writing and writers – Page 127 – don't confuse the narrator

no movement but sound

I went out early today, but the birds must all have been awake long before me and when I left the house the noise in the street was startlingly loud for a Sunday morning. I suppose they were busy discussing air pressure and wind speed, temperature and flight paths or whatever it is that birds talk about before they get moving in the morning.

There was so much sound, but no movement and not a single bird to be seen even though the trees are bare of leaves and they must surely have been visible as dark blotches among the branches.

Telegraph pole silhouetted against sky at daybreak

I remember thinking as a child that the insulators on telegraph poles were birds perching; I reckon it was a reasonable mistake.
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work in progress

Although I understand that the UK weather was dreadful over the holidays, I’m not sure that it was really cold; certainly there are already signs of spring about. Of course we’re bound to get some real winter weather later, so I hope Nature has the good sense to be patient.

Chrysalis

Tight as apple pips,
 buds spiral around
a moss-supple stalk
 anticipating spring
when they will split  
and shake free
 tissue wings.

That’s a draft, and questions remain:
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circles

Black jacket & red scarf — ready for the revolution

“Bad governments bring bad weather,” says my aged mother, complaining that she hasn’t been out of the house for the last ten days. “Roll on the revolution.”

“So, what are you doing to further the revolution?” I ask.

Mainly, I’m trying to distract her from her woes, but I do think that if you’re nearly 90 and want the revolution to come in your lifetime, it’d probably be a good thing to be pro-active about it.

At first, she doesn’t think there’s much an old woman like her can do.

Then, “I could carry a placard.”

This is good: she’s no longer thinking – or complaining – about how cold and wet it is.
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words & weapons

We went for a drive yesterday and, as usual, I took my camera with me. But I wasn’t really in the mood for taking pictures; I wanted to see things for myself rather than look at them through a viewfinder. Sadly, that means that although I have a few nice pictures of a reservoir, I missed a really good shot of black cows straggling across the Spanish hillside and another of a herd of bracken-coloured goats grazing on the scrubby roadside.

We also saw an elderly rustic walking down the middle of the road carrying a seriously dangerous-looking rifle, apparently stalking something. I didn’t take a picture of him, either, but that was mainly because I think that pointing a camera at a man with a gun is not the wisest of acts.
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