Conjunction

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

After the April rain

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

Life's largesse sprinkled freely

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

Transcience

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.

Ice Queen

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

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

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

Machinery

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

Locking the doors

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.

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