(mostly) first person poetry, prose & opinion
(Edited some 12 hours after original posting to add a post title.)
For the last month or so, scarcely a day goes by without another news story about a once-in-a-decade phenomenon, a record influx, a mass migration… the huge clouds of painted lady butterflies that are appearing across the UK.
And for the last month or so, I’ve been watching hopefully – but in vain – to observe this “butterfly bonanza”.
Continue reading “unintentionally untitled”
I’ve been recording the videos for a new online writing course with the working title “Creative Inspirations”. The course was born from the fact that, at some time in their life, almost every writer looks at a blank screen or a blank page and realises they don’t know how to get started.
For me, this happens quite regularly. Indeed, I could say it happens almost every weekend when it’s time to write a blog post. Sadly, although each class in the course will provide a new activity or insight to trigger ideas, I’m not sure it’s what I need for writing here; I do, however, hope it will be of use to other writers and poets who have hit a bit of a wall.
Continue reading “butterfly thoughts & mindful musings”
Autumn is full of butterflies. Or so it seems to me.
Sometimes, as in the picture at the top of the post, it is only the visual echo of a butterfly. Sometimes, as in this fragment, it’s a memory of summer:
From among the fallen leaves, the wind
lifts a broken butterfly wing
and gives it flight.
I said yesterday that there still seemed to be a fair number of flowers around considering it’s now officially autumn. So today I went out to see if I could find something more seasonal to feature on the blog.
Hips and haws, blackberries, elderberries, snowberries, cotoneaster, yew and rowan… I went round gathering fruit from other people’s gardens and along the canal path – or at least gathering photos.
Continue reading “autumn berries”
The previous post was a bit of a political ramble and was nowhere near as popular as other recent ones that feature pretty photos and fragments of poetry, so let’s try again.
I never collected butterflies as a child, never owned a killing jar, never pinned spread wings flat on boards or boasted of my trophies to visitors. I did, however, own a butterfly net made from a piece of net curtain, a hoop of wire and a bamboo garden cane – well, maybe my brother owned it and I acquired it – which features in the poem Childhood posted last autumn.
I could also identify just about every adult butterfly in the book, though I was less expert when it came to caterpillars.
The final lines of the poem Childhood are:
The butterflies have flown away;
their colours paint my dreams.
I’m wondering now if in fact it is moths like this that add that dash of dream colour.
For years I have been sure that there’s a poem in the woodshed. Today, I seem to have found another fragment:
