Waiting for a friend sipping tea, sunglasses on passers-by double and disappear as reflections in shop windows everything lit golden then dimmed behind my lenses I stir the drink some more
Waiting for a friend they’re half an hour late now I barely notice just watch the people let my mind wander the liquid turning in the cup
And it hits me, squarely, there on the corner by the crossroads these moments left to my own devices find me so contented thinking, writing, dreaming drawing, planning, scheming
Have I just mastered the art of how to be alone or am I just happy Maybe… I’m just truly happy finally…
Nineteen nighty five Nominally fourteen; I was sitting in the sports hall pen in hand the desks apart a teacher I didn’t know patrolled the aisles The English paper said ‘write a story include a river and an allegory’
The clock at the front clicks thin hands jerk and tick I spin my pen study the air vents above me there’s a dusty shuttlecock caught up in the pipework there’s a brown deflated football sitting on the skylight I need to start writing…
I wasn’t a reader, then I knew nothing much of stories I’d watched a lot of films I’d heard a lot of pop songs but I wasn’t a writer
Unimpressed by the aesthetic the muted light inside the sports hall I pushed my mind out onto the playing fields down the long road past the waterworks to the river on the edge of town
And I could see it there a bend in the channel where a tree had lost its leaves a tree was clinging to the dry mud of the riverbank being undercut by the flowing water being ever exposed by the erosion being deposed
And I started to write of the tree being cut and torn being pulled and weakened by the hunger of the river Hanging on with every root and the river’s endless running
The more I wrote the sadder I felt for the tree the more I wrote the more the tree’s plight mirrored something I’d seen the more I wrote the more I saw my mother’s best friend’s fight with cancer revealed before me The more I wrote the more I saw her face looking back at me and the more the story moved me
And the tree succumbed to the river’s flow as all things will, eventually
That essay was the first time I wrote something with any meaning handed my paper back a tear-stain just above my name That was the first time I wrote something and I haven’t stopped since…
Pen devoid of poems adventure long overdue living room carpet growing long in the tooth I’m pining for movement so keen to get out I’ll go walking down to Holly Hagg
Little glimpses at normality haloed by golden rays There’s no poison in the idle river no politics in the quiet horse cantering to another chew
The clouds of working day part while I’m out walking bathed in nature’s endless beauty which never disappears only ever obscured by thought or perspective Eased back into focus on the road to Holly Hagg
With every step I take the tension unspools And there are words, waiting ideas that come to me pinned to ancient fenceposts nestled in the cracks between the stones making up the wall that keeps me on the road to Holly Hagg
The walk becomes a gallop blood pumping in my chest body now loose enough for every step to be a dance I am light and free as I close the distance on my prized poetry and the generous view expands beyond Holly Hagg…
The Lighthouse 