wordcurious

Carols in the care home.

2011-12-29T19:24:00.000Z

A wet December day, dark with dusk.
A ring of armchairs rimmed the room;
carol sheets stirred like sleepy butterflies,
nestling in the laps between the wrinkled hands.

While shepherds watched their flocks by night

One by one the carols came.
Crotchets and quavers filled the air like festive snow,
settling in the snow-white hair as voices,
bass with age, sang songs of ancient joys.

Away in a manger

In a gap between the songs I heard a sob.
"He can't have gone" she said, shaking her head in disbelief.
"He'd never leave me here alone".
"He's back tomorrow love" they said but
though the arms were quick to hold and
voices gentle to assure
nothing could be said or done
to mitigate this moment
of fearful lucidity.

Oh come all ye faithful

She was not his wife the way she used to be.
On good days she'd remember him and cry when he left.
On other days she'd not know who he was.

In the bleak midwinter

(c) A McN

Xylophone leaves of autumn

2011-12-04T21:56:00.000Z

In the morning fog as
thick and white as cream,
distance dissolves.
A strange illumination,
neither light nor darkness,
fills the air.

An intimacy of being....
wherever I stand is only here.
Beyond me is no there;
only the pale opaque of air
muffling the silent world.

From the grey looming trees tinkles
the fogdrip from fingers of branches.
High bright tones,
tuning the xylophone leaves of autumn.

(c) A Mc N

Dark waters

2011-11-06T12:39:00.000Z

Being loved by one who understands my stranger needs
there were no questions asked
nor fears expressed.
"I'll put your supper on the side if you're not back" she said.

The shackles of the day fell fast away
And with a childish pleasure tingling in my blood
I ran along the winter lane towards the sleeping sea.

The sun had long since set and winter darkness
lay across the creek, blanketing the marsh where
geese dreamed long dark chevrons in their sleep.

It was a small half hearted tide that lapped the
muddy slipway by the quay but even so the water
glistened blackly in the dark.

I sloughed the kayak slowly over mud
until I felt the weightlessness of water pick me up.
Birdlike I was free and paddled
silent as a whisper to the waters off the shore.

In the darkness all perceptions melt and flow.
All familiar things are strangely new and
even if you're never lost,
you never know quite where you are.

All was silent save
the lap of waves against the marsh,
the call of curlews in their sleep.

In the darkness overhead a presence dimly grew.
I felt the weight of moisture in the air and
knew that rain was on it's way.

Suddenly the wrinkled skin of water sang with rings of ripples dancing everywhere.
Out on the open water I was caught
and kissed by cloud, romanced by rain.

When I returned to shore, wheeling the kayak up the darkened hill
I was a different person from before and (true to her promise)
found my supper waiting still.

(c) A McN

Between the lines

2011-06-16T10:40:00.002+01:00

Late on a summer evening
in the not-quite-day
and not-quite-night of dusk
I walked out with nothing
but an empty net
to catch some twilight words for you.

Thoughts fluttered like moths
across the moon but I held back;
I did not have the heart to trap them in my net.

A night breeze slid gently
down the slope on which I lay,
tumbling metaphors like scents across the nodding grass
but they were delicate as gossamer and slipped between the weave and warp of words.

So I returned without the words
to tell you what you've meant to me;

but if you read between the lines
you'll find a poem there.

(c) A McN

Sometimes you want to show appreciation to someone but don't know the best way to begin. This was one of those times.

Night fog at the docks

2011-02-20T22:51:00.002Z

Night passion

2011-02-20T22:43:00.002Z

Thin clouds scud ragged across a gibbous moon.
Storm and moonlight stir some ancient magic;
Sleeping trees awake to animated life.

Dancing and shuddering to wild
wind rhythms,
an ecstasy of branches
billow in the dark.

I watch this passion ride unbridled through the winter-wizened trees,
faintly jealous of the raw extravagance at work.

When did I ever love with such abandon?
When was I loved with elemental energy like this?

My giving and receiving
filter through self-conscious lenses
till the passion runs diluted
and the colours wash away.

But I still hope
because the high tide of my breath rises with this moon,
the taut drum of my skin sings to the beat of the air's blunt fist
and my rivers of blood pound the red walls of their channels in spate.

Despite of the numbness of a clumsy self awareness
I am still gifted
with a body
that is buzzing
with the spark and fizz
of being.

I too can
wake to animated life
beneath this canopy of scudding cloud
and silver moon.

(c) A McN

Inching Alchemy of Spring

2011-02-20T22:39:00.000Z

Suddenly I noticed
how the green shoots grew,
and birds were singing in the eaves..

The brown and barren forest floor
was spiked with lunging life
that perforated winter's skin
of dry dead leaves.

Soft as whispers,
sharp as knives,
green blades
unsheath before the sun.

The inching alchemy
of spring is come.

(c) A McN

Welcome

2011-01-08T09:54:00.000Z

And the forest welcomed me again;
bearing no grudges at my absence,
harbouring no expectations at my presence.

Space was simply made for me.
The air parted for me,
the fragrances infused me,
the mattress of grass held me,
the deep dark soil undergirded me.

It is good to be home.

(c) AMcN

Foghorns

2011-01-08T09:34:00.001Z

Embalmed by silent shrouds of fog
l stand in a stupor of dreaming,
watching the thin misty light
seep into the shadows of evening.

The trees are wraiths around me,
hovering in and out of dreams;
only the drip of cloud-liquor
distilled from their branches belies their true being.

Space and distance are drunkenly dysfunctional;
invisible blackbirds scold invisible rivals.
Their calls dissolve in darkness and
randomly rematerialise
with fog-softened edges.

I sweep the torch around.
In the beam a billion droplets dance;
each silver sphere defying gravity,
flocking on the whims of air
like thoughts drifting in a cloud's deep dream.

In the distances a universe away a foghorn sounds.
Resonating waters shiver;
sinews shake,
it wakes the hairs upon my skin.
A second answers mournfully from closer in;
the dialogue of dinosaurs
crying out their lostness in a lonely world.

I wander home, fogdrip falls like tears around me
but something luminous inside
is tingling still,
thrilling to the strangeness of
the changeling air.

(c) A McN

Acre of water

2010-09-23T22:29:00.002+01:00

On a wet walk we sat
Watching a fish flash silver in the rain
Breaching the grey air in a flick of flexed muscle and
Falling open mouthed back
To the liquid universe below.

A single splash swallows the moment;
A fish shaped hole in the shimmering surface.
Then the waterskin heals in a quiver of magic and
The lake lies silent save the hiss and
Tinkle of rain and the whispering circles,
Delicate beneath each dancing drop.

The fish shaped hole has long since gone
But its ripples roll across the lake,
A lazy ring of water sliding outwards,
Seesawing the surface to the very edges
Where the rushes grow.

So a single act of a leaping fish
Shakes an acre of water.

May the leaping of our faith and the
Dreaming of our dreams

Achieve the same.

(c) A McN

Ice dragon

2010-09-23T22:19:00.000+01:00

Glow worms

2010-08-15T08:49:00.000+01:00

We walked out in a dark, fern-fronded wood,
a place to try your tears and let the cool pine-fragranced air
purify your broken spirit like an incense for the soul.
The path snaked in the dark tangle of
jumbled shapes of trees and scrub,
rock and heather, crag and stream.

From the formless chaos of a thousand shadowed shapes
imagination spawned grotesque
menageries of fear that lapped against
the narrow passage of the path,
mirroring the misery
of condemnatory demands
that echoed still in whispered
accusations in your head.

