Rebirth: Old Year's End

 December 2025, not an ideal place for the first post of the year.......but I won't be the only one for whom the last few years have found weighty, wearying, and not the easiest to work our ways through.

I have virtually no idea how much of an audience I ever had, if any, apart from the small clues that the dubitable "Visitor counter"appears to register, nor how many of those that seem to drop by for a look are even human rather than random AI bots trawling for things to copy and/or parody, or scrape for others' ideas......

Does it really matter? Aren't "Blogs" their own creators own "raison d'être" anyway?

Hmm.

(This is meant to be the new header, but it's experimental, even if not a new shot, I just am unfamiliar with the new layout.....)




I'm going to try to maintain my stance, as host, in avoiding anything either too personal, or too revealing, whilst simultaneously staying "true" to my world view, and the inherent and problematic positions I find therein......how I square that circle, only time will tell, and yet against all odds, here I am again, tapping at my solitary keyboard, shining a little evening firelight into corners of my life.

"Bide a while" remains, if a tad on the dusty side.

Bear with me for the next few posts as I have been trawling back through the piles of notebooks and trying to get back in the saddle again, metaphorically. I haven't been in an actual saddle since the Cornish adventure, sadly.......at 58 it's rather unlikely I'll be mounting a trusty steed again, at least not any time soon......

Apart from the minor tweaks to the appearance/layout, the content of the Blog is more or less going to remain me rambling on, chucking poems and prose about, interspersed with photos, scenery mostly, and maybe oddities and quirky things if I spot any......with maybe a bit of comment if I think of anything that's not too controversial.......

Let's get things rolling :

Words Run Out

Then one day, after the fights,

Accusations, confessions,

Storms, sunsets and dramas,

I could hear again.

Birdsong, the horses, next door's cattle,

Passing traffic, passing laughter,

Not you.

Small sentences dried, and died.

As we ran out of words.

I haven't decided on dating things, but as I haven't recorded dates for everything, it's a moot point anyway here.....

Some clues are probably too blunt.....

Another Promise

From this tranquil hole, gentler Spring,

Scent, light, peace,

My eyes picked up on her approaching,

(Did my heart fly, soar with herons?)

Banking, turning in the promise of life,

Did he burn with star-fire, rhetoric?

Fireworks, dragon-souled, and infinite majesty?

I caught your smile, let it enter, and enfold,

Warming and very welcome.....

And held out empty arms to return,

Such gently sprung love,

Scented, tranquil,

To hold

The promise.

Bentreriwall Viaduct

There's an overgrown brambly gate,

Locked, long forgot, galvanised,

Under the viaduct, in the cleft of the valley.....

I hid my soul there, brambled,

As the Riviera train clattered overhead,
Carrying my mind, East.

To return, to reclaim.....

Wafting fluffy seeds, late,

Smells much like fox.

Turning towards your borrowed house,

Scratching my heart into the stoney pillars of never never.

Pen on Paper

Cheap Bic shuffle, blue,

Runs across clean white paper, loom,

Weaves thoughts, patterns, squiggly words,

Clickety-clack, there and back,

Calling up chips and fractured histories,

Thrown in dark corners of the weaving shed,

Now picked up and sewn together,

Creating non-people who never were,

To vent out, and strip bare,

To shred and reveal the writer's core,

Knitted, woven, fabric, illustrations of texture,

Dark centred, lost threads, torn thought,

Trailed on the page, careless blood-letting,

Not for the leeches, but for the lost,

For the embroidered tapestry of self,

The Emperor's hilarious, sad, foolishness,

Tapestries of confessional, misdirections and blame.

Expeditions That Won't Happen

It's sometimes hard to listen,

To silence, to

The Shipping Forecast,

Thoughts free-wheeling, and soaring,

Careless lists.

Daring humour,

Places we'd almost certainly love,

But never go.

Old Poems Old Poets

Juvenile scrawls tear you up to disguise,

Allowances for self-revealing glimpses,

Thirty years later, still I know you,

Designers of textiles, hairdressing, flautists,

Hunters, Queen Goddesses, fireworks,

Therapists, poets, stoners, Pachouli Oil maids,

Nanny, Groom, Adopted, lost, carers,

Masseur, Jon Bon Jovi's ex..... Environmentalists,

Bank workers, artists, dreamers,

Drivers, riders, givers and takers,

Lovers, liars and fakers, and more dreamers.....

All confetti now, but loved, remembered,

Cherished and forgotten, and smiles,

No time now for tears, wry smiles,

Shut out, reflect, just be true.

Everything probably was your fault......

All along, but hey, some of it was AWESOME!

I have more, but maybe that's plenty for a return effort. I mean you can overdo it......

I know I've said it before, but things do evolve, dry up, start again, falter, stall, maybe fail, maybe recover. I hope I can find the impetus to keep it going now though, I must say I did used to sometimes really think I was creating something worthwhile.

Feel free to leave a comment, just not spam though!

And it's goodnight from Nell too........