The Unexpected

I regarded this site like an old notebook as forgotten years ago, and to now find I have a site in ‘ready to go’ form is – to change the metaphor – like finding an old car in the shed which starts up and runs with a little coaxing. So now I have found how to sign in I am behind the wheel and ready to dribble drivel over the internet.

A form of diary I suppose, a public diary when I press the button, is it an art form? A good diary can be, like Mr Pepys, but I make no claim on his skills yet nevertheless I find it calming and even company to share my life as comment on a digital rather than paper page.

Two Poplars Gone

A vicious storm, so the weatherman said,

too damn right. And now my fifty footers

lay sadly horizontal.

Grown from two cuttings eight inches long,

twenty years synthesising sunlight into such grand structures,

(I decorated them with climbing roses)

laid low in twenty minutes.

And a chestnut and a willow and countless limbs strewn upon

the battlefield all about their giant trunks.

Strangely they put me in mind of my parents after death.

Mother at 103 was withered, twisted, worn out, a husk.

Father was quite magnificent, a grand old oak of 90 odd summers

laid out in our lounge, boxed, ready to go.

These structures, material energetic spiritual, ceasing to be.