#133: mightbemaybenot (1/Dec/18)

[written on the 30/Nov/18…. posted as I thought you may like to read it…]

1. comes around

another last day comes around
shh, don’t make a sound
not yet
don’t ruin it…

1. the usual it seems

.. I woke up early, little sleep, the usual it seems, it was dark, the usual it seems, it’s autumn, or winter, who can tell, it’s dark, the usual it seems… though matters little though just enough to leave a small niggle in the forefront of my thoughts, the usual it seems… it’s not unusual to not tell twins apart; are they twins?… it’s hard to tell if there’s even two as one bleeds into the other almost seamlessly, or in fact seamlessly… the usual it seems… when all the leaves are gone is that not winter then?… but I see five leaves left on the gingko, and three left on the apple and one remaining on the once-adorned maple, and as for the oak they must be double-figure still though low they still cling on in vein (sic) hope, they’re there still singing autumns praises, flying the flag, so to speak, albeit waning flag… the usual it seems… so is it winter yet or am I simply wishful thinking, or longing for an autumn gone to linger that bit longer?… I think it might be, maybe not, or mightbemaybenot……

• strewn

… driveway strewn with acorns some still on their branches some just free-fell from above, luckily before I got there otherwise my head may come to grief… road strewn with cars   in a typically British orderly way, even here in Wales queuing is the same, confined between the kerbs, the lines and to the left, always on the left, a trait you’ll find on escalators, stairs and even footpaths a tendency to keep to the left leaving anything oncoming for the right… an unwritten truth… woodland path strewn with leaves not unlike a snowfall but instead in all the colours of the rainbow if said rainbow was sepia, making drifts along the edges leaving just enough to walk through, a parting of the waves as Moses-like I stride forth through a flurry here and flurry there tantalised by wind gently stirring  its autumn soup…….

1. still slumber sleeping

… buildings caged in scaffolding as though turned inside out with their viscera on show… a dragon waves and I wave back, it’s flapping slashing through the air sound, a ropes loud objection to being bound so as it is to the flagpole… some street lights don’t seem to know it’s morning while others think it’s still night: it’s the inbetween-time with their eyes about as wide awake as those of the parade of drivers, also in an inbetween, except the one between patience and not… most shops still slumber sleeping in until a no doubt designated hour when they’ll spark into life as though all at once like they were never closed at all; except there’s one or two who break the rules opening earlier, much earlier, to beckon in passing waifs and strays with tantalising rows of headlines bothersome or worrisome or absurdsome alongside bakery delights reminding some they forgot to have breakfast before venturing abroad…

1. where they go

… sky strewn with clouds still unsure which way to go, how to play the day, keeping us guessing, wondering, or at least those of us who bother to look up as those in towns and cities all-too often forget to do anymore bearing an air of seen it all before… nevertheless today they’ll be glad they wore their overcoat to wend their way to where-they-go, in and out like ghosts street to street, they’ll get there in the end these where-they-go’s to where-they-go…..

1. early worm

… the bins are being emptied, their discards discarded again but this time into wheeled twilight warriors who, kind of but not quite that stealthily, groan their way in their own inbetween, between the street and clumsy-parked cars leaving behind them  battlezone of empties at the mercy of the wind, some blue, some green, some black, some brown all become forgotten while some become blown so far from home they wander wind-strewn still-born streets like lost dogs… gardens fizz with bird calls, not song as such not being spring, but of other things in code that’s only known to them… meanwhile a blackbird gets the early worm, and the early worm gets eaten… the moral of this tale?… don’t be an early worm…

• cue the queue

… people?… ah yes, people… they emerge from their cocoons just to climb into another then to sit in slow procession in this still-snaking pageant of traffic, patiently impatient, resigned, surrendered to a daily grind with Friday on their mind… it’s another day in paradise, apparently, as the light gets lighter and mundanity spills in stealing away poetic justice leaving just disembodied words to find their own way like the queue, like the dragon, like the bins, like the early worm, like the ghosts from street to street all strewn and cast like die upon a game on chance and circumstance, pick a card but don’t tell me what it is… never… the less I know the better…..

© 2018 robert greig

#93: silence of the buzzard (13/Nov/18)

it flew from the oak, huge as it was, so much so I wondered how it could fly at all…. but fly it did and easily, smoothly, it was after all a bird, big for one for certain but one nonetheless as on outstretched wings the buzzard abandoned the tree as though it had just then popped into existence having not been before just that second so effective was its camouflage, its plumage blending almost seamlessly at any time of the year but particularly so among the sepias, russets and golds of autumn… it is still autumn, isn’t it?… the flip-flop season, one minute could be winter and the next could be just as easily late summer but no, no it’s most definitely, ‘ish, autumn as leaves even now after so many blustering storms continue to fall from the ever-thinning crowns of the canopies to litter lawns, path and streets, gutters, bus shelters, benches, tops of cars and anyone foolish to stand still long enough, with even the smaller bushes and shrubs now temporarily adorning these hand-me downs, sometimes ill-fitting and sometimes uncannily convincing you’d never know of their former preloved existence.. but that was a whole season ago, a season that left and took the warmth with it leaving the sun barely enthusiastic enough to lift itself off the horizon… for such an enormous wingspan the buzzard left the tree owl-like from where it perched silent, vigilant, patient, almost omniscient with barely a fuss nor even a sound…… if only, if only I had the simplicity of the buzzards life, hard though no doubt it is at times, still, there is envy………

© 2018 robert greig

the millipede (25/Sept/18)

a millipede walked across my carpet with more legs than a centipede and yet much smaller than… where was it going, where was it bound across this landscape featureless where not a pattern to be found or discerned… I’ll never know, you’ll never know… I picked it up, it wriggled in objection, I dropped it, it proceeded on its unknown quest, I picked it up again, it wriggled again perhaps more than the last wriggle, probably a bit miffed at this interruption… did it know I wasn’t a centipede?… centipedes have a taste for the taste of millipedes which I think is just an extreme jealous over-reaction at themselves having fewer legs, up to four times less in fact with millipedes having up to 400 (not 1000 as the name may allude, probably because whoever first named them looked and exclaimed, “what a f*** load of legs!” and was too much a scaredy-cat to count)… having managed to place it on my palm where it wriggled confusedly working out which way to take its many legs I opened a window and out said window sent it on its way, whatever way that turned out to be, the wriggle-way, obviously ……  … … …

© 2018 robert greig