A
Blackness
As
clear as night
wings
like ink
drawn
in non-flight;
more
positive than anything
is
that Rook on the rooftop opposite.
Its
wide-nosed beak
scans
feathers
for
insects or dirt,
coat
clean and brilliantine,
upstaging
the Jackdaw
hidden
in slate—
charcoal
indistinct
like
a so-called Eskimo
wrapped
in sealskin
or
centuries of a misconceived othering.
*
Rook
really took the biscuit, though;
all
the colours swam into him,
absorbed
their differences
to
nothing,
a
negative-positive
to
outshine the Sun,
a
blackness that turns day
and
night
back
to light.
Nalini
Paul
| | |
Nalini Paul |
***
Chrys Salt's tribute to Adrian Mitchell -
With
Adrian at the Peace Festival
if
you saw him running it was because he’d spotted truth in the crowd
and was chasing it if you saw him smiling it was at a good deed
waving from a balcony if you saw him jumping it was in a playground
with all the other daft kids on the block raising anarchy if you
heard him singing it was girls and boys come out to play if you saw
him laughing he was laughing he was really laughing if you saw him
waving it was to say HELLO come in and join the feast of the human
race if you saw him writing it was a love letter to the world on the
day of its crucifixion if you saw him dancing it was to a Beatles
tune about giving peace a chance and waiting for that moment to
arrive
Chrys Salt
***
BUS
PASS
I
waited anxiously at the bus stop.
Two
old ladies behind me
and
a younger woman with a child
behind
them formed the queue.
And
when the bus arrived I panicked.
I
encouraged the elderly ladies on first
then
I motioned to the young woman,
discretely
falling in behind her.
I
wanted no association with these
old
women – for we were leagues apart –
the
mother and child much preferred
with
my bus pass sweating in my palm.
I
dreaded the bus driver’s eyes
as
I dreaded the pad for the pass.
I
felt sure he would question my age
as
I felt sure I would fumble the pass.
All
things pass, of course. It happened
without
a word or the faintest of fumbles,
my
pointless exasperation grounded in the vanity
of
an uneasy, newly retired, senior citizen.
James
Aitken
***
Geneva, August 2010 (from Gold Tracks, Fallen Fruit)
the
wild sail of the water fountain
flaps
a sheet of light across the Lac LĂ©man
-
from
the cathedral bell-tower
it
looks like a thread of torn lace
round
the city’s wrist
|
Geneva rooftops (photo Morelle Smith) |
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Scotland, East Coast, August 2012
passing
through a narrow tunnel
that
winds between the banks of sand –
no
warning - the flat sea has spilled over the horizon -
it’s
as if the dunes first protected you
then
pushed you out
|
dunes, sea (photo by Morelle Smith) |
Morelle Smith