a little focus

Once more I’m sitting here with a host of possible topics to write about and, once more, it’s proving difficult to zoom in on one specific idea and get a blog post written.

As I said last weekend, “When you’re stuck for something to write, it is often because you are looking vaguely around you and there are simply too many potential subjects.”

Pinning down a single idea is like trying to find the queen among the heaving life of an ants’ nest or a hive of bees, a specific car in a multi-storey carpark, one precise tree in the forest…

And yet there are trees that stand out from the rest.

While gardens and fields are turning orange in the heat, most of the trees in this area are staying green. So this yellow tree in the park caught my attention.

I thought perhaps it was a trick of the light and the sunshine had made the leaves appear yellow, so I decided to go and look more closely.

It looked no less yellow as I approached, but nor was it much easier to decide whether the colour was a trick of the light or whether the fluffy bits were new leaf growth or some kind of catkin or seed head.

It wasn’t until I came close to the tree that I could see that it was actually covered in yellow blossom.

I know it’s not a laburnum or a forsythia; it’s not broom or gorse or mimosa. Indeed, it’s not any of the yellow-blossomed trees I can find pictures of on Google.

I’m usually good at identifying plants and insects and finding the information I am looking for online, but here I have failed.

I have, however, confirmed my theory that if you start to look more closely at things you’ll end up with something to write about.

Now, to finish with a poem. I’d had a long day and walked up through the park carrying my sandals, so, although it’s a repost, the dry grass scratching at the soles of my feet made this piece seems relevant.

Noctambulation

            I watch black beetles dart while choirs
of skylarks glorify the dawn and shreds
            of mist braid chimney-stacks and spires
                  in yellowing frills.

            I’ve walked the sheeptracks of your dreams
in search of unicorns, but they have fled.
            Now they graze where honey flows in streams
                  through pillowing hills.

            The cropgrass scratches soulbear feet,
and each blade wounds. Too much is left unsaid:
            I choke on words made bittersweet
                  from swallowing pills.