Then a single point of pure illumination pierced the darkness;
calm and confident it shone as if a
fledgling star had fallen from a nest and crawled
with patience through the undergrowth
until it reached the sky again.

Tiny as it was it lit a hope beyond its size.
In all the jumbled chaos of our hearts
where words are misconstrued and motives all maligned,
the tiny light of love can still be beautiful indeed...

And though our self-esteem
feels like a beetle crawling in the night,
our worth is like a fledgeling star,
a diamond in the dark.

(c) A McN

When we needed them, the glow worms were there. Half a dozen or more illuminated our walk at a dark time when the misery of others had been heaped on us when we were least able to absorb it.

Eraser

2010-08-11T22:32:00.002+01:00

On a morning's stillness,
Hung between the seagull's cries,
The lick of water tongues on sand is soundless beauty
where the steaming, gleaming
sun sings symphonies
of molten music
on the rippled shore.

I try to guess the tide's intention as it
dallies with each sliding wave.
Some touch my boot and chuckle round my foot
but others shed their shining skin and drown
as unseen suction pulls them down.

My footprints linger for a little while,
Bronze castings in the morning light,
until a breath of tide glides far beyond
the limits of the strand
to claim new markers
on the glistening sand.

In silence all my signs erase.

I wish in all things to be one with you,
For all my marks to be remoulded by your waves,
For all my faults to be refashioned by your grace.

(c) A McN

Starchild

2010-08-11T22:19:00.003+01:00

Not a molecule there is
But once was bright star substance
Shining in a universe of old.

And even we
(with all the dull utility
Of flesh and bone)
Even we once shone
And graced an ancient night
In galaxies before our own.

So when I laid you in your cot tonight
And marble moonlight glazed your skin with silver leaf
I left the curtains open to the sky;
unwilling to disturb the moonglow's magic on your face.

Ghostly it was, and you transformed before my eyes;
Starchild.
Creature of heaven; milkwhite in darkness.
The cot cast zebra shadows on your frame.

I shut the window lest you float outside,
riding the moonbeams home while I was turned away.

Tiptoed, I left the room
But could not shake the hauntings from my mind,
The memories imagined from another world, another time
When heaven's light was part of mine.
I long with all my heart
To be transformed;
To break the shackles of a shallow mind,
The harness of a cold and hollow heart,
To be consumed,
And burn with fire again.

(c) A McN

This was written many years ago but I only found it recently in a notebook.
The astronomer in me has always marvelled that every cell in my body owes it's founding chemistry to a long lost star explosion where hydrogen and helium were forged into heavier elements. To look at my young son shining in reflected moonlight brought back something of that wonder - we are all creatures derived from light.

Light lover

2010-06-17T11:02:00.000+01:00

I was woken in the early hours of a summer morning
by the sun tapping at the window
squeezing her long slim arms
through the crack between the curtains,
prising them apart with brightness

"Wake up," she said, "I want to play".
"I'm too tired, let me sleep some more."
"Well let me in anyway, I can stroke you as you sleep."

So I opened the curtains and she floated in on her yellow dress
with the smile on her face that I love so much,
filling the room with her presence and the smell of warmth.

I went back to bed.
She stretched herself across the window sill,
draping over furniture and
resting across the bottom of my bed.

I closed my eyes to sleep.
"I can't stroke your face from here," she whispered.

Sighing, I took the pillows to the bottom of the bed
pulled the duvet up to the top
and lay back to front
with my feet at the headboard.

That's better, she said, smoothing my face with her warm caress.
I turned towards her and fell asleep again.
My eyes were closed but my head was full of light
and my dreams were singing.

I awoke an hour later. She was gone.
A grey sheet of cloud lay hung
like a dark vulture in the sky.

(c) A Mc N

Prayer before dawn

2010-05-20T07:28:00.000+01:00

In the early hours,
long before the stars dim,
long before the light brings colour to the shadowed earth
I lie awake trying to pray.

Thoughts swirl like pillars of mosquitoes
goading the silence of the heart but thoughts are not prayer.

I muster memories to milk emotion's energy and strength
remembering with joy your passionate embrace of life that often left me wishing I was more like you;
I let my indignation rise at cancer's bold audacity
to trespass where it will
but neither love nor anger constitute a prayer.
So I wait in quiet impotence,
staring in the darkness
without words to shape the wishes,
or strength to shape the will;
waiting as the last mosquito settles for the night
and peace unbidden creeps like mist across the pre-dawn dark.

I remember
that the birds will shortly sing,
the sun will rise,
the daily miracle of life will ring with random and chaotic joy
and every cell we own
will hum with life today.

And maybe that's a kind of prayer
to pray.

(c) A McN

Tree snakes

2010-05-18T08:27:00.000+01:00

Gentle to them

2010-05-18T07:57:00.000+01:00

I study their carefree faces, frozen mid smile
with the air teasing the hair around their head.

In the thin light of a Californian summer smog they
cast no shadows but faint reflections dance on the wet sand
like the light that dances in their eyes.

They are young and beautiful with the playfulness of youth
and the confidence of early adulthood when life stretches to infinity.

Strange to think they were already pensioners
when I was a child four thousand miles away.
Strange to wonder if this cheerful company
laughing on the wall from a hundred years ago
ever found the dreams for which they yearned.

I hope life might have been gentle to them;
especially the girl with the kindly eyes and
the diffident young man to whom she smiles.

(c) A McN

An old photograph on the wall of my hotel room captured a group of young people I could never have known. They had yet to live through two world wars and a great depression. I felt a strange and fatherly affection for these youngsters; older than my grandparents yet as young as I still feel inside.

Shropshire rain

2010-05-10T16:49:00.000+01:00

Coming from the west in
grey black curtains, the colour of slate
it drums on the roof
with the sing-song cadences of Wales.

But this is Shropshire rain
running thinly down the
brown stemmed bracken,
dropping from the dripping sheep
to the short shorn grass and the
deep dark soil of centuries.

This is the rain of misted hills,
wraiths wreathing scarp and vale;
pale woods dissolve and crystallise again
and I tramp damp and drizzle drenched
across the misty heights...songs bubbling unexpectedly
like shafts of light.

(c) A Mc N

The most miserable weather often evokes unexpected emotions. Its very rawness gives us the sensory shake-up that makes us more alive.

Fog womb

2010-04-14T22:29:00.002+01:00

The soft damp air curdled as the sun went in.
Fog wrapped us tight in its velvet night blanket.

I stood where the trees loomed over me;
my small breath tumbling up to join the bigger breath of night.

Out on the waters the low base boom of boats
fog-horning the darkness
rippled the mist with long low seismic songs.

In the womb-dark wet air where the disembodied sounds
like voices, lullaby the silence into sleep
I wonder quite how deep
the memory recalls.

(c) A Mc N

High Spring Tide

2010-02-16T22:41:00.000Z

Looking for wisdom

2010-02-16T22:22:00.007Z

I walked out early
in the grey, moist light,
looking for wisdom.

Horses steamed in the fields,
lifting their heads to look as I passed by.
In their eyes a dignity,
the heritage of ancient herds remembered.

I pray for you to always have the dignity
of knowing who you are.

The rutted track grew soft and wet
until a mire of mud and water blocked the path.
I turned aside and wove a way through bush and bracken
till a new path came in sight.

I pray for you to have the courage that can trust in unknown routes and the inner compass that can lead your way.

Down a valley dark with trees I walked and my world
shrunk small in the gloom but when I looked
a stream was laughing at the lowest point and when I listened birdsong laced the lid of branches
holding back the sky.

