don't confuse the narrator

light relief

Midnight Moths owl: Birmingham Big Hoot Art Trail. Artist: Alyn Smith

When I told a friend that I’d been looking through old poems trying to find one to send to a competition with the theme darkness, he laughed and said I should find that easy: after all, I write lots of dark poems.

In fact he was wrong. The subject matter isn’t always the most cheerful, but I do tend to find a bright twist to things. Like the owl in the photo – the Midnight Moths owl from Birmingham’s Big Hoot Art Trail – I can’t help but see the stars.

Coincidentally, yesterday I came across the word eigengrau: the colour that we see when there is zero light.

It seems that even in perfect darkness we don’t actually see black: our optic nerves make us see a dark grey instead. Perhaps we should re-name them optimistic nerves. Perhaps I should write a poem about that.

no more fun

True, there was no diversion on the other side of the sign, but nor is life “a glorious cycle of song” on this side. There again, what did I expect?

in the clouds

Three weeks ago I wrote that my external hard drive was refusing to boot. Faced with the prospect of losing ten years worth of photos, writing and other memories, I managed to remain optimistic.

I finally took the drive down to the shop earlier this week and have spent a tense few days waiting for news. The chap now tells me that he thinks he has managed to recover everything. To avoid a repetition of the problem, he recommends that I start storing things in the cloud.
Continue reading “in the clouds”

the big picture

Looking through my photo files for ideas for a blog post, I find mostly close ups of flowers and insects. Panoramic views are few and far between, and pictures of people are even less frequent. Even if a scene could be a landscape, my focus is usually on details.
Continue reading “the big picture”