142/2023

One of the gods of war,
Punished for his transgressions
By being turned into a cat
With a permanent sneer
And unfathomable eyes,

Pollinates the poppies by
Rubbing his wire fur against
The petals of death in an
Attempt to pay back his debts
To those whose fate he was.

Under the
Heaviness of
His being
He prays
To the kinder

Gods to let
The flowers
Grow and bring
Decay back
To bloom.

R 22/05/2023 13:55

It’s been a very frustrating day, the coldness of which has sapped the energy out of my entire being. The sun is out now, but the wind is still fierce and cold, and the warm pockets of air which exist when the wind speed is low, have disappeared. And, no, I’m not arguing that the climate crisis doesn’t exist; if anything, the very opposite, because the seasons are shifting so severely that we’re having coldness when we should have warmth, extreme heat when we should have warmth, and warmth when it should be cold. By my reckoning, we’ve seen a shift of at least 6-8 weeks over the last 10 years (and, no, I’m not a scientist; this is all just gut reaction, as ever).

Of course, I encountered someone in the local hypermarket today who sparked off the opening paragraph to another new novel. I ended up sitting on our drive at home with this person in my head and started scribbling the paragraph with the shopping still on the back seat. Cue M knocking on the car window (she was just getting back from work), and asking me what I was doing (I think she might have thought I’d fled the house in a huff or something). I have this eerie feeling it’s the start of the next Aggie book if I have time to get round to one.

Last word – when I said yesterday we all play parts; I don’t think we’re conscious of playing them most of the time. And some of us need them. I’m terminally shy, for example, and doing radio (BBC or just Radio Stradbroke from my bedroom) needs an awful lot of work (even though the part I have is just the one of me that’s not shy). And before I dig myself yet another hole for people to pick more holes in….