Like the chatter
of my father is mixed
with the sunlight
banter of a lazy, Sunday afternoon
and the request of tea,
as soon as he arrives.

“Put the kettle on,’ swerves
towards the kitchen.

He places  a newspaper
over the chair he favours,
its folded creases
to leave behind
a thoughtful reminder
of his visit.

“I thought this might
Interest you,” he smiles,
pointing to himself with
the paper and takes
a silent moment
to peer upwards and
over the garden.

“A sky, to feel good in.’
he declares.

The last words I would
ever share with him,
although I didn’t know
at the time.

The shelf in my room
collects words,
many of them,
and yet,
so really very few
now I think about it.

Although time always
takes life, the messages
of life live through time.

The most enduring
sentences
live on again
underneath and
upon memories
and are beautiful for
being unbound,
just where they’re left.

~ Matt

It’s good to write
down your thoughts,
whether they be
insights or outsights,
notebrambles
or soulrumblings
(which obviously aren’t
all actual words,
but perhaps, could be).

So many wyrdwoods
simply vanish
or go unexplored
when you decide
to put off
jotting them down,
if you believe
they’ve already been
entered into before.

Yet, they mark
the journey
that helps to
establish into being
your conjured,
sapling words
and branching thoughts
as they’re planted
within the mind.

The beauty of it is
that only you
can expresscarise
and grow your own
personal wordwoods,
as only you can do.

Take deep breath,
breathe in,
and then release
the impression of dawn,
while the only motions
are of charcoal night
concluding,
the light turning dew
to a cobalt blue.

To walk silently then
is akin to being
within the
undiscovered, wild sky,
barely before few else
have their fuller senses
to notice it,
or can stir the calls
of rising birds
from their opening songs.

If you’re here early enough
you might witness
emerging through the mist
an owl’s face,
and upon the tips
of one of its wings, dewdrops,
carried away to become
distant, fluid stars.

~

( 5/3/24)

Although, that which
is sought from the past
might sometimes
be a singular, formed cog,
one that if it were to resume
wouldn’t quite move
with the present.

So, inner wheels shifted,
leaving behind
uncollected fragments,

which seamlessly merged to
lighter, cumulus skies
from a train’s window –
above hills curved by streams,
and towards trees made of
wildlife songs, unfamiliar
but somehow all a leaf
and alive with a sense of place.

And it began to dawn
that perhaps some of those
landscapes weren’t mine
to hold onto either.
For I was just passing through
the seams of life stories,
sat between vivid memories
once lived by others.

Maybe, those residual echoes,
they had never been
quite abandoned,
but remained, weathered,
distinct as dry stone walls,
or the murmur of streams
overriding rocks,
interlinked, like a perpetual,
flowing commentary.

And where those
memories that remained
were noticed, cherished
and released once more,
was to be reminded that hope,
connection and everything
else that mattered,
lingered too.

~

Soberly, a seagull swoops
and time stands still,
I’m not a cautious fish,
but it’s all in the moment.

Rockpools are drawn
towards the sea
as tidal torrents turn,
multicoloured starfish shine
an enclosed universe.
It’s all to be discovered.

This, the sheltered cove,
the last beach before I’m grown,
before I wonder
where wonder went.

Lately, there’s an impression
of unfamiliar footprints,
walked over each other,
and I’m uncertain
if they are aren’t mine
and I follow them,
they may lead me off elsewhere.

Clouds moved to the north,
swept the thoughts we carried,
for it’s only what was held
in the moment
that mattered
in that time, and place.

And mirrored against
each breaking wave
we walked the ancient way,
the fond way the moon takes
along the coast
before the sun rises fully,

with conversation told
as shells,
some bright, some fresh,
spiralling into old favourites,
others well, where you could almost
hear the sound of the city
if you listened enough.

It’s sometimes a case
of what you pick up upon
and distance to,
on mornings like that one,
those latter shells
subsiding into an ocean
with a voice just its own.

~

(Beachcomber painting by Rachel Bochnia)

With a mischief
behind its mirrored eyes,
a curious bird,
hops between jumps
to make quite certain
you’ve followed
its steady progress.

And witnessed within
a squirrel’s desire
to be further up,
right there at the treetop,
the resolution
of an unclaimed ambition
runs along relaxed,
and free.

On a robin perched
upon the back of
a garden chair,
a burst of red suddenly lifts
across the sky
in a flight of spirited colour.

And there’s a notion,
an impulse
as the dawn settles between
invisible boundaries,
and sits down beside you,
that your own move,
your own sequence of steps,
your own great ambition
and defining direction,
is also anticipated.

(24.6.23)

unconventional.

Yet, there is light upstairs,
and that is where
the roof,
which should do otherwise,
dives for the stars.

Under a disorderly
meadow’s shadow,
as day topples past noon,
sky a semblance
of some thirty years ago
when eyeline
was just below my knee
and horizon, a sharp grass blade,
wildlife hides
with an occasional scurry,
this field gives a sneeze,
then settles again.

Brow creases,
my mind focuses
on a two century old companion
who runs rings around
my brief trip on this host planet.

Each notch on its bark,
fascination, map lines
for insects to traverse,
the original skyscrapers
and today, I wonder
thinking back,
how many more junctions
life has yet to carve in me.

Now, in this canopied quietness
I stop, listen, feet extended
to where my shoes
lay discarded on the ground,
roots felt through socks
as times when I’ve tripped,
hair leaning against
nature’s memories,
each strand interwoven
with the sway of wildflowers.
Yellow ones under the chin,

“Do you like butter?”
they still ask in a children’s voice.

With the emerald inland sea
all around, I drift
into afternoon,
the sound of wooden oars,
breezed branches
that shift in half closed eyes.
Silhouettes against
the sky’s glare give images
like black and white timbered houses.
and I wonder,
if they have a room for me.

For though I love
this place, I wish
I was somewhere beyond
human perception,
some would call it paradise,
I would call it the light
before the edge of the world.
If only buttercups
held a little more shine
and staying power.

Or perhaps,
not so much an absence,
but rather a distance
that lacked a direction.

Although,
nothing is quite
lost on such passing days,
as downstream
a few sycamore leaves
embraced a fallen branch,
and along with it
an old, buried dream
resurfaced.

Quite how that happened
I don’t know, but
such is the nature
of dreams
it drifted out of sight
before I could fully recall it.

A continuation as it were
of life’s drop-offs,
wayward thoughts and
unexpected dives,
only to leave behind
a trail of light,
shimmering
with the river’s course.

That certainty of knowing
where it was going,
was missing elsewhere.

Yet along the river,
here it pulsed and sped-on
as vibrant as imagination,
for to it, distance and
unrealised dreams
were never an obstacle.