The Jersey Tiger moth seems to be doing it wrong:This makes me wonder about all the other creatures in the ivy hedge who have their camouflage right. Which makes lying in the hammock rather less enticing.
I flew to Spain on Wednesday. We boarded on time, but sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours while they fixed a technical problem.
This was the view through the window just after take off:Despite appearances, I don’t think it was the warp drives they fixed, as we were still two hours late at the other end.
L’Escala: thunder blue,
the Mediterranean
beat her lace-frilled cuffs against
the coast’s ridged washboard rocks
while the cobla band played on
in brassy silence.
You’ll find a couple of other poetry fragments from my recent trip to Catalonia if you click here.
La tramuntana
turns the beach
vertical, lifting it
towards a cleanswept blue
where tiptilting gulls
fly backwards.
It’s not quite the right photo, of course, but the tramontane wind blew so hard for four of the five days of my recent trip that I couldn’t see or think or focus. I could hardly stand upright most of the time, so was pleased to find even a few lines of poetry, without worrying about whether I had appropriate pictures to use alongside.
A painter’s light, you said,
but I saw nothing,
eyes scrunched against
drifting sand and tufts
of cottonwood.
The Ham Museum is a shrine
to swine: crimson haunches hang
in the swelter of strip lights; fat leaks
dripping into plastic cones while
an unobtrusive bustle of barstaff
serve the gathered worshippers.
With ritual gesturing, slim-bladed
knives skim iridescent curves.
Glasses are raised in veneration
of marbled flesh, and wafers
of translucent succulence dissolve
as devotees discuss the mysteries
of the world.
The (draft) poem is loosely based on a chain of bars in Spain, while the pig in the picture was photographed some time last year sitting on a table outside an English restaurant/wine bar/pub… Actually, I’m not sure what the Almanack should be classed as, but it’s worth a visit if you are in the area. It caters for a rather wider range of tastes than does the Museo del Jamón.
don't confuse the narrator 