Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Lead limbs drop in a hot bath. Water slops to the overflow. Steam hangs like a sigh, sticks to the mirror. Incursions of night air, from a thin line of open window, touch cold on heated skin, hold off the tendency to sleep. Floating and sleeping slip together, too easily. Spiders and flies make a tapestry, on the white square of ceiling; spin a warning.  Plug un-nested; drains out dirt and somniferous danger. Weight returns, reluctantly. A towel wrapped shadow, in the fogged mirror, slowly combs wet hair. 

Poor 'nice', poor over used, beaten up, inoffensive word. Privately one can use it, but publicly it draws ridicule. It has a taint of helplessness. Add a solid fist, a bag of grit, a pan of glowing cinders; knock off some flimsy pink and sugar: I wish I could recover this word. I would make a nuptial present of it: I know just the people for it. This is what I'm thinking, staring at a blank manila surface, reaching for a pen. What I'm smiling about, as glue and glitter are smeared barehanded onto folded cardboard. Put the card in the sun to dry- nice weather for it. The word is jumping at my heels. So, Dan and Anna, if you are wondering, that's what your wedding card is all about. 

Look to the window, momentarily released from a writing trance. Ten minutes may have passed, or a decade. I check the calendar and a watch. Most of two days, it turns out. I think Boy went to school and we had meals, and other things like flying side kicks with Launceston Young Farmers, like playing in the nursery sandpit with Baby, like brief glimpses of star spattered sky and rippled cloud. But, for the most part, I've been somewhere between 1972 and 1977, between Bristol and Bodmin Moor. The window is the room, backwards and blurred by double glazing. It's October 19th, 2012, it's nearly half past ten at night. Just for distracting fun, I pull out an old notebook from the desk shelf. My handwriting used to be so neat. Here is what I read: The spark that removes you from the 'doctrine of perpetual flux.' When everything changes and you change, and you perpetually move. Your head spins. Centrifuge breaks you up, no hand holds, no connection. Wit

Before the storm started up, something reminiscent of a hand mirror shone in the sky: sat in a dip of salmon coloured cloud, too still for a satellite, it could have been a star. Between the star and the pending storm, the river geese are set a-flap. An apex of them echoes our roof, turns back to the river. Lively improvising wind devises trumpety old car horn noises from the forgotten tv aerial: gets a round of applause, after I stop looking for the old car altercation. From the window also see dead branches on the fat trunked ash, dangerously reanimated. Takes my mind off the trouble I'm having with hyperlinks. Every step on the list- ticked. Works fine until I upload it- is lost in translation. Again! Stormy words and childish renunciations- this is stupid, like everything is when you can't understand it. After work, waiting for Mr, I stand in the shivery wind, on pitchblacked tarmac. Everything is rain drenched, except the rustle of leaves above; internal desi

Into town for an hour, for serious tasks, such as banking (using financial formula: take money from a , feed b ) and acquiring car fuel. Smuggled under my grey suit jacket, a lining of cerise pink satin. Blatant polka dots on a scarf. Home to my red and mud coat, home and out: here strolls me, there pelts Dog, through the clasped hand angles of the woods. Under the shaded steep slopes, a hundred tunnels lead to a hundred underground lives: tentacles of a terrestrial alien city. Out from branches, ferns, brambles, crisp fallen leaves, out to the furthest field, to a prairie of stalks: here strolls me, there pelts Dog; soft rain touches, hears my plea for the washing on the line, moves on. In the hedge, in warm wraps of sun, bright pops of ripe strawberry.  This is Strawberry Pig- most famous berry I ever picked 

In a flaming flurry of writing, searching out character notes that I put down here: breath, dear lady, breath- ah, there they are- now laugh at yourself- now, what's this? Ariel font? Rhyming couplets? Ah, yes, laugh with yourself. You wrote this, you remember, it was a show for children about the pitfalls of ambition and the joys of friendship. You wrote: Here's a story writ to warn us Of the hungry eagle and the envious tortoise All day long the birds he watched But tortoise on the ground was stuck -Ah, he longed so much to fly so free Good sense is replaced by rivalry 'I challenge you to teach me to fly,' He nagged at the eagle till by and by A free lunch opportunity The peckish eagle comes to see The bird complies, 'Oh very well,' And grabs poor tortoise by the shell 'Spread your wings!' the eagle mocks And drops poor tortoise on the rocks -He learnt his lesson all too late Eagle fodder was his fate If you

The day is a reflection of me; fields are contemplatively quiet, sky is grey and blue. Mud buffers each boot. I even wonder what to write of, today, and I know that isn't how this works. Words find me, I am their roost. In my mind, a dull settling. Overhead, a pheasant, thoroughly annoyed. I see the ornamental silhouette, too late for the camera to be pulled to action. Perfect time to remember the camera. Dog appears, another perfect timing, wagging her tail as though to check her brilliant diversionary plan has worked. The illusion of collusion. Now I am smiling, not thinking, work turns back to play. Here is light, here is shadow, here is the vast spread of turned earth, the warm fertile loosened earth. Run my hands through dried grass seeds, a shimmy of a noise. The beginning of music, I think, where things touch, and speak to the air of that meeting.