I pray for you to overcome the fear of dark
and find delight in hidden treasures of the humbled heart.

Out on the hilltop where the air flowed free
I made a nest of old dead bracken where I lay,
dry and warm awaiting wisdom's fleeting call.
All around, the residue of seasons past
was sifting down to rich and pregnant soil.

I pray that as the gentle breeze of time
drifts each of us away from this, your moment,
you might, yet, make your future nest
in warm, dry legacies of friendship from across your years.

I walked out early
in the grey, moist light
looking for wisdom.

I came back
with a pocketful of memories instead.
I hope they might suffice.

(c) A McN

This was written for Bethany Mballa's dedication. I didn't know what I was going to write for her so I walked out into the woods, looking for wisdom.

Mud People

2009-12-30T23:02:00.004Z

(c) A McNaught

The ancients thought of our shadows as being an extension of our personality. Occasionally, as in this case, a group of shadows go walk-about. Being insubstantial they can handle mud and water with ease...

Alien timepiece

2009-09-25T22:59:00.003+01:00

I awake,
dimly aware of its vast presence,
creeping silently through the salty creeks
beyond the black frizz of trees.

The hairs on the back of my neck tingle
but whether it is fear or thrill
is hard to tell.

In the dark,
the sheer weight of its coming,
the magnitude of stately momentum,
bends the land, creaking the rocks
to perceptible shivers that even a worm might hear.

Alien timepiece coupled to the moon,
the tide ticks through the night,
ever later than it was,
crawling round the clock
to strange and awkward times
with steady and relentless pace
regardless of the rhythms of
the human race.

(c) A McN

Since moving to the coast the tide has become an important rhythm but it is so hard to keep track that a few days away leaves me edgy. I love the full flood Springs best of all. They gave me that same feeling of life's bounty that I get in the presence of puppies, children playing, spring days and pregnant women!

Laughing shell

2009-09-25T22:42:00.004+01:00

The language of water

2009-09-25T22:33:00.002+01:00

Long after
the tide slipped silently into the night
the marsh is alive
with the language of water.

I listened in the darkness
to the trickle in the creeks
and the bubbles in the puddles
in the mud.

The water was all verb and adjective,
running, seeping,
quivering, shining.

From mud creek to salt flat,
liquid chat and murmer filled the air,
each creek a different dialect of sound.

I wished I had the wisdom
to know what every nuance meant
translating every phrase to physics,
chemistry and art..

but lacking understanding
I'm content to tag along
just to marvel
at the music
of the song.

(c) A McN

Four small words

2009-08-26T22:04:00.000+01:00

Unbidden it came, a short,
bald statement of fact.

"I like my life" he said.

Four small words with mythical power
to send the serotonins
seeping through the brain,
to fly the flag of self esteem,
and shape a shield
against the daily doubts
that undermine.

But for me, his father,
something in me soared
something sang like the wind sings
when it slings banners of cloud to the sky,
delighting in the shapes assumed.

(c) A McN

Snailed

2009-08-26T22:02:00.001+01:00

Tonight we got snailed.

The front step was streaked with straining necks and elongate antennae
stretching forward in slow motion frenzy.

One by one we plucked them up and one by one they lost their nerve,
shrinking back inside their shells.

We tossed them on the lawn.
They rolled and bounced in bald indignity.

Remembering their eager sprint across the steps,
the straining, streamlined pleasure as they flew,
I wished I could have left just one
to skip and dance as only snails can do.

(c) A McN

Missing waves

2009-08-13T12:36:00.002+01:00

Missing waves...
missing the slip and slide of the hull
on the hills of silver
shouldering silently beneath me.

Dumb beasts
in ordered herds shepherded by winds;
I love your liquid elegance,
your humble, mindless strength.

I love your ecstacies of surging on the shore,
the lion leap, the raging roar,
the dying shingle songs you sing
when sinking in the sand

leaving the kiss
of holy water
on the land.

(c) A Mc N

Suddenly, in a long involved meeting 250 miles away, I needed the sanity of the sea, the company of waves.

Feed the birds...

2009-08-11T23:15:00.004+01:00

(c) A McN

We got several of the braver birds eating from our hands. They were extraordinarily good chips though - GJs chipshop in Blackfield is second to none.

In memory

2009-08-11T22:21:00.003+01:00

For no obvious reason
we found ourselves in bright mid-morning light
walking and talking in a mosaic of gravestones
and reading messages
from the living to the dead.

We spoke of life and death,
of rocks and writing,
of families and memories.
In the summer sun
grasshoppers sang
and butterfly ballets performed
in the gap
between graves.

You read the tombstones;
I listened to your observations,
loving the privilege of fatherhood
as I watch you move through
the summer days of childhood where
life still has space for the dreamer
and who you are is more important
than the hoops
through which you jump.

These captured moments I will keep,
etched in the air by words
that simply say

"In loving memory
of a well spent day".

(c) A McN

At the Prater Park, Vienna

2009-07-29T13:50:00.003+01:00

Keren and crew loop the loop.

Puddles on a tandem

2009-07-28T06:38:00.005+01:00

I felt you come alive when the wind streamed in your face
and when I tempted you with puddles something lit you like a bulb.

Three times we split the water,
sliced the mud to peals of laughter.
The shadows that had haunted you that day
fluttered ragged in the wind until they fell
dissolving in the wrinkled waters
underneath the pedals
as we passed.

I had forgotten quite how beautiful
the simple things of life
can be.

(c) A McN

It was her first time on a tandem but unlikely to be her last.

Ornithology in Prater Park

2009-07-28T06:32:00.006+01:00

For a heartbeat,
eighty feet above Vienna
the long arc of the swing pauses long enough to tease
then tip us backwards upside down
to face the tiny people far below.

We plummet like a gannet to the ground
but like a swallow skim the earth
and like a lark ascend the air again;

something in us singing as we go.

(c) A McN

I never normally go near a fairground, never mind a fairground ride. It was life affirming in a funny kind of way - feeling so vulnerable at the top of the scary swing.

St Stephens House by touch.

2009-07-28T06:24:00.007+01:00

At St Stephen's house
we felt the carvings on the walls.
Skulls grinned as we poked our fingers in their eyes.

The model (with its cold brass geometries of scale)
showed us how small and insignificant we were - as if we didn't know.

But then we stumbled
on a pattern in the rock
upon a block
of limestone in the wall.
We felt the sharp and shelly sand
with semi- rounded pebbles
from the ancient storm and flood
that rolled them into place.
We felt the smoother grains above
that told of later long
and windless weeks and water
smooth as glass.

Through several hundred million years
this memory in rock remained to
teach us how the little things
endure beyond our wildest dreams.

(c) A McN

No-one had interpreted rock strata to him before. It was a Eureka moment when he realised his fingers were touching a weather event from millions of years ago - a tactile photograph of time.

The Lasts

2009-07-01T01:01:00.002+01:00

They started slowly and invisibly at first:
the last cutting of the hedge or mowing of the lawn;
the last time winding the pondweed on a stick whilst
water skaters skit like kittens from the growing candyfloss of green.

Then time sublimating from an airy future to a solid present
made the lasts more self-aware.

The last time I cycled to this home from this station.
The last day the bookshelf had books.
The last calling in on my neighbour
or walking my boy back from his school.

Then, they fell fast like leaves from an autumn tree
and it hit me packing the boxes in the small hours of the night
when my eyes misted not with weariness
but with brokeness.

