HERE IS

SCURRY

TO HELL IN A LEAKY HANDCART

HONEY SWAT

SWIMMING DOWNLINE

Photo credit and thanks to snapwire from pexels

WILL YOU BE MY VALENTINE, SILENCE?

CAOIMHE THE WHITE - a short story

Photo credit: Wolf on Pexels

I hear the doves calling my name from the cliffs.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

Nobody is listening. Down here, at knee height, the clamour of human rage is deafening. Angry ones surround me on all sides. The ones on the right have given all they own to crush those on the left. The ones on the left have spun their half-truths into dragnets to capture the ones to the right. The ones in the middle are shooting in circles hitting everyone who stands in range.

Some signal their entitlement, waving banners printed with ancient riddles. Others sport visors of privilege, rushing against the ranks of the peddlers of falsehood, carrying secret swords weighted with words. Faceless mercenaries are kettling them all, persuading them with pikestaffs and promises, right, left , centre, slantwise towards the sea.

I won’t howl, for that would sound to them like despair. I will not whimper. Yet, how else can I touch them? 

Some from the right dig in their heels, as they are dragged under the feet of those left-lingerers. I can see some on the left trying to climb the walls to escape.  As soon as they get half way up, they turn back to unleash their mockery on the heads of the right-ramblers, faces contorted with scorn below. Nobody cares if they fall in their fury. They get to call it victory. The ones in the middle are no longer safely centred. They are being spun like scythes in a whirlwind, first right, then left, always slicing, always dividing, always falling and failing.

I am running, here, there, anywhere I can still see daylight between them. They are fluttering, battering themselves against one another like moths in a funnel of fire, melting into mayhem. Why don’t they love each other any longer?

I must reach them. I can’t see who is who. Bodies blur. I can’t check their identities, allegiances, alliances. What would it matter to me? Every last one is in my heart. Every last one fills a gulf in my soul.

So I’m pushing forward, the hairs on my body brushing between their kicking legs, narrowly avoiding their stumbling soles. My ears are full of their yelling, their screeching for vengeance, for violence, for retaliation. 

I nudge a hand with my muzzle. It hangs limp. I lick the cheek of a pale one fallen. She doesn’t move. We are almost at the cliffs now. Some are charging along the edge, but the mob of them has grown so wide, others spill into the breakers and fall silent. I cannot catch their eye again.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

High and far, in the fragile light bouncing off the salt waves, I hear the doves. This time, the people hear it too. It means nothing to them. Yet the sound makes them all unstiffen their necks and raise their heads to the sky to see what this strange cry might mean. They halt as one, inches from the cliff edge. I sense they are confused. Why are they all standing together? Who has messed with their differences? Who dares play peacemaker? The doves are not giving them entertainment, or predictions, or tokens to spend. What could possibly be their worth? But no matter. They stand still anyway. The thrift flowers blow kisses of pink petals to soothe raw ankles and scarred heels.

A trill, a squeaking as the creak of a door from the sea.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

Half of them turn their heads to where the sun is cracking her golden yolk into the salmon-flecked ocean. The other half listens without understanding, to the song of the dolphins offshore.

I nuzzle the palm of a young child as I melt away. Her mother hears her giggling and lifts her up shoulder-high, dropping her weapons to ricochet off the rocks and come to rest in a rockpool.

“Mummy, did you see the white wolf?”

“There are no wolves in this land,” says her mother. “That's just silly talk, little one. Let’s get you home.”

“Her name is Caoimhe. She is for us and for our peace. The doves and dolphins told me.”

THE MORNING AFTER

The morning after
You have to let your heart
Stay supple to the loveful
Coax and encourage
Flexible and sweet
From this corner of now
Where we're curled up crying
Relax into bless
Though hate blow hurricanes
Buffeting stultifying bitter bane
Open wide tender though petals may be stripped
Remember not
Passing peckles of past peace
Glanced in memory's mirage
Trust today's quiet breath
Its rippling whisper
Centred in passion for compassion
Letting all colours come out
In the wash of welcome
Rooted in patient love
Our deepest longing
Our homeliest hope.
Your heart is so much bigger than
Any of this.

LIVING THE DREAM

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels

Turned on the morning news

And overnight

Children

Have only gone and

Let all the animals out of their traps and cages

Inspired gangs to throw their knives into the fire

Sown woodlands to heal frack crack and landfill

No-one can pick a side now for standing as one.

Threatened ones dance in diversity out of danger

Cures and care are now funded by giving a damn

Trolls set up helplines for those they have bullied and beaten

Peace reigns with volume and vilify put on mute

Foodbanks just folk tunes hummed by long remembrance

Plastic just melting as healthy as foam on the seas

Then we

Woke up.

To ourselves.

Didn’t we?

ARMISTICE HUSSAR

Gin-clear mirror of the stippled stars,
Trench-traced terrain in pirouetting braids,
Hair-throat poppies windward weave and feint.

Armistice evening finds the lost hussar
Stiff with rainbow silk and medal moons,
Hearing the bladed wire's frayed echoing

Boom, thrash and crump, spritzing sludge
Across shocked hedges, mutilated fields,
Salt-cheeked salute for comrades gone,

His horse unridden, healed from harrowing flight,
Back in the paddock of home, a foal again,
Whickering with joy, nuzzling his hand for sugar.

(Written in remembrance of all humans and animals who have died in warfare, including my great great grandmother's nephew who had three horses killed under him while fighting with the 18th (Queen Mary's Own) Hussars in the Great War in 1915. He died of wounds from a piece of shell while trying to dig out comrades buried alive under a "great fall of earth" during fierce fighting at the 2nd Battle of Ypres aged just 23.)

Cloudy and unknowing?

"And so I urge you, go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labour, but love, full of rest." (quotation from “The Cloud of Unknowing” by an anonymous 14^th century Christian writer, sometimes just affectionately known as the Cloud-author,  possibly a priest somewhere in the UK East Midlands)

Stirrings, whispers, knowings,

Deep beneath chatter and chafing

Skittering the surface

Discerning delights

The  hushing centre

Naked blind feeling of being

Held

Held in yolk-warm golden safety
Stillness beyond science

Repenting and emptying

Pure love’s hasteless in-flowing

Plunging all else down, away

Shed through the space that separates

To forgetting’s nebulous nowhere

Synapses sparking in a rage of strive and grasp

Heart-darts of longing love

Pierce up like a child’s finger tracing the rain on the roof,

Unleashing giggling showers

Startle and shiver

All-wise fountain father

Flow your Spirit of chaste vigorous rapture

Love that laps

 through crosslife obedience

To the sour prickle of a world’s thirsts

Flame, cradled and fanned in fragile palms

Candle shooing the shadow

Mirror of grace

Glass of revealing

Cross spreading to gather,

Raising us up,

To healing simplicity

Helpless to reach

Already reached