Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Poorliness bustles in, tells you to rest. Just like that! Naturally you are annoyed. This is not the space for interruptions. There is no space for interruptions! What, dear stupid, is another word you could use? Poorliness runs a hot hand over your brow, it makes the rest of you feel cold. What? What is an interruption, dear stupid? Can you hit a cough with a thesaurus? This is not helping at all! Interruption is intrusion, obstruction, is discontinuation… is interlude, a pause, hiatus… Like a chrysalis, perhaps? Now drink up your turmeric and cough up some wings. And you think about the cough. There is no regret in the early dark walk, where you saw the moon float in a field puddle. It didn’t matter then that you had forgotten your scarf, you were so rapt. Why does it matter now? This is how the story flows: allow it.

Bloonbloon: plural of balloon. Grandchild 3, hands in the peg box, regards her Granma with elf like composure. She runs and trips into a wet clump of grass. Her hair is rivulets. Rain, frost, thaw and Dog have conspired to make the garden ploppy. Granma retrieves child and pegs.* Sheets fat-belly from the line. Nothing between clouds but blue and sun. ‘Beach?’ ‘Beach!’ ‘Are you a parrot or an elf?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Aha! An elf.’ Grandchild 3 sets her feet on the sand. She runs at the sea with no sense of stop. The sand is paved with footprints. Dog digs them up, looking for her favourite stone. ‘Splash!’ Granma stomps a puddle. ‘Splash splash!’ Little feet are distracted from the surf. Clouds pull in, the wind comes in briny. ‘Do you want to share some soup?’ Granma lures. ‘Share.’ Grandchild 3 holds up her hands for a carry. She eats no soup. Granma has no warm roll nor melted butter. Dog lies under the table, waiting. In the car the little one sings, words and so

Polytunnel In Winter. Limes to the right, sprouts to the left. Mr and me read the sum of our achievements from last year’s signed off accounts. ‘Hmmm…’ (A phrase that should not be translated politely and thus is left as is.) One of us fills the kettle. Monsters stick with you, they are not just for childhood. They slick along the sidelines, breathing warmth into doubtful blooms. No escape is found in the winter garden. Under perspex shelter the lime has dropped its fruit. A wall of rain compounds the isolation. Why are we here? In this sad and beautiful place? One finger reaches out to trace the shape of a leaf. Imagines, gently, that this is the colour, perhaps the same curve, as a monster’s head? Smiles, then. Are they as you wish them, these slinking fears? Three times, four times? We have lost a home, made a new place for ourselves. It has been close. This feels close: teeth at heels. A sprout is pinched from a stem and crunched. There was a samurai, the

Between the window and the bright sun is a heavy curtain of rain. Each drop falls shining. The ground becomes unstable, feet unable to direct, everything askance. Snow settles, makes mountain peaks out of  high moorland. Darkness snuggles down; unsettled snow flies under it, throws itself into adventures. What is best about cars in heavy weather: the view, un-squinted. As the moors pass, snow frequency lulls. Swirls in fine polkadots dance. Beyond this the sky whites with lightening, strikes awe. This morning hail stones, part melt, gather frogspawn-ish on a windscreen. They have a particular coldly weighted slump as the wipers clear. The view is grey-blue, ice-smeared, flat as a screen.

As winter moved in, so too the spiders. They had favoured the bathroom, redecorating corners with grey trails of silk. Little beady black species was superseded by the leggy danglers, the ones that swing in close proximity, as though trading gossip. Possibly about the mysterious slump in the population of the little beady black spiders? Do arachnids burp? House-spiders are shy this year, they blush behind furniture until we sleep: then who knows? Perhaps they make themselves tea and toast, switch on the lamp, perch up spectacles and read, crossing a few legs, passing opinion on local events. (Just because they’re cannibals does not mean that they are uncivilised.) Moths had called by and eaten part of Mr’s most comfortable trousers. Perhaps we do not understand their fashions: perhaps they had tried to make lace? Was it them that woke the butterfly? It is perplexing, yes, this inability to pursue understanding, yet in the margin for error is room to spin. I ask the ba

For a moment, a wrong thing happens: a brow furrows up, a mind goes looking for a subject. Ha! Stillness arrives, like a round stone on a flat surface will pivot to stillness. Like a surprised pond will absorb ripple. This is how. Not immobile. Receptive. Not pursuant. An absorber. Not malcontent, rather there is something to learn, always. To practice. While the everyday occurs; a beer bottle left on a windowsill, a curious dog looks in a mirror; it occurs, it reoccurs. Not every day. This day.

An awareness of time, of where we pinpoint ourselves, this is the river stepped into, the daily scenery of our selves, the constant-same-old, ever-changing-flux. The scenic route, I have lived. Backdrop, it is not. Down by the Tamar, the real river adds umph to the metaphysics. It pounds like a muddy headache, thrills by speed, shoulders its boundaries aside. Ever newer waters, the old philosopher said? Flow on those who step in to their rivers. Heraclitus, who died of misanthropy, if the tales are true. He survives in fragments. I observe the river. Recall the rain cycle. This river, that cloud. This river, my blood. Your blood. Our stars, crossed or co-existent. Impermanent, always. The universe is us.