Leaving bits of myself behind,
things I had made,
trees I had planted and pruned
and loved into shapeliness,
memories I had treasured
were dissolving into history.
It is a foretaste of dying.

But it is also the raw and naked vulnerability
of the unknown leap to an uncertain future
that will never be the same.

And that (I believe)
is life.

(c) A McN

15 years in the same house. Four of our offspring passed from childhood to adulthood and the late gift of number 5 passed from babyhood to childhood. It was very hard to leave and yet the yearnings for our roots were well past their sell-by date. Change is risky but the atrophy of dreams is a bigger risk by far.

Poppy pup

2009-06-05T23:18:00.003+01:00

Botanical Gardens, Belfast

Conjunction

2009-06-05T23:10:00.002+01:00

Sawing wood in the dark,
my arm swings to a tribal rhythm.
The rasp of the blade is a hypnotic chant and
the headtorch brushes shadows back and forth as
I sway to the ebb and flow of force.

Incense of sap and sawdust rises
to mingle with the pillars of my breath.

Behind me, the moon is a thin, wry smile.
Two planets shine like silver dimples
on her cheeks.

(c) A McN

May Morning

2009-06-05T22:58:00.003+01:00

Today started
with the soft snowfall of willow-down
drifting from the riverside trees
in the warm, bright morning air.

Today ended
sitting in the garden in the dark
watching the stars appear,
seeing the moon-milk on the honeysuckle leaves
and wishing someone would share it with me.

Between the start and the end
I have struggled,
looking for things to keep me active,
things to keep my mind from turning inward to the
hint of shadow that,
in some lights,
looks to be a gaping hole.

(c) A McN

Strange how, even surrounded by beauty and aware of blessing, the shadows can cast an unseasonable chill over the inner landscapes of the mind.

Still centre

2009-05-23T22:51:00.003+01:00

I liked the eddying of water as the wave returned.

After the April rain

2009-05-23T22:47:00.003+01:00

After the April rain
with the woods still steaming
I stole some time away.

Silence
save the drip of silver from each leaf,
the slow steam pressure of the rising sap,
the soft hydraulic hiss of leaves
unfurling in the blades of evening light.

Birdsong bubbles in the air.
Bluebells perfume the stillness.
An owl begins to tune his call.

A white curl of moon emerges as
the blue sky thins to black.

Distant cumulonimbus mountains
slip beyond the curve of night
flickering now and then in a spasm
of summer dreams.

(c) A McN

Swansea morning

2009-05-11T22:50:00.002+01:00

Swansea beach in the morning light

Life's largesse sprinkled freely

2009-05-11T21:45:00.004+01:00

When I consider your embrace of my senses in a thousand ways
I can only delight in you.

Light enters my eyes in multiplicities of shape and shade,
hue and chroma, form and focus.

I walk through an ocean of sound and meaning,
from the whispers of breath to the song of
birds holding the silences at bay.

At the day's boundaries where the air is still
my body fills with the delicate semaphores of scent:
mist and dew, earth and leaf;
the scent of Atlantic salt on the air,
mingled with a hundred miles of living land.

The lure of chips and sting of vinegar;
crunch of vegetables, sweet juice of fruit and the
mystery of chocolate melting in the mouth and washing care away.

I celebrate the sense of touch,
the reassuring flicker of my blood dancing daily in its webs beneath my skin,
the touch of rain and sunlight, friend and lover,
wind and saltspray.

I give thanks for warmth and coolness, fur and feather, hug and handshake,
comfy chairs by sunlit windows, hot drinks in cold hands
and soft abandonment of bed.

These are my gifts from God,
life's largesse sprinkled freely,
flowing like a foaming river.

May my appetite for life be large
(but never let the gift eclipse the giver).

(c) A McN

Misty bridge

2009-03-26T08:16:00.004Z

Early morning in York. This bridge - and the people crossing it - captivated me for about 10 mins. Then the geese captivated me more.

Crows dreaming

2009-03-21T09:43:00.003Z

A long train journey slid from day to dusk to night
and a full moon hung in the trees like a snagged balloon.

Hunched over the laptop glow
my world spiralled down to a carriage,
a seat, a document, an email.

In the tyranny of work without end
life's flavours drained down;
colours faded; feelings fell away.

Then, coming out the station,
breathing the bigger world beyond, imagination reinflated with a sigh.
The moon was high, still caught in the cobweb laceries of tree.
It hung black crow's nests in bright silver frames.

I listened for the cough and caw of crow
but all I heard was the traffic drone
and the feather breath
of a dreaming bird
and the March air soft and
scented by the sea.

The road was a noisy tide subsiding -
interweaving lines of light
ebbing red and flowing green
as traffic trickled through the night.

High in the trees
the bird breath waxed and waned
to the lullaby wind and its tumbling tones
and the bird veins beat with a blood as old as stones.

And the dreams of the crows ran deep;
deep as the roots of the cradling trees;
deep as the earth's fond memories of dark and noiseless nights
before the roads ran sour with fumes and glare:
when only the dreams of birds and trees
troubled the evening air.

(c) A McN

I often marvel at the way life intrudes into our dullness so vividly and unexpectedly in the thinnest sliver of a moment. If I could identify the magic formula and repeat it at will I'd live more richly.

If I could bottle it I'd be rich in the other way as well!

Night music

2009-03-15T22:26:00.000Z

A slender moon with a wry smile
illuminated the dark fields with a thin milk glow.

A black dog walked beside me,
and a shadow accompanied us both.

Down the dark and hedge-frizzed track we walked in silence
to the barn where the night silences folded in on themselves under high rafters.

There in the shadow of the wall where the moonlight lapped like a high tide
I slide the silver whistle from my coat. It shone pearly white. The fingerholes were six dark planets in a row.

I lifted the instrument to my lips and breathed out the music in my head,
breaking the silence with the dance of scales and melodies,
turning breath into notes that flew like birds across the empty fields to roost in the inky outlines of the wood beyond.

When my fingers froze and I could play no more I walked
out from the shadows to the moon's white spotlight.

The stars were there in silent ranks, swarmed from horizon to horizon,
drawn from the infinite silences and loneliness of space to this one place

where a man filled the night with music
and a dog hunted rats around a barn.

(c) A Mc N

Sunset fire

2009-01-31T22:45:00.003Z

Sun setting through the edge of West Wood near Sparsholt

Foggy reflections

2009-01-31T22:02:00.005Z

King again

2009-01-17T12:59:00.002Z

If there was a best time
It was when you were small enough
that I was big on the stage of your lives.

I was a giant in those days,
A kindly king,
A sage,
A playmate
all rolled into one.

And then the slow drip of years washed it all away.

Now you see me as I am;
Nothing special.
Good at some things
Bad at others.
Embarrassing at times,
And infinitely old and grey
Despite the colours and the wonder
Brimming underneath the skin.

In the ordered world of adults
I'm no longer fit to reign..
I think I need some grand children
to make me king again.

(c) A McN

Not that I wish to put pressure on my children in any way, but I miss belonging to the world of little ones. Their world is much closer to the world I prefer to inhabit and it would be nice to have some fellow explorers who regard it as normality rather than senility.

Transcience

2009-01-17T12:41:00.006Z

I seem to have been snatching at water all my life.

I speak and the words evaporate into space.
I reach out and touch another but the tingle of the contact fades.
I pray but forget who or what I prayed for.

I see beauty but recall only faintest outlines.
I hear the music of voices I love
but the memory is a faint recording dimly heard through the static of the brain.

