Winter Woes!

(source)

Find your way out of December

it’s cold

 it’s dark

and it’s grey

it follows right on from November

chasing the autumn away

---

(source)

It leads to one of least favourite

January

that hole

in the year

where nothing is right, dark swallows the light

and adds another age to my years

---

(source)

February, I thole, with its promise

that the

herald of March

will blow in

buffet the cobwebs of winter

soon April will bring again spring

---

(source)

May might still feel like winter

Scotland

not noted

for sun

but I hang on, with hope, in these dark days

that June or July will bring some

(source)

Failing the former, the latter,

August

might

give us a break

failing a summer then autumn

September, October, I’ll take

(source)

But stuff the months of midwinter

with their birthdays

and dark days

and shit

Bah, humbug to winter’s

crap weather

don’t like it one little bit

---

(source)

Should have been born in the hot lands

or taught

to at least

hibernate

I’d gather in nuts and milk chocolate

a pot of tea and just wait

---

(source)

Till daylight returns to the heartlands

till heart

has thawed

or dried out

any season but winter

hate it without any doubt!

Advertisement

Pick Your No’s

So, this past week, the weather here has been dire. Headlights on at three o’clock. All sorts of shit plummeting from skies the colour of mink. Kids in all day in the classroom in case they keel over from water exposure. Add in a full moon. High winds. Mental. Truly, it’s a thing. Kids and weather. And full moons.

My own youngest came into my sanctuary a few minutes ago – now gone 8p.m.- begging to go outside with the girl across the road. To play! Ffs!

I said yes.

It’s dark o’clock, thunder just rumbled, I can hear them squealing. Having a ball, apparently.

Nope. I don’t get it either.

But kids and weather. It’s really a thing.

I know. Been teaching for nigh on thirty years. Seven of my own. And, guaranteed, if it’s a sunny day, they want to shelter from the heat, play Minecraft and get on your mammaries. Underfoot for the hell of it.

Snow. Wind. Rain. Let me at it!

She’s just come back in – this second – ruddy-cheeked, happy as a pig in the proverbial, high as a kite. But not nearly as high as if I’d said no.

Sometimes no is the wrong word. I know. Take it from me. Pick your no moments.

 

 

 

Ringing The Changes

As anyone who reads this blog knows, my natural tendency in poetry is to rhyme. I can’t help it most times. It sort of pours out of me like the rain pours here in Scotland – mostly interminable with occasional bursts of sunshine to ring the changes.

Naturally, I’d love more sunshine but I’ve learned to love the downpours, the drizzle, the being dumped on from above. Hyperbole anyone? But I have learned to love the watery sunshine and the new growth that emerges so furiously after a deluge, the myriad shades of green and the promise of pastel relief.

Mostly I’ve learned to appreciate the sun when it does deign to chase the clouds away and then I’m like every other Scot enjoying the break from the seemingly incessant rain – get your kit off, harvest the rays and let the sun work its magic on pale skin.

We mushrooms might live in too much darkness, way too much moisture but we’re very tasty with a bit of square-sliced sausage and some bacon. Plain bread, brown sauce. Gawd, I’m starving! And we like to turn rotten into meaningful – slight political allusion there. 😉

Anyway, here’s my first Shadorma as far as I remember – mushrooms not being as noted for memory as taste and a slight hint of danger if not picked carefully!

I couldn’t resist a bit of free verse challenge too. Did I mention we Scots like a challenge on our plate?

  (  Shadorma Challenge – Passing Time )

In darkness

Or festooned by rain

Moisture mulched

Our springtime

Winters Byzantine’s fall

Mushrooms’ summer stance

---

Free Verse

Insouciant to Northern needs

Strange seasonal rhythm,

Clear skies belie what always gathers

To favour lush growth

And so the greens are very green

Of every hue

Weathered temples succumb to rot

As nature’s need to rejuvenate

Flushes and fuels, sprouting mushrooms,

Rich in resource, delicacies hardened and hardy,

Even in unnatural darkness

Bringing forth flavours

Building on the old.

Normal rhyming service will no doubt be restored because a new cloud burst always follows here. But, today, the sun is shining. Yay! Strip the veil and cast the spores! 😉

Elemental Daughter

She can tell, by turns, which way the world blows,

Lips to air, deep breaths, she tastes, she knows,

Lets the Kaver finger hair and loose clothes,

Mistral rushes through her channelled pores.

She nor’westers within stones long risen,

Empower’d by the buffets in between,

Dances there with deities all borne in that scene,

Feels the pressure, coriolis weaned.

She can rise from rivers, balance water,

Atomic weights, compound all they to her,

She’s the breath, the elemental daughter,

Born, released and free forever more.

Crazy sort of lady is the folk lore,

Witch upon the wind and on the moors,

Bathing in the floods of fire and aether,

Shower’d, she of air, she lives and pours

Flesh to life and soul to all around, rotating,

Twirling dervish, live unto the end,

Controls and calms, by turns, all elements about her,

Every waft of current is her friend.

Listen when she speaks through thunder’d prisms

Wrap yourself in bounty born within,

She curls around all feelings, depths and chasms,

Feel her dancing, daughter of the wind.

Time Warped

Time warped,

the minutes and the hours,

seconds passing sleep or wide alert,

Night-time sojourns

meshing into mornings,

dawnings falling backwards disconcert.

