when sheep become goldfish (14/Sept/18)

autumn is spilling in, from over the hills and far away to closer and closer each day with limitless bounds grazing the mountains and scavenging summer and gorging on what it leaves behind, all of its flaws and all of its haws, the grating of grates being cleaned and readied, the splitting of logs chopped in the spring to season through summer to feed sacrificial to autumns remorseless embrace… “it’s coming, it’s coming!”, the upland sheep bellow, “have you regrown your fleece?”, as they check each other out to ensure they are ready prepared for what they are built for but still, even a sheep needs wraps itself tight, after all, you’ll not find them huddled in front of a hearth anytime soon… I know what you’re thinking, yet another weather-worn wringing of words about weather, “the weather, the weather, anyone would be forgiven to think you’re obsessed!”, which in all fairness I probably am but you see we are none of us to a man or a woman immune to its vagaries conjured from seemingly nought… some get annoyed, in fact most people do, projecting intent upon it’s every move, they’ll shout and they’ll swear at it, sometimes they’ll smile at it though that is as rare as a unicorn… they’re bothered by how it never stands still, like it has ants in its pants or its feet are on fire, like my patio felt during the heatwave… ah, the heatwave, the heatwave, remember that?… when was that now? so long ago or that’s how it feels as though it was only a dream but it happened, it happened and even then there were those most put-out by its relentless abuse in outstaying its welcome, refusing to rain, and turning a sea of pointlessly-manicured lawns to a marbling of browns to which they equally pointlessly water with sprinklers and hoses ignoring that most of it quietly vanished I evaporation but giving the grass false-hope turning green for a day and then dying a death, as they say… but that was then and this is now and all is maybe forgiven, or possibly not, or at least totally forgotten by those with the memory and attention-span of a goldfish… … … so how did we make it to this, from sheep to goldfish, have to be careful upon what you wish…… autumn is coming, as if you didn’t know, filling the blanks that summer’s left vacant, at least here it is anyway and here is the only here I can be as if I was there I’d be there……… … …

© 2018 robert greig

haar (6/Sept/18)

cometh the haar, cometh the dark-time, light is leaching, time has breached… that bucket won’t be enough, even one without holes to bail out the rushing days which aren’t in themselves in any more of a rush that any year past… it just feels that way as September brings that sinking feeling, in a downward trajectory into winter as though this is a thing to dread albeit temporarily halted by an imaginary respite when the clocks go back one hour resulting in a mass delusion which serves to last no more than a week or two at best before…
before…
before we sink again… this is how some see the year, winter as the lowest ebb, a time between the tides, the slack when nothing much happens… or so that’s what they think… which is followed by a change of gear as buds appear and the time begins to feel itself pulled up by its bootstraps at first in baby-steps then stomping strides into spring when anything and everything is possible, or so that’s what they think, until..
until…
until it finds what it’s been looking for, summer sitting high atop aloof upon its plateau and where time then sits looking at the view and thinking, I’ve made it, all the way, all the way, all the way up to the top of the top…
now what?…
time stops…
or so that’s what they think… all that energy, expenditure, is bound to take its toll and it does, so now, now, how to come down from such a mighty peak of expectations?… follow the tortuous path, yes, there, though it’s more of a sheep-track admittedly and yes it is a bit twisted, unflat, and may at time falls away on one side or the other or sometimes both at once but if you hold you nerve,
hold it,
hold it,
hold it, you might just
make it,
make, it,
make it, but watch your step, mind the gaps… there are always gaps, those inbetweens you’ll find between the things you give a name… don’t worry so much about the loose stones, it’s the leaves on the track you need to keep a watchful eye… but trust in a good pair of sturdy boots, that’s the trick… it’s downhill all the way, but the kind of downhill you might be thinking…
there…
there…
see it… it’s still only barely visible through the haar but it’s there deep in the heartwood of winter beyond the autumn distracting with its scatters of illusions and allusions…
there…
there… winter huddled around a fire… waiting… seems as good an aim as any so perhaps not so ‘downhill’ after all…

© 2018 robert greig

absent minds (3/Sept/18)

ghosts taunt the trees and horse huddle in threes, or these three do, I suppose if there was a fourth then they’d huddle in fours, but these are just three, two brown and one white… and a wheelbarrow… for some reason it too occupies the field, grazing like the horses are maybe, if wheelbarrows graze that is…… whatever it’s doing I’m sure it has its reasons… from the first floor looking out over the fields of horses and wheelbarrows to where I know the Strait to be but can’t see way over into the mountains currently moidered by clouds themselves coming apart at the seams, hastily-sewn clothes shedding threads in fly-away trails… nooks and crannies, peaks and crags, on occasion peeking through… with a silver cheese knife he absent-mindedly sliced another sliver as thin as gauze, such precision all the while removing and replacing his spectacles, every time he spoke, off they came, then on again…… she pondered the contents of a book turning pages absent-mindedly back then forth, back then forth… another said “hmm” almost absent-mindedly to everything said and even when  silence became just that too long for comfort, another “hmm” escaped his lips… a fourth, as opposed to the three which were horses in the field, absent-mindedly folded a red napkin this way and that as though trying to recall the word, what’s the word… “hmm”, said the other, another sliver of cheese reduces the Caerphilly’s volume and another page is turned… yes, origami, that’s it, that’s the word… she sets down the napkin remembering she has no idea how to do it, rain strained remnants of sound from the air flinging it at the windows and walls, an agit-artist in a strop……

© 2018 robert greig