Splash

Small waves on a small beach at Lepe, New Forest National Park.

(c) A McN

Night Cycling

Weaving through the dark
with a faint wheel-whirring
no louder than the treadle of a sewing machine
I thread a white light before me,
a red light behind me.

This is my flying carpet
I ride the wind silent as an owl;
the air parts to let me through.

Merely for the joy of motion,
I abandon straight lines,
tacking in short needless curves
like a zigzag stitch.

Lamp posts advance and recede,
casting doppler-shifting shadows
that knit and purl around me.

Black road unrolls by the yard.
The sky is sequined velvet
where the stars shine down.

Orion stands defiant in the east,
straddling houses in a single stride;
but underneath his proud and lofty looks
he longs to have
a bike to ride.

(c) A McN

Keeping up

And sometimes I seem to be
someone else when thoughts and
feelings wax and wane
like the watching moon.

I consider how I change;
tracing the dark mark of the poorly aimed hammer as it slides from
nailbed to nailtip at the speed of
a lumbering continent.

A few short months and all my skin and nails are new.
A few short years and hair and bone
have followed suit.

I am a surfer following a wave of life
riding a body that is never twice the same;
like the surf curling through the water or wind billowing through a barley-field.

Small wonder then
that sometimes I surprise myself
with inconsistencies of mood and inconsistencies of thought.

Forgive me.

Though I change no faster than
a speeding continent
I still struggle to keep up.

(c) A McN

Meditative

Taken at MonkeyWorld in Dorset.

(c) A McN

Without

I went out at night,
wilfully unprepared.
without torch,
without phone,
without purpose,
without plan;
save that of being vulnerable enough
to receive the things
from which I normally hide.

Engine switches off…….silence.
Lights off next……. darkness.

Opening the door,
face-tingling cold damp air waterfalls
into the warm car cocoon.
But I am going out.

The sky dark with night and mist and black cloud brooding.
The bridlepath a tunnel of grasping tree fingers groping to touch me
and a breeze blowing through dead leaves;
tumbling them down with a skeleton rattle.

Everywhere, the silence quivers.
Rats breathing, mice creeping, owls calling.
Hidden eyes watch me.
Ears turn to follow me.

Mouse whiskers twitch among the leaves.
Mist whispers in the trees; seethes through ragged branches.

All senses are alert.
I walk slowly enough to be silent,
slowly enough to be unnoticed,
slowly enough to force my heartbeat down.

Time and space distort in darkness.
Trees are airy, eerie geometries enclosing
fractal shapes that shift between dimensions
depending on light, fear and imagination.

But strangeness electrifies.
Every sense is amplified by darkness,
fingering new feelings I never felt before.

I sense the silt of history stirring in the breeze
and phantom memories uncurling in the misted wind.
Long dead shepherds mutter together,
bringing long dead sheep down for the night.

Beyond them the landscape flickers like an ancient film as
woodlands come and go, wolves howl at the moon and far behind,
the mammoths lumber through;
ice frosting the wrinkles on their elephantine skin.

This is the moment of connection.
Time and space flex with elastic ease
and the mystery of life's feisty pilgrimage
hangs heavy in the autumn air.

It only deepens as the decades into aeons run
and standing in the darkness of an autumn night I see
That I will nourish worms one day
wthout diminishing
the miracle of me.

(c) A McN

Grazing

Horses on Plaitford Common, New Forest National Park.

Volcano

In your raging
words came spilling out in
torrents of white-hot anger.
It was like standing
on the edge of a vent
when the volcano is erupting
and you know you are going to get hurt.

But in this way it was different..
I could see that deep inside the magma chamber,
deeper than a man could reach,
there was a raw pain whose shape escaped you
but whose heat boiled underground
from origins beyond the span of memory and
times before your conscious world began.

Oh that time might take those wounds
and cool them in the cradled arms of love.
Oh that the sting of burning lava might
crystallise to strength of solid rocks
then weather down to wisdom's rich fertility.
Oh that I, imperfect as I am, might be
the healing, humble grass that
helps the barren land find beauty in its grasp.

(c) A McN

Nightsong

The room is dark
The clock drags the sleepless minutes
Over the hump of midnight
And onto the long gentle slope to morning.

I listen to the big river of the wind
Splashing round the house and Frothing over nearby trees.

My thoughts tug at their moorings,
Straining against the long cords of consciousness;
Longing to catch some eddie of the air and fly.

I try to let them go,
Try to cut them free
But they are thick and strong and,
Twisted with anxiety.

The darkness rumbles in the wind,
The house creaks like an arthritic barge straining against the flow
And the taut thoughts hum like a tuned string,
Waiting to accompany the morning song of birds.

(c) A.McN