Mid-night, 

inelegance of musings,

 stars unseen in murky hash through pane,

Daylight darkness,

entangled sleeping patterns,

or time, warped, misdelivered by the rain.

Hades On Horseback

What cloven horsemen ride upon the wind here,

Striking hooves on sharpened edge of waves,

Hunched and headlong, shrouded cloaks protecting,

Eyemasks glinting red? No fortune saves

Any in their path, though flight above us,

The heels of jeopardy are felt below,

Riding willfully to depths of nowhere,

Pistols drawn and daggers tucked to show

No enemy that’s found within their flightpath

Or foe espied, from fathoms far above,

Have hope or faith, outrunning is no option,

Bow’d their heads, and ours as sacrificial dove.

What earthly gate or hellish palace hides them

In daylight hours, these princes of the dark?

Where upon the shores of any peoples

Do black knights harbour steeds and stable mark?

Who betrays location as they search here,

Plots the points upon the charted graph?

Who drowns gladly in the tidal wave of hoofbeats

Pounding on while evil horsemen laugh?

Are any there who hear the fairground laughter,

The cackle of the master turning wheels

As rainbow-coloured equines carry minions,

The hounds of hell on horseback as night squeals?

 

Humbled By The Wind

A really lovely day today was somewhat spoiled when I hit the deck like the proverbial ton of bricks.

One of those gorgeous, gloriously sunny, windy days that twirls your skirt and lashes hair around. One of those days where you get a bit high with the nursery kids and play tig and chases till you’re breathless with laughter. Quite good when the three and four year olds can’t catch you! One of those days when running about like an eejit seems like the best fun you can have.

But that’s not when I fell.

I reserved that for the afternoon session when the same blustery day enticed me outside with an older crew to do orienteering. Why waste the sunshine, eh?

Last minute instructions to them as they stood on the stairwell and I stood halfway in and halfway out of the building was when it happened.

I had secured the heavy exterior door in its prop to allow us back in the building after they exhausted themselves chasing clues and answering questions. That’s when it happened.

A fantastic gust of wind caught the door, pulled it from its fastening and….everything moved into slow motion… but in a quick second flash……decked! I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. Landed with no grace whatsoever.

The kids, god bless ’em, rushed to my aid and shouted, ‘Are you OK, Mrs Hurley?’ I sort of lay there in a heap of dress and handbag going, ‘No. Not really, no.’

One of them had dashed for help and, before I could say, ‘What a red neck!’, there were two members of staff coming to my aid.

By this time I was on my feet and checking out my injuries.

No damage done to my tights. Well, there’s a relief. But a bloody big bleeding graze beneath. A gash on my hand. And a rather strange pain in my shoulder that is really more behind my right breast. Are there muscles there? I can’t remember. Or maybe they can’t remember.

I think I was in shock from getting battered through the air because I seem to remember one of the kids asking if we were still going to be doing orienteering. Might have been my imagination. They wouldn’t be so heartless, would they?

Well, we did anyway. I limped around while they ran amok like banshees in the great North wind. ( I have no idea which direction it was coming from. But I like the sound of that.)

Now I know it’s said that pride goes before a fall. But what about afterwards? And why did the wind feel it necessary to have a go at me? These are the questions and musings that enter a befuddled brain knocked sideways by the power of nature.

I got sympathy from hubby when I came home. A hot bath and a hauf. My own kids informed me that they would have laughed if they had been the kids involved. I don’t know what some parents are raising. I really don’t.

And I don’t have any plasters for my knee. 😦

 

 

Submerged Skies

My response to the prompt. I wish I could see the heavens but…..

 

Heavenly wonders

Hidden behind storm clouded

Skies – waterfalls flow.

 

Carpe Diem’s Special #70, Alexey Andreyev’s “Evening sky”

evening sky —
over the city lights
stars hardly seen

(c) Alexey Andreyev

http://chevrefeuillescarpediem.blogspot.fi/2014/01/carpe-diems-special-70-alexey-andreyevs.html?m=1

Flavoursome Friend

Bliss time again,

First coffee!

Gawd, I love it so much!

Nowhere to be on a Sunday morn,

So reading

And a mug of my crutch

 

To pep up the day before it begins,

All snuggled and sipping in time

To words that I read and some that I write,

A pleasure so simple but fine.

 

Prep for some comments!

I’m ready to roll

In and out of my favourite blogs.

All calm in here,

Though grey outside,

The weather has gone to the dogs.

 

Thunder and lightening

Accompanied my dreams,

Flashed in at my window pane,

I woke through the night

With sadness, no fright,

But a heart aching with pain.

 

All better now, dreams are so strange,

Especially when I can’t recall

What passed through my mind as I lay sleeping.

Maybe that’s wiser for all.

 

Though heavy the skies,

My heart is renewed

With a cup of the freshest of brew

And time to peruse,

Chat with my muse

And catch up on all of the news.

 

So cheers little coffee bean!

My days wouldn’t start

Quite so well

If your scent and your flavour

Did not endeavour

To rouse me. It would all go to hell.

 

Mornings spent trying to awaken.

Giving my old body a shaking,

But no need for that, cos you’re right on hand.

Yes, you my coffee, are grand!

Uniformity

Cloud bank

Walls in world,

Cloistering grey

To grey.

Heaven to earth

Divided,

Kept separate

By uniformity.