Sometimes the sky seems solid: there are no thoughts; no words; no voice. Sometimes there seems to be no poet.
Aphonia
I have lost my voice.
The murmur of the traffic is enough
to drown the sound of my ideas. Star grit,
like broken oyster shells, embeds itself
in my soft palate and I choke
on smoky clouds as I aspire
to the feathered tops of pine trees.The moon dissolves,
a luminescent coughdrop,
liquid on my tongue.
For no particular reason, the rosebay willow herb is one of my favourite summer flowers. The name is one I remember learning as a child, along with so many other pink and purple blooms: meadow crane’s-bill, mallow, cosmos, buddleia…
I haven’t spent much time in the UK over the last 20 years and I am struck now by the willow herb spires lining the river banks and towering above the long grasses in the fields and meadows.
There seems to be something very aspirational – and inspirational – about how they point to the blue sky: I get the impression they are telling me there is no limit to the possibilities.
A closer look reveals a host of insects busy among the flowers: a reminder that without hard work ambition may count for nothing.
If you get a group of writers together, it’s pretty much impossible to come up with a definition of poetry that they will all agree on. One of my personal favourites describes poetry as “the genre where the writer has more control over the presentation on the page than the layout artist does”, but I’ll admit it isn’t tremendously helpful.
This quote from Phil Roberts is another of my favourites:
The most complex and ‘adult’ word-game of all: the poem.
On a walk the other night, I came across this sign:
I rather like the idea of a “permissive bridleway”, but I like it even more knowing that it has kissing gates installed along its route.
As the seond photo shows, the path also has way markers that hang out on the verge [sic] dressed in their glad rags.
I think perhaps I should be writing a poem entitled In summer, the permissive bridleway puts on its finery, but I fear that would be the high point of the piece and I would be unable to do it justice.
Yesterday, I said that my muse seems to have gone off on holiday. 
Chiltern Railways toilets become ‘inspiration stations’
and the story tells how the train toilets are being transformed with floor-to-ceiling vinyl images based on “attractions” along the Birmingham to London route. The only example cited is Compton Verney, an 18th Century country mansion in Warwickshire.
Continue reading “the muse bemused”
don't confuse the narrator 