October Alder - owning my sway
Ian M
Posts: 123
Pilgrims Way
meet me on the corner of
Pilgrims Way
and while trying to avoid mud-staining our undersoles and the clothing we can no longer afford to wash
we’ll see how the trees have sprung their boughs in liquid movement like the flight of the finch alighting on its tallest branch;
we’ll find how neglected the land has become by the apprentice deities of self-disappointment who choose instead to rub the temples of their own important problems of consumption;
we’ll learn how parents of all kinds across the land are praying for their offspring to be born ugly or malformed in order that they might be spared the rapacious plunder of their inherited resource;
we’ll smile and greet the lone dog-walkers as they pass us by in wary acceptance.
They have grown accustomed to being the sole markers of these trails.
Their houses are in the foothills, fenced off from their own kind in the lowerlying valley, but open to the sprawling shadow descending from the chalk rises above them.
we’ll come hard-facedly alive in respond to the aghast autumn wind and the voice of its rasping warmth in the trees. We will come alive with a carnal joy deep within the austere glare of our eyes – from where it cannot be swept away.
and we shall slip and slide over the moist earth down into the wooded crook and retrace the paths of ancient rivers now thickly carpeted with welcoming leaves of brown and grey and yellow and black, and ochre reds and dull greens.
and we will tread softly to avoid disturbing the calm beneath the swirling eddies of violence in the treetops.
and we shall marvel, bent almost double at the concentric spirals of sudden succinct mounds, and laugh as our urine disturbs tiny insects about their business at the base of a stubby tree.
and we shall stand contemplatively before the old radio masts after gigglingly vaulting dilapoutdated stiles in the sudden warmth of a patch of sun.
and through a black passageway revealed to us by a turn in the path, we will journey beneath the skirts of berry-laden deciduates.
There we will find sunstarved gnarling windfall death and coarse patches of bramble at times too thickly twined to penetrate.
Our path will be similarly out of joint and a great, silent fatigue will fall on us to remind of the hearths and homes we left behind.
Our jokes and good cheer will be tense and forced beneath the blanket of prickly decay. But the times we think we can go no further will soon be outnumbered by the glimpses through the branches of brighter destinations to come.
and so we will descend into lower lands, a light rain slowly unbraiding the twigs from our hair as we set about the even distribution of so many hitchhiking seeds from our coats to the sides of the re-discovered pathway;
we will follow a gentle undulation away from the greater heights, veering off the path to follow the prints of unshod hooves churning in the moistening mud;
we will find ourselves in a lush green untrampled for many years with clouds of dark grey-blue rushing over our heads pelting us with heavy, cold drops.
and the sun will shimmer through at the close of its day over the gentle incline of a far-off ridge.
songs will be in our hearts, ecstatic smiles on our faces as we stand tall in motionless awe.
after the last of the clouds has stormed over us both, revealing a deep azure blue to lose ourselves staring into, we will look behind us at the arc of distance we have traversed to behold a vast rainbow stretching thinly, solidly over perhaps an equal measure.
it will be our reward
October 4th 2006
It was the morning; a cold morning
The latest of many mornings I had seen
Funny: I used hardly ever to see an hour
earlier than 9 or so except on the exceptional occasion
(In my previous lines of work and higher education)
Now hardly a day goes by when I do not forsake
the more productive later hours in order to be well fortified
for early labour the following day.
There’s never any in between, is there.
The first day of a chill in Autumn
And my shadow stretches from
A horizon at my feet,
Extending the boundary whose slant
Naturally is falling from my door
To cast the air in briskness
Into which the musty cold may march
To be gladly heartened
El Niño
El Niño, you were our brother
Who we greeted every four or five years,
Making room to accommodate your return:
Whether in good or bad temper
A civil coexistance could always be found
‘El Niño,’ that’s not your real name
But one bestowed you by those of no knowledge
Who came from the further reaches
And were thus unable to recognise the family line,
Uncomprehending when they say your face
They treat us like the children:
We who grew up in you presence from the very beginnings
While they turn in prayer for your clemency
And rage an impotent fury when not getting their way.
These people survey only to control and harness to their own ends
And I’ve watched them sounding you out, my brother.
Their eyes light up to see your immense and destructive power
But they care not for the familial nurture that is its antithesis and foil
El Niño, we cannot call you by your forgotten name
Nor do we secretly crave your unrecognised anger;
Being unwelcomed upon the return to your eastern home.
But remember us who ever awaited your rains’ return;
We who knew to accept your gifts, and in turn to offer up our own.
no one understands
and why should they?
they don’t know shit
and they won’t be taught;
won’t know the danger,
won’t be fraught
They are Those for whom
You can have no time
much as they have none for you
so few will choose to understand
by their own accord
Must they then be forced
in a Discord to the spirit of their time?
True Story – as typed one evening, October, on a piano stool
My baby left a message on my machine
Said she was going to karaoke with some girl friends
To celebrate her birthday
I got the message only after getting back around seven-ish from walking in the hills
It told me something more than what was in the words by themselves
The message I received was that we no longer have anything to say to one another
I called up to make my excuses, wished her a pleasant evening and a happy birthday
Saying I’d give her my present tomorrow.
