing itself to be someone.

Space, amid the noise, silence.
Tomorrow I will be home,
Tonight I am…

All you travelling people, be safe, and look around you. Enjoy the visit.

Streets of Home.

Looking around my home town. Watching the life, trying to see everything. I have a feeling I’m missing so much. So much to see and so many things to do.

The Steps Down to the Sea.

In his book The Art of Travel, Alain De Botton tries to explain why we feel restless, and then when we get to the place that will solve all our troubles there is no difference. The essence of course is us ourselves, we are still there, here, carrying it all with us. It is a good book to read by the way, I would recommend it. So one thing he wants people to do is to walk around your local space, and see it with a strangers eyes. I have been trying to do that ever since I read the book.

Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

The Old Bandstand.

Spotted.

I’m trying to keep up with my writing, at the moment it is a slow process, there only seems to be so much room for thinking. Work, and the mental capacity I use up crowds out the words. But I am fighting back, I have started meeting with two local writers, to look over and offer proofreading, comments about form, content, and how we feel about their work. I enjoy the feedback, and the way it is freely given, sometimes it’s hard to look at your own writing with sufficient separation.

Street Singer.

I’m still taking pictures as you can see and have been featured on the website of our local paper, The Weston Mercury so that is good.

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So here I am, looking and re-writing, this is the after.

Old Stone Words

The Grey Wethers, Dartmoor

Going back to old words, older than any I have spoken,
old enough to have never been written.
Lines and circles, knowledge stones
marking the landscape that has become
empty of the trees that made it what it was.

Bridges across water, across the ideas of places,
leading to other words left behind,
of such weight we no longer carry them
with us in our pocket as we do now.
Words of such heft we set them in stone.

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Thanks to Jim and Melanie for their help. These are the stones Melanie 🙂

Christmas Lights.

I told you I would be back with something happier. Well here it is, hopelessly cheesy and ready for the season. I hope you all have a great time over Xmas.

Christmas Lights.

There is always time to wait,
for the time to start is not like Christmas Day
or Christmas Eve and fixed in place by calendar
and custom. First there must be the tree, alive,
scented and ready for us to arrive.

A balancing act of seeing and not looking,
just arriving when it is ready to be taken.
A brief moment of circling and standing,
of height and girth, and space.

Space is always important for a Christmas tree,
for the hanging of jewels, of tinsel and lights
because tradition is only built with age.
With the slow growth of time and together,
and the final tradition that is remembered.

No more waiting now, it is here, dressed
in finery better than the night sky,
and the lights are ready, the new treasure
hung from a limb to be seen first
and with the room dark, the star,

the final piece placed above the tree
as tradition and memory call for.
Then the lights are switched on,
with the room naked and alone. With
this tree, everything is ready to begin.

A room, scented with a tree
lit dimly from inside.
Now it is time to start.