Open daily until noon throughout winter months Jack is out again. Freezing this scene in time and space Painting ice on ice with his sable fingers. In plein air he does his work. Unencumbered with cut down kit. Quickly he washes in with cold crystal palette reduced to white and pale cyan. All night he creates his landscapes then stands back at dawn to witness sun add sparkle, twinkle and twisting creak to his pop up exhibition.
Rooks Ten thousand it seems, explode out of the tree and fling themselves against the biting wind. Acrobat clowns pushing, tumbling with their clan. Laughing at each other with rasping banter. Kids flying out of school tugging and pinching with v-neck jumpers on back to front and inside out. Reckless? Irresponsible? to ride the thermal when your food is a thousand feet below. Are lives not too hard for this madcap display? Too little time before dark and survival through the long winter night. “It is our way,” they caw. “We ride the wind to feel our freedom.” “Spin our yarns to let our children know they live.” I stand transfixed, and am compelled to ponder when last I laughed uncontrollably with friends?
Thoughts Memories like shadows fade in and out, as clouds skitter across a mid day sun. Some lucid as red, a big, lopsided lump of chocolate birthday cake. Others languid, pale milk thinning as it runs down a baby’s chin. Where did they go? those toddlers who chased round the garden beds. Swept up by the tick of the clock and pressed, waving into the past.
Comet Long hair’d star. High void drifter. Solar orbiter. Let us cast dreams together, that you will catch in your tail, and freeze in ice. Keep them safe round your cosmic journey. Until your return. Then shower their hope in silver asteroids to our grandchildren’s children. Who will pick them up, and be the change we have failed to be.
Tracks Tracks through snow reveal two creatures shared this route. Travellers on the same path briefly before they trod their separate ways A world shared but understood by each quite differently. One flowing in symbiotic harmony. Feeling. The Dao. The other tight as a fist. Forcing. Yang without Yin. A balance upturned until a time they find their way back To share a path one lost some time ago.
Pickers Low tide, receded with the moon. Soon it will return to cover up this field. Ebbed. Crop left, high and dry. Just three piles of baskets lay empty where they were beached. Will they return with the flood? when the sun has done it’s round. Back to trawl a harvest through. Asparagus becoming fern, unloved, like the pickers, gone home now, washed out on the turning tide.
Comoonication Find the moon and we shall speak, un-met. For we may share the moon, break bread and talk ‘til sunrise.
Two Lanterns Sun Impaled In branches Trickles daytime Down beneath the earth Dark Moon Up high Push pulls the Sun through night to Rise again at dawn Light
All poems ©️ Mick Scott. If you’d like your poetry to be featured on a Sunday, in any or many languages, drop Your Editrix a line.
