● Lady Percy moves me - might she move you? CLICK TO FIND OUT
● Plus my novels, stories, verse, vulgar interests, apologies, and singing.
● Most posts are 300 words. I respond to all comments/re-comments.
● See Tone Deaf in New blogger.


Thursday 25 March 2021

On scribble


Verse for looking back on the pandemic

Again, again, slow-flowing afternoons,
The sun a drug, the Morris coffee mug
At risk between my cumbrous finger-tips:
I dare not break it now, so late in life.

The Gard(y)an strewn, both front and back,
Absorbed, as on a soporific tide
I’m eased towards the shallow bays of sleep,
Wherein I’ll wake and reckon I’m seduced.

But earlier that day a different world,
A conflict of familiarity,
L’s novel which I felt I had to write,
Concerns a woman with a tale to tell.

Those gristle words, I’ve chewed them endlessly,
They may have lost all juice they ever had,
All novelty, all chance of dark surprise,
Chanting a dirge of dull uncertainty.

And yet, and yet, L is my gift, my love,
She strives as I strive for some clarity, 
Too strong, too quick to simply fade away,
Too permanent within my hollow skull.

Outside there’s Plague but I am armoured now,
And I may doze or write a line of prose
Or find a rhyme as lo! I find I’ve done,
Or, evening time, pour out some pricey booze.

I’m lucky, and that’s not always the case
With age, more like a vacancy.
But I have sunned and worked this word machine
And passed some time in staying – well! – alive.

5 comments:

  1. Staying alive nowadays is my greatest source of gratitude. I find each day I awake seductive. Just thinking about about seeing another sunrise or listening to the morning serenade of all other life outside my windows makes my brain sing "Hurry sunrise, see what tomorrow brings!"

    I appreciate your poetry; thanks.

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  2. uh...that should have been, "Hurry sundown."

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    Replies
    1. Crow: Thanks for that. This verse refers to a very special form of sleep - dozing in the afternoon. I know I shouldn't do it, that it will leave me awake at nights; yet slipping away into that very shallow and dreamless form of unsconsciousness, where one may still hear the sounds of wakefulness in the near vicinity, is almost irresistible. VR often calls out to wake me, but with the best of motives. Were the bone china mug, with the William Morris pattern, to slip away and break I would be heart-broken. More conflict.

      Delete
  3. I am raising a glass of quality ale to the line:
    Those gristle words, I’ve chewed them endlessly,

    Prost!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Zu Schwer: Raising, but are you drinking? I jest, I jest. Thanks for that.

    ReplyDelete