I have moments of deep connection when love and respect
arc like electricity in the gap between lives
But so soon it becomes a wisp of remembrance
curling like smoke around faint insecurities.

Even standing still a flood of seconds surges round me;
milliseconds froth and spray against my face.

I want to capture life
To catch a little bowl of friendship and experience,
keep it on the mantelpiece where treasures might be counted like iridiscent fish;
But I know the fish would die.

The transcience of life provokes me;
the flutter of days tumbling from month to year unsettles me.
I feel like a child beneath an autumn tree
snatching at the leaves that cartwheel through the air
and wondering all the time if standing still with outstretched arms
would fetch me more.

So I will rest a while;
letting the golden leaves of time still tumble down
without the need for catching every one,

letting the flow of life slip through my hands
but splashing my face in clean refreshing spray.

I will attempt to live with open eyes and thankful heart today.

(c) A McN

It remains one of the many childhood pleasures I still enjoy. When the leaves fall off the trees I have to catch one at least. They fall with slow elegance but are deceptively difficult to catch.

The last goodbye.

2008-12-22T11:59:00.003Z

Like a statue you were
but beautiful to me.
Eyes shut in your longest sleep;
hands folded like butterfly wings
in white.

I held your hand in mine.
Cool as the earth it was,
still as starlight.

Not grief but peace.
So glad I was for you
to know such stillness.
Freedom thrives in stillness.

I thanked your body for bearing me.
My flesh owed debts to yours.
Now in the grace of death
our hearts might also know their debts
one to another.

Sleep well my friend.
You are smaller in this box
than ever you were in memory.
No doubt it is better that way round.

Remember me in your
new found freedom.
I would have been more a son to you
had I found the gates much sooner
and known the lock was only
there for show.

(c) A McN

Eight years after I wrote it..
Strange how many years it has taken to get that particular poem out for view.

Reaching for the light

2008-12-15T22:01:00.002Z

Sculptures at Hilliers Arboretum, Hampshire.

What it is..

2008-12-15T21:54:00.003Z

So what is it I am looking for with you?

It is hard to say exactly
But I think I'll know it when I find it.

It will be the colour of a purity
Bright enough strong enough to be unafraid of contamination:
sure enough it need not stand aloof.

It will be the shape of a courage
that can question even itself
without defensiveness.

It will have the weight of faith,
not so light as to blow away in every wind but...
nor so heavy as to weigh me down with needless burdens.

It will have the knowledge to
discern the good from the bad;
the bad from the neutral
and the motivation that flavours
every choice I make.

And most of all it will teach me
to be real
human
accepted
loved:

and more holy
than I yet know how to be.

(c) A McN

Ice Queen

2008-12-11T23:32:00.002Z

The moon was an ice queen tonight;
sledging frost-white across the Milky Way.

I stood alone on a ghost-glowing heathland,
tiny against the acres of space and eternities of sky.

A scattering of small pines
punctuated the moonwashed moor;
levitating above the luminescent land on a
slender thread of trunk.

But the moon was centre stage.
By the edge of a black pond I
saw her small reflection shimmer
as she worked her winter magic
casting spells upon the water,
turning liquid into stone.

But oh, what elegance she brings..
sketching out her ancient memories of sister earth
she sculpts frost feathers from the fossil birds,
and giant crystals from the continents of old.

Needles of ice knit her bidding
in the black and frigid water.

I stood, still as stone and equally transformed.

Ice stitches grew beneath the moon's pale fingering.
Between them, little veins of water shrank away.
The grass around me creaked as its hoar-frost hair stood on end,
saluting the moon.

In the vast spellbound silence
only the mechanical rip and chew
of a horse grazing in the distant darkness
gave me hope that I might
tear myself from iron chains of wonder.

When at last I turned,
shook the magic from my eyes and walked away;
she sent my shadow on ahead
persuading me to stay.

(c) A McN

Splash

2008-11-22T08:57:00.002Z

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

Night Cycling

2008-11-22T08:50:00.002Z

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

2008-11-22T08:42:00.001Z

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

2008-11-22T08:33:00.003Z

Taken at MonkeyWorld in Dorset.

Without

2008-11-22T08:20:00.004Z

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

2008-11-22T08:09:00.002Z

Horses on Plaitford Common, New Forest National Park.

Volcano

2008-11-22T08:04:00.003Z

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

2008-11-22T07:33:00.005Z

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

Misty morning

2008-10-14T07:32:00.002+01:00

Captured near Micheldever Woods after very early airport run.

October sun

2008-10-14T07:25:00.002+01:00

October sun on a London street.
Time has slowed to the eleven o'clock elasticities;
Cars and people trickle past.
I walk slowly enough to let the sunshine
Stick to my face.

All is brick and stone,
Tar and concrete,
Stasis and order.

Overhead
The distant ocean of blue sky foams with cirrus
And a bird swings on a lone trapeze of air.

Along a dark crack in the pavement
Yellow fingers of light draw three lone blades of grass
Up to the autumn air.

They shine with impossible tenderness of green
Against the grey hard stone.

I watch them nodding deferentially
As I pass.

(c) A McN

Relativity

2008-09-23T22:50:00.001+01:00

The moor is a brooding beast.
The grey still night slides closer
On a mist of midges and a fine
Silk drizzle.

The curlew haunts the
Wind-still silence with an ancient tongue.
The melodies stir memories beyond the span of human mind;

But I am thinking of you,
longing to have more to give than words
but these are all I own.

In your darkness I will tread as softly as I can.
I will not counsel
from my storehouse of accumulated ignorance.
I will not patronise
and practise sympathy upon your pain.
I will not presume
to stand too close for your comfort, or look upon your nakedness.

But I will tell you simple truths

You are loved,
You are surviving,
As strong as you should be,
As humble as you need to be.
There is faith enough for your calling
And grace enough for your anxieties
And gentleness enough for your humanity.

You are doing well in the eyes
Of the One you love.

All else is relative to this.

(c) A McN

Wood and water

2008-09-23T20:37:00.003+01:00

Bedtime

2008-08-18T07:28:00.001+01:00

Bedtime.

In the darkened room
the storles dlstil from imagination's swirling vapours.

Your eyes shlne with anticipatlon and your grin widens to a gappy smile as the last links of the story fall into place..

I tell you how much I love you and your skinny arms lock around my neck.
Your much loved dog comes through to settle by your bed and feel your fingers resting in her black fur.
.
I tuck your pyjamas into your socks the way you like me to.
I turn the lights down and turn some music on.

We pray together,
you as always full of questlons,
me as always struggling to explain
the intangible certalntles of falth,
wondering all the while
if this time with you
is not a bit of paradise
slipped through.

(c) A McN

Redeeming the time

2008-08-18T07:21:00.002+01:00

We lay - father and son - in a midnight wood
under a fallen birch tree,
with a plastic sheet
tied across the broken boughs for a ceiling.

This was my final fling
my bid for freedom before the holiday ended.
Work strained at its leash,
growling deadlines in my subconsciousness.

This was my last chance to make a memory
worth taking to the grave
before the tyrant of my time
jealously demanded me again..

I toyed with many options and
only tossed this one half heartedly to you,
expecting no response.

But your voice and your eyes
shone with instantaneous adventure.

We cycled out, racing the setting sun,
exploring the woods, spiralling slowly from bridlepath,
to footpath, to deer track, to fallen trees
to a shelter for the night.

You woke me in the early hours,
long after the owls had ceased to call.

You were cold.
We fixed you up with extra wrapping then the rain began.

