memories

bluebell close up

Spring pours sunshine
through the woods to dapple
on my polished shoes.

I hear birdsong echo
children’s laughter; green
is a scent, a taste
fresh on my tongue.

(The opening lines of an old poem.)
 

moving targets

Usually, I take pictures of flowers and plants because they’re pretty and they tend to keep still; just occasionally, though, a moving image is too delightful not to at least try and capture it.

dogs playing in small pond
dogs just wanna have fun
The photo doesn’t do justice to the reality: there were four dogs in total, and for a few brief minutes before their – unseen – owner whistled them back, they chased each other in and out of that muddy puddle with pure unfettered joy.

news at the cutting edge

swiss army knife and pearl-handled penknife
There’s been a lot of talk this past week about “Tory knife crime plans”. (The plans under discussion are for mandatory prison sentences for anyone convicted twice for carrying a knife.)

News websites change rapidly, so one headline that particularly caught my attention – “Clegg attacks Tory knife crime plan” – is no longer to be found. I’d made a note of it, though, as that badly chosen verb “attack” bothered me.

For a bored subeditor, making up punny headlines can be fun, but I think there’s a point when serious news should be treated seriously. (True, my post title is slightly frivolous, but this is a personal blog not an official news provider.)
Continue reading “news at the cutting edge”

in Catalonia I

View from the headland, north of Llançà, Catalonia,

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.

coast north of Llançà, Catalonia, Catalunya

blowing my own trumpet

Close up of band statue, l'Escala, Spain
This week I received a surprisingly enthusiastic reaction to some poems I had submitted for feedback; I also received some delightful comments on my blog from random robots.

I leave it to the reader to guess which is which:
Continue reading “blowing my own trumpet”