A frosty morning at Entwistle

Story

And so the story goes

But not for the want of telling

And the ice still grows

Upon the dead of night

Waiting for the sun

To break its covetous fingers

And where is the unicorn now

When our time is all but spent

When sighs break like farts

Upon the new morning airs

And if there is no more hope

There is always tea and sympathy

And it is just enough now

To guide a star fallen to earth

Back up into the heavens 

It must be...

It must be Christmas soon; all the lights are out and switched on. Is there any shop out there that is not having a 'Black Friday' sale. Methinks the frenzy is hiding some very weak sales. Here is a picture of the House of Fraser store in Manchester that I took last week. Very colourful but mid-November - really!

Heretics

Radical heads cleaved and conspirator hung

From out of dark, tortured confession sung

And never imagine our malice cannot return

That on high pyres, witches again may burn

After all, only eight christening gowns ago

Heretics were destroyed upon a fiery inferno

Now scarce we can believe that we did such ill

But remember in other lands, it happens still

Here they wait for the dark days to reappear

To hunt down the weak, the free and the queer

Liberty is a currency each generation must earn

Only vigilance can stop the archaic night's return 

Invisible

I need no longer hide in the world trembling

Lest I am discovered and asked to participate

Time has wrought this splendid thing upon me

I, decaying spectre of aged imperceptibility

A latent force; no longer any catalyst of chance

Walk slower now there is no fear of attention

I have time to watch rain fall in gentle elegance

For I am at last become invisible to all others

I move naked and unafraid through the world

An autumn wanderer among thickening mists

Where care and worry dissipate on resignation

I become a resting dove that shelters from cold

Stilled into such appreciative wonder and calm

Though it took a lifetime, I am in the end saved

With time enough for one last incorporeal flicker 

Well

And what is made well; endures

For we are not well provisioned

And now merry is as merry will

When our empty fields need no till

For now the winter finally holds sway

It is indoors we come to make play

Reflection

Some pictures from my walk around Entwistle reservoir the other day

Undone

Comes now the quiet time

In this decay of illumination

In the shrinking days

We flee to our comforts

To fires and hearty repast

But where firelight perishes

Where heat will not reach

To gloomy corners and nooks

Returns there the time of ghosts

That sit within quiet shadows

They brood and murmur regret

To prick late upon conscience

And look you well  

At what you have done

In the dark of a winter's night

When fairness was forsaken

And all they accomplished undone

Winter is Coming

Summery autumn is finally overcome

The eastern winds and cold have won

They take the days and shake the trees

Conceal the birds and kill all the bees

Under skeletons of bare wood we now play

Looking up into foreboding skies of grey 

Monica Waddington (1931-2016)

A shadow has fallen upon us

Naught can be made whole again

Though I am forever undone

No shadow will be upon you today

And though tis a sweet deception

All things grievous will seem repaired

And time will attest my resolve

When wood and fields yield;

Deep skies less blue than my mood

But now is not the time to feel sad

For all shall be ended well

I will wrap my goodbyes in gold

And lay red roses upon your carriage