There was no wind to speak of.
The rain fell under the influence of gravity alone
in long straight water-needles
stitching 3D soundscapes in the darkened trees.

You asked me questions,
not for information but for reassurance of a father's voice nearby.

And I gave you my words,
half asleep but shining like a light
underneath the dark rain-curtained trees.

Sleep was fitful but the peace was deep.
The memory was deeper still
and long may serve us both
with love.

(c) A McN

The thousand thoughts of self unclenched

2008-07-05T20:16:00.002+01:00

The morning after a night of summer rain
I awoke early, restless to be out.

The air was too fragile to burden
with the sounds of a car
or the fumes of an engine.

I cycled, the road whirring beneath me.
I wove along random lanes
turning left and right as took my fancy
with all the plan and purpose of a butterfly.

It was a fine, full, maiden of a morning
and love at first sight for me.
Her hair was the wispy cirrus, her breath the warm breeze
and her firm full curves were the green chalk hills.

Steam rose like wraiths from the vergeside banks.
The air was freshly laundered,
fragranced with floral extravagance
and hung out between the trees to dry.

I was aware of some small miracle at work,
one so delicate I looked away
in case attention gave it fright.

I lay in long damp grass on a bank of summer bloom,
buzzed by flies, stroked by wind, kissed by sunshine,
anointed with dewdrops shaking down
from white cow-parsley heads.

The miracle continued to unfold as self absorption drained away.

The daisy petals were unlocking...
one by one the thousand thoughts of self unclenched.

The temptations, the attitudes,
the justifications, the condemnations,
the excuses, the ambitions,
the dreams, despairs and fears
..unfolded.

A hidden spring uncoiled and one by one
the petals of my pettiness unsprung and opened up
to face the sun.

And somewhere just beyond the wide
horizon-curve of consciousness
an old familiar voice, ancient as the stars, silent as the air,
whispered the words I love to hear
'Look at that beautiful daisy down there'.

(c) A McN

Grass at the swapping of the worlds

2008-06-12T21:46:00.003+01:00

Swapping worlds

2008-06-12T21:36:00.002+01:00

At the time you swapped your worlds
I was stalking the narrow evening light;
Capturing the places where the grass-heads glowed with inner fire
and fingers of brightness reached across some
ninety million miles to anoint
a favoured stem with gold.

Strange how death,
dramatic as he is,
remains so silent in his work.

There ought to be a ripping
In the fabric of the universe;
A tremor in the rocks;
A shockwave of indignity
as life is plucked away
and grief lies bleeding in the gap.

But silently as light death comes
And I was wholly unaware;
Watching the grasses tremble in the evening air

One by one the shadows shifted as the sun shone through;
One by one the grasses blazed,
Anointed by transforming light.

It's your turn now.

(c) A Mc N

A fit man with a twinkling sense of humour, David had been critically ill for 10 days. It seemed so unlikely he could die - despite the close shaves in the past. Then he slipped away. I was only two miles away taking photos in the evening light - it seemed strange that death is so silent; that something so extraordinary is so unobtrusive that you can be nearby - even in a neighbouring room and not know it has happened.

Machinery

2008-04-24T21:34:00.007+01:00

I awoke and the night was silent,
save for the rumble of the machine.

A steady thump of the engine ticking over in the darkness;
a scarcely perceptible rush of fluid in the pipes and the hum of static in the circuitries..

I lie awake listening to its softly pulsing purposeness.
Only at night do I notice its presence;
the day is brash and loud and
deftly drowns all other sounds;
but silent night peels every other noise away until..
the old familiar engine throb returns to haunt my wandering thoughts.

Who owns this engine?
Who maintains it?
How long will it run?
Why is it here, beating time like a metronome within?

Even as I write it rumbles on..
auricle and ventricle,
artery and vein
ebb and flow;
breath and blood.

How did the engine engineer itself
and switch the circuits on?
And when did the first
faint flicker of the
dream of living
dance inside
my foetal form?

(c) A Mc N

On the move

2008-04-09T08:08:00.002+01:00

Locking the doors

2008-04-09T07:33:00.005+01:00

Locking the doors at night
I heard the rumble of rain drops drumming the dark roof.
Grabbing the umbrella
I opened the door.

Black wet night shook like a dog on the doorstep.
The rain teemed down from the infinite darkness.
A click.... the brolly blossomed open,
green, nylon jellyfish launching
into the ocean of air.

Rain pounded on the tight skin
and darkened the fabric with a thousand spots.
Fat, shining water globes dangled from the edges,
turning the lamp-posts upside down.

I walked down the garden,
Grass and soil soft beneath me;
even the cold air soft with the steam of exploding rain.

In the greenhouse I shone a bright torch beam,
up and out through the rain-rippled glass
into the underbelly of the cloud.

And, oh, how my heart leapt to see the rain transfigured,
to see the meteoric streams of light -
silver flashes streaking from a radiant so distant
that torchlight turned to black.

For a fearful moment I glimpsed immensity -
a sheer relentlessness of rain;
a beast much bigger than my comprehension.

I began to understand
how big a billion is, and shivered awestruck,
at the presence passing
overhead.

(c) A Mc N

Bridleway.

2008-03-30T21:24:00.004+01:00

When I walked out on this bright spring morning,
I felt like a creature from another world where time had frozen round about me.

I knew the earth was singing like the birds,
But the note hung in the air,
A single tone anchored to the soil.

All around, the green buds burst,
Sap exploding into flower-froth;
hydraulic energies inflating leaves like detonating air bags..
But in the treacle motion of my freeze frame world
I saw only delicate flags of white and green,
Fingering the morning air.

And the sun hung golden
In a mist so thin that the hills were watercoloured by the light.

Everything was soft;
The light, the leaves, the motherly curves of the grass-furred chalk slipping down to the track where I walked.
Even my shadow was soft, draping itself across the dry path where ants moved in intricate perambulations;
clockwork creatures trickling out of cracks with their morning mechanisms slow and half unwound.

My spring unwound as well
and in the long, elastic string of time and circumstance
I tasted the unhurried privilege of peace.

It was a taste I could acquire.

(c) A Mc N

Destiny

2008-03-13T08:03:00.002Z

It has been a long time
putting me together.
There was the vast improbability
of conception;
a roulette of possibilities whose outcomes might have made a
million other men...
or made a childless stain of blood instead.

But the alchemy of life - my life - began
and destinies were drawn in helix scripts while unseen forces
fashioned faith and watered me with wellsprings from another world.

Then the borrowing of body substance
from the earth;
Calcium from the waters,
Nitrogen from air
and all the others begged from
rock and soil.

We have never come together in this way before.
Flocks of molecules migrate through continents of tissue,
stampedes of atoms, loosed from rock's captivity, leap and frolic with the pulse of life.

This is me.
For a moment in Earth's history
the rocks can play and move
and love
instead of waiting dumbly
watching life with blind
earth covered eyes.

We have waited so many millenia
to come together in this way.
In me the very stones can sing.

Let me live well
in this interlude between eternities.
Let me cherish the possibilities,
nourish the potentials,
adore the mystery of my miracle.

Let me fulfil the purposes
So long awaited in the stones;
And in the dreams of God.

On tiptoe.

2008-03-11T08:05:00.000Z

The colours of Love

2008-03-01T09:24:00.001Z

In part it was green,
the colour of the trees
that cradled my early years
and the purple rhododendron
that shone like sticky candy
in the deep wood shade.

In part it was
the white of a rabbit in my outstretched palm
the ginger of hamsters, the black fur of dog
and the ruby red eye
of the albino guinea pig.