I hung up the phone sadly, made myself some sandwiches
Thinking how sublimely ridiculous it all was
And how it was always going to be this way
With Lady Luck coming over only to squat on my coffee table
I took a bottle out of the drinks cabinet,
Reclined in front of the TV with an old mustard pot in my hand,
Poured my first glass of port and took a bite out of a bitter bar of chocolate.
meet me on the corner of
Pilgrims Way
and while trying to avoid mud-staining our undersoles and the clothing we can no longer afford to wash
we’ll see how the trees have sprung their boughs in liquid movement like the flight of the finch alighting on its tallest branch;
we’ll find how neglected the land has become by the apprentice deities of self-disappointment who choose instead to rub the temples of their own important problems of consumption;
we’ll learn how parents of all kinds across the land are praying for their offspring to be born ugly or malformed in order that they might be spared the rapacious plunder of their inherited resource;
we’ll smile and greet the lone dog-walkers as they pass us by in wary acceptance.
They have grown accustomed to being the sole markers of these trails.
Their houses are in the foothills, fenced off from their own kind in the lowerlying valley, but open to the sprawling shadow descending from the chalk rises above them.
we’ll come hard-facedly alive in respond to the aghast autumn wind and the voice of its rasping warmth in the trees. We will come alive with a carnal joy deep within the austere glare of our eyes – from where it cannot be swept away.
and we shall slip and slide over the moist earth down into the wooded crook and retrace the paths of ancient rivers now thickly carpeted with welcoming leaves of brown and grey and yellow and black, and ochre reds and dull greens.
and we will tread softly to avoid disturbing the calm beneath the swirling eddies of violence in the treetops.
and we shall marvel, bent almost double at the concentric spirals of sudden succinct mounds, and laugh as our urine disturbs tiny insects about their business at the base of a stubby tree.
and we shall stand contemplatively before the old radio masts after gigglingly vaulting dilapoutdated stiles in the sudden warmth of a patch of sun.
and through a black passageway revealed to us by a turn in the path, we will journey beneath the skirts of berry-laden deciduates.
There we will find sunstarved gnarling windfall death and coarse patches of bramble at times too thickly twined to penetrate.
Our path will be similarly out of joint and a great, silent fatigue will fall on us to remind of the hearths and homes we left behind.
Our jokes and good cheer will be tense and forced beneath the blanket of prickly decay. But the times we think we can go no further will soon be outnumbered by the glimpses through the branches of brighter destinations to come.
and so we will descend into lower lands, a light rain slowly unbraiding the twigs from our hair as we set about the even distribution of so many hitchhiking seeds from our coats to the sides of the re-discovered pathway;
we will follow a gentle undulation away from the greater heights, veering off the path to follow the prints of unshod hooves churning in the moistening mud;
we will find ourselves in a lush green untrampled for many years with clouds of dark grey-blue rushing over our heads pelting us with heavy, cold drops.
and the sun will shimmer through at the close of its day over the gentle incline of a far-off ridge.
songs will be in our hearts, ecstatic smiles on our faces as we stand tall in motionless awe.
after the last of the clouds has stormed over us both, revealing a deep azure blue to lose ourselves staring into, we will look behind us at the arc of distance we have traversed to behold a vast rainbow stretching thinly, solidly over perhaps an equal measure.
it will be our reward
October 4th 2006
It was the morning; a cold morning
The latest of many mornings I had seen
Funny: I used hardly ever to see an hour
earlier than 9 or so except on the exceptional occasion
(In my previous lines of work and higher education)
Now hardly a day goes by when I do not forsake
the more productive later hours in order to be well fortified
for early labour the following day.
There’s never any in between, is there.
The first day of a chill in Autumn
And my shadow stretches from
A horizon at my feet,
Extending the boundary whose slant
Naturally is falling from my door
To cast the air in briskness
Into which the musty cold may march
To be gladly heartened
El Niño
El Niño, you were our brother
Who we greeted every four or five years,
Making room to accommodate your return:
Whether in good or bad temper
A civil coexistance could always be found
‘El Niño,’ that’s not your real name
But one bestowed you by those of no knowledge
Who came from the further reaches
And were thus unable to recognise the family line,
Uncomprehending when they say your face
They treat us like the children:
We who grew up in you presence from the very beginnings
While they turn in prayer for your clemency
And rage an impotent fury when not getting their way.
These people survey only to control and harness to their own ends
And I’ve watched them sounding you out, my brother.
Their eyes light up to see your immense and destructive power
But they care not for the familial nurture that is its antithesis and foil
El Niño, we cannot call you by your forgotten name
Nor do we secretly crave your unrecognised anger;
Being unwelcomed upon the return to your eastern home.
But remember us who ever awaited your rains’ return;
We who knew to accept your gifts, and in turn to offer up our own.
no one understands
and why should they?
they don’t know shit
and they won’t be taught;
won’t know the danger,
won’t be fraught
They are Those for whom
You can have no time
much as they have none for you
so few will choose to understand
by their own accord
Must they then be forced
in a Discord to the spirit of their time?
True Story – as typed one evening, October, on a piano stool
My baby left a message on my machine
Said she was going to karaoke with some girl friends
To celebrate her birthday
I got the message only after getting back around seven-ish from walking in the hills
It told me something more than what was in the words by themselves
The message I received was that we no longer have anything to say to one another
I called up to make my excuses, wished her a pleasant evening and a happy birthday
Saying I’d give her my present tomorrow.
I hung up the phone sadly, made myself some sandwiches
Thinking how sublimely ridiculous it all was
And how it was always going to be this way
With Lady Luck coming over only to squat on my coffee table
I took a bottle out of the drinks cabinet,
Reclined in front of the TV with an old mustard pot in my hand,
Poured my first glass of port and took a bite out of a bitter bar of chocolate.
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thank you