Author: chrisnelson61

Chris Nelson was born in East Anglia, but grew up in Birmingham when his family relocated when he was still a young child. After leaving school he studied computing at what was then Wolverhampton Polytechnic, before deciding that it was not a career path he wanted to follow. He retrained as a teacher and has taught in a primary school in Dudley since the mid 1980's. He has dabbled in writing short stories since his youth, but has began writing more seriously since the turn of the century. He lives in Stourbridge with his wife and two children.

Counting Grains

Posted by chrisnelson61

Watching sand trace patterns as it runs

From one hand slowly into the other

And then on and ever on

Filling palms on its way –

And wondering and wondering

For how long will this amuse

And considering the joke as grains get trapped

Like memories I can’t displace

Thoughts I can not lose –

Images of you somewhere beyond

Somewhere above counting,  counting

And dreaming of new ways to hold us

Creating new colours on which to dwell

Pictures which blind the eye –

Accustomed now to the caressing sand which

Speaks in aging tones

An endless wheel on which to hang

And glorify the hopes to which our hands cling –

A falsehood that has been draped with

Careless abandon across our shoulder

And embraces now heavy with tears

As I still fathom the joke