There were winter colours;
orange stove embers, pale grey ashes,
the bright woollen palettes
of hand knitted jumpers
and days lengthening to
daffodil yellows.

There were blues of a summer
and greens of a sea,
where a dinghy's deck is flecked with the
white salt spray on the
bronze of the sanded grain.

Silver racquet;
green handled hockey stick,
black camera,
lilac bedspread
yellow beaks of birds and
the purple cassock of the acolyte....
these are the colours of my childhood:

And if love has a colour,
these are the colours of love..

(c) A Mc N

Unhinged.

2008-02-15T21:39:00.002Z

Last week it was black shapes
inked on the pale paper.

Idly I opened the book;
eyes scanned the lines,
taking in the angled shapes,
the geometries of lettering.

Then in a silent moment,
a mere shimmering of time,
the shapes became letters:
the letters became words,
pictures formed in my head and reality unhinged.

I sat in another's soul,
gazing out at a different world in a
different place at a
different time.

But today it was the low afternoon light
lapping like a yellow tide against the heaving
shoulders of the Black Mountains.

I was no longer in a car,
negotiating roads
and Welsh bends.
I was in the air,
riding like a kite on the breath of sunlight,
unhinged again
and scarcely safe to drive.

Sometimes I fear crossing a threshold;
entering a world from which
I can't return
..or maybe wouldn't want to.

Should I close the lid?
Fix the latch and
lock the genie in?

Is this losing of ourselves in wonder,
the first step in the giving of ourselves to life?
or the last step in the selling of ourselves to fantasies?

I will not lock the latch.
Nor will I take away the lid.
Instead I'll take a little time to oil the hinges so they move freely...

in both directions.

(c) A Mc N

Leap of faith

2007-12-02T21:52:00.001Z

Standing on one leg in Birmingham

2007-12-02T21:34:00.000Z

Staying overnight in a strange room
I awoke and decided to make something happen,
To create a moment that might be remembered.

So I wrote to my daughter (the old fashioned way with a pen on a card)
And I told her some of the things about her
That were special to me.

Remembering the unposted letters that have haunted my life
I seized the moment and a stamp,
Taking my folding bike through the foyer,
Past the bemused receptionist and
Out into the grey drizzling morning.

Savouring the cold damp air
I assembled the bike then
Stood on one leg
to tuck the trouser into the sock.

Then it struck me,
Standing on one leg in Birmingham,
That a moment had frozen in time.

I was alive, balancing on one leg while the
Earth turned,
The clouds slid across the bowl of the sky
And the wet air wove between the
Brick and concrete mazes of the town.

I was aware,
In touch with myself as if the very
Act of balancing
Brought poise and pause to time.

People around me moved in silence,
Soundwaves slowed and stopped.
My stillness hung in the air
Imprinting memories on
The Rosary chain of life...

A grey drizzle,
A letter, a bike and
A man standing on one leg
In Birmingham.

(c) A Mc N

Sustenance

2007-12-02T21:22:00.000Z

Not a queue
But a line, waiting
Waiting for eternity to greet them with a kiss and a
And a silence unusually rich with purpose.

The taste of bread, elastic on the tongue.
The tang of wine.
The touch of something deep;
Intangible.
Living off the harvest of another time.

A feather-breath of meaning,
Melting the hard edges of the heart,
Misting the awkward shapes of our clumsy lives with the finest beads of condensation;
In which the light of life
delights to play.

(c) A Mc N

Thistledown

2007-10-07T21:46:00.000+01:00

Bubbles of thistledown.
Fragile fruit of a summer's growing;
I watched them, a loose flock flying high,
sliding on slivers of sunbeam in the cool, clear autumn air.

What is fruitfulness?
The statuesque rigidity of thistle stem?
The wiry beauty of spiked resilience defying season's turning?

Or is the fruit the dry and shriveled seed;
the secret store of potencies
distilled from alchemies of life?

When the winds come they will scatter and fell:
seeds to fly and stems to fall.
But all will lead to life.

Fallen stems will fertilise,
fallen seeds will vitalise.
True life is never wasted;
when it out-manoeuvres death.

But there must be no randomness,
no blind chances,
no cold mechanics of evolving.

Behind the season's turning is the contemplative love
that counts the hairs on heads,
and sparrows in the air,
that the names the stars
and clothes the field with colourings
beyond compare.

Such love longs for a shepherding
of life into new life

For a singing through death's valley
and remembering of summer songs
that will be needed
at a future time.

(c) A Mc N

Playmates

2007-10-07T21:30:00.001+01:00

Playmates.

Granite stream

2007-09-08T10:49:00.001+01:00

It was a sanctuary for me;
Broad valley frizzed with trees
Under the gaze of granite hills,
Serene and cool.

The river wide and self-assured,
Yet intricately wrought with rock and
Stepping stones and secret pools.

Water smooth as crystal murmured
Stories as it flowed.
I listened to the narrative unfold,
Tales of storm and rain and rocks
And hills immeasurably old.

Pure air, pure water,
Washing the restless mind:
Contagious purity of earth and sky,
Trickling to the inner depths
Where faith is old and dry.

In the tingling of a moment
the inner scabs and scars all melt away,
The role-plays and pretences cease
And as they do, the compass of emotion creeps
From stress to peace.

I watch my boy collect pebbles,
Fishing pools for giant eggs of pink and grey.
And from the songs he softly sings
I guess he also feels this way.

(c) A Mc N

Castle of the dogs

2007-09-05T21:07:00.000+01:00

Castle of the Dogs on the Morven peninsula, Scotland.

By torchlight

2007-09-05T21:05:00.000+01:00

By torchlight
the drift of drizzle
Is a fine feathering of magic;
A dusting of cloudflakes,
Fine as flour
And light as liquid snow.

I watch the wind made visible
By twists and turns of droplets,
Shining like planets,
Flocking like tiny birds,
As the torch illuminates
The soft, dark underbelly of the night.

(c) A Mc N

Stars in my hair

2007-09-05T20:58:00.000+01:00

I lay on my back on the dark, dew-slicked grass,
and gazed at the gaps between the stars.

But when I raised my binoculars
to the empty spaces
they had filled with a twinkling of lights
swarming like bright bees
in the black circles of vision.

But even in this swarm
lay darknesses between the lights
so I took a telescope to study
the little gaps between
the little stars.

But when I looked,
even the little gaps brimmed with tiny stars and the
fuzzy smudge of galaxies.

The more I stared,
the more the darkness wasn't there,
the velvet black
merely a diminution
of the light
between the brighter stars.

I lay pondering,
and fell asleep with stars in my hair,
feathering my face with light
and my dreams
with wondering.

(c) A Mc N

Fuinary spit buoy by sunset

2007-09-05T20:55:00.000+01:00

(c) A Mc N
It was shortly after taking this image that I realised the strange noise
in the water was 3 porpoises lazily passing my kayak.

Neaps and springs

2007-09-05T20:54:00.000+01:00

For ten days
I lived a mere stone's skipping from the salted sea.

I slept to it's murmuring,
woke to it's gulls crying,
And watched it's tides rise and fall.

Gently it caught me in it's rhythms.
Waves lullabied my sleep by night and
By day I counted time by tides.

Like a growing self consciousness
I became aware
Of the moon's slow dancing through the days and nights,
Spinning out and in from full to crescent,
Crescent to full,
While the wide waters surged and sighed
Like a slow drum beating.

I began to measure my life by the rise and fall of the ocean's breath.
Highs and lows, neaps and springs
Gave a finer audit of my days than the cruder count of seasons.

