Travelling in the UK, I seem to be in headless chicken mode, with no time to sit and think or write, and yet achieving very little. Yesterday, though, I took a walk , as it was a glorious, slightly blustery, English summer afternoon.
I’ve commented before on the monkey puzzle in my mother’s village, but I’d never seen it with cones before:
The Matins bell sounds honey-clear
across still valley air. It chimes
outside my window where
a carillon of grapes calls
to the rising sun.
The photo is actually from the year we moved to the village – the previous owner was assiduous in his use of pesticides and chemicals, so the fruit that autum was far more photogenic than what we produce.
The words are not recent, either, but I’m hoping that now the summer is effectively over, and I am ready to settle down at my desk with fewer distractions, visits and visitors, I may be able to find space again for poetry.
Back in Spain after what seems to have been a long absence, I find the village half in fiestas. 
There appear to be other ‘cultural activities’, too, such as those advertised on the poster in the photo: Miss Camiseta Mojada – ‘Miss Wet Tee-shirt’ – is about the level of finesse I would expect for village fiestas, but I can’t decide whether Mister Paquete Mojado strikes a new low for culture or a new high for equality.
I guess it would probably be better if I don’t start wondering too deeply about the chupitos eróticos or the invitation to “come and ride our mechanical bull”.
Having very little to write about – and very little time to write – I thought a photo would brighten up the page:
I dreamed of you last night and woke
to moonlight, sheet-tangled feet
cat-twisted and cold.I drowsed again, through decades, slipped
between cities and crossed continents,
embracing and embraced,
now chasing and now chased,
no pause between the kisses passed
from partner on to partner
down through the yearning years.I dreamed of you last night
and woke to moonlight.
(St John’s Eve – Midsummer Night – is celebrated across Spain with fire jumping in the street and general festivities. It’s supposed to be a time of powerful magic, and seemed a suitable title for this slightly chaotic dream poem.)
don't confuse the narrator 