Even now, when my cluttered thoughts clamour for attention
And a long tangle of responsibilities
Wraps me in a paralysing web,
Something in me softly sings
'Highs and lows, neaps and springs'.

(c) A McN

In Twilight

2007-07-27T09:48:00.000+01:00

In twilight all perspectives change.

Trees seem taller, bulkier;
Hunchback beasts
Ready to stalk the night.

And the clouds, mere water-carriers by day,
Project the dreams and nightmares of the sleeping earth in
Curdled shadows on the curving dome of night.

I had forgotten quite
How small I am.

Darkness rises like a tide,
Welling from the shadowed depths beneath the trees and
Running out to lap around my heels

I had forgotten how it feels
To be so out of place.
And alien beneath
A rising moon.

There was once a first time,
A first awareness of the world
Outside my constructs,
A world where I didn't really matter.
May there never be a last time.

Only in alienation is a
Sense of self maintained.
Only in being utterly irrelevant to others
Is the strangeness of ownership of self brought home.

(c) A Mc N

Borderzone

2007-07-17T23:49:00.000+01:00

Day of summer rain

2007-07-17T23:44:00.000+01:00

I walked in a wood
Lush with summer; dripping with rain.

The ceiling was a printed pattern
Of leafy fingers and palms,
Shining dull green in the dull gray light.
The wind shook wet mischief from the trees as we walked beneath their shade.

The song of a damp wind's breath,
The slap of leaves
And the rattle of rain
Was symphony enough for me.

I wanted to run with the rain against my face and to cartwheel
In the long wet grass,
But the adult in me said
It wasn't sensible.

But, playful still, I grabbed a narrow trunk of birch
To shake a shower from it's reservoir of rain
And run away before it landed.

The woodland paths were shining,
Filmed with a lovely skin of light.

It was a day of summer rain.
Even the ghosts of childhood
Grew green
and strong.

(c) A McN

The way trees dream.

2007-07-17T23:19:00.000+01:00

I listened to the wind of a summer storm leaning on the trees outside my window.

It was late at night but my head was ticking louder than my heart
so I was awake,
taking in sounds
while the gentle simmer of thought
bubbled away with just enough
pressure to keep the lid off sleep.

The big trees bend.
The air sifts through;
leaking between the lacery of
leaf and branch.

The trees sigh,
leaves rattling as the wind exhales,
then a clumsy gust
tumbling out the darkness,
reinflates the canopy.

There is poetry in the motion,
lullaby in the songs of the air;
rhythms in the resonance
of tuning-fork branches
spilling their harmonies
to the liquid night.

Air twists and turns,
Spinning together from mountains and moorlands,
skimming on rivers,
and skating on oceans,
bundling through cities…
threading these woods
with the weave of their travels.

I hover on the edge of sleep,
Listening to the suck and surge of air;
savouring the scents of
a thousand mingled journeys
as they shuffle and spin
Through the shuttle of branches.

Consciousness seeps slowly away.
The wind gushes wild stories
In the gaps between leaves
and I fall asleep wondering
if this is the way trees dream.

(c) A McN

The annual lie

2007-06-19T08:57:00.000+01:00

For a long time
I have wanted to dispense with my birthday.
It is a lie.
The colour of my hair is a lie too.
And the wrinkling of my skin.

I am the victim of a merciless conspiracy
between the inadequacies of cell replacement
and the cold counting mechanisms of solar system orbits.

I am still young.
I play, I wonder, I believe.
Innocence is still hopeful, still ashamed of wrong.
Cynicism is still largely locked away in the brown
bottle with a child proof lid and "Poison" on the label.

But life flows like a river in flood.
The earth spins relentlessly,
Night and day flash by and, swept before them,
Seasons brush the months away.

I plan to learn new things.
I plan to invest in friendships
but time sidesteps the good intentions
and work, the parasite of time,
steals the rest away.

So here I am,
wondering how to respond when people ask
"What do you want for your birthday?" and
" It's a big one this year, isn't it?"

It's hard to say what I really want.
A truce with life,
or at least a truce with myself,
might be nice.

And it's hard to say "Could you buy me
One of those sprays that removes insecurity and defensiveness?
Or a mirror with the reflection that doesn't always expect me
To make the first move?"

I would like to rejoice in my achievements without fear of pride
and enjoy my life without fear of failure.
I would like to care more for other people
and care less about what they think of me.
I would like my love to be founded more on the basis of overflow
and less on calculation.

I fear I am merely a year older.
But if you could buy me any of those for my birthday
I would be a year wiser too.

(c) A McN

2007-06-10T21:54:00.001+01:00

Herding

2007-06-10T21:40:00.000+01:00

Cycling along a Yorkshire lane
where the summer grasses graced the verge in a froth of seedheads
I chanced upon the sheep.

Five beasts with brains as woollen as their backs
fled as a flock along the road before me,
demonstrating with fluid practised moves
the instinctive art of synchronised stupidity.

There were no turnings, no gateways,
only the narrow hedge-rimmed verges
so they ran and ran and ran in terror of perceived pursuit.

And when I got to where I was going
I returned to find them once again,
and - unwittingly - chased
as they - dimwittingly - ran
the whole course again.

I wondered how often we,
like sheep, exhaust ourselves
with fleeing from the things that cause us fear
from loneliness,
from memories,
from anxieties,
from haunting thoughts.

Perhaps we should stop on the verge side now and then,
letting the monsters draw nearer
in the hope that if we stand calm and fearless as they come
they will pass us by
...this time.

(c) A McN

Sleeping out

2007-06-10T16:19:00.000+01:00

Sleeping out
on a night of soft rain,
I walked into the twilight moor,
into the maze of gorse and bracken, birch and fir.

Foals were silhouettes of shade
twitching in the
silent shadows of a mare.
I walked with reverent stillness there.

The night fell, the wind rose,
Tumbling the sky breath over the sleeping trees,
Birch leaves trembled, black as the ace of spades,
I made my bed beneath their shade..

Slowly, fear of the unknown night subsides,
a territoriality evolves,
my tree, my bush, this nest where I belong.
In the dark I listen to the haunting nightjar song.

Sleep was fitful but the air sank deep
The night-sharp scents drill down
Tingling the stagnant layers of the lungs
Between the hissing showers a half moon hung.

An interplay of light and shade,
Showers and moonlight, filled the fitful hours.
Stiff limbs, but a loosened mind uncoiled in curdled dreams and thought.
And peace was found where it was sought.

(c) A McN

Winter sun

2007-03-03T14:26:00.000Z

Twilight mist

2007-03-03T14:14:00.000Z

On a grey day,
In a narrow, dripping valley
Where the blackbirds sang and scolded alternately,
I watched the mist
Dissolve the trees
Into a formless void
As my splintered emotions
Melted together and settled out at last

The river ran,
A sleek silver snake,
Frothing and hissing on its bouldery bed;
Filling the damp air with the illusion of rainstorm.

This is the netherworld, the misty grey
Between night and day;
Between seasons;
Between the hurt and the healing.

It is a place of peace
Where the mist makes all things insubstantial;
All things isolated,
All perspectives skewed;
But, somehow, all things
Faintly new.

(c) A McN

After my 8 year old's tantrum to end all tantrums I felt thoroughly drained. How do you balance compassion and discipline? How do you teach forgiveness and responsibility at the same time? How do you stop the things someone shouts in anger taking root in your own confidence and self esteem? The mist had no answers, but being there, surrounded by the vastness of nothingness, made the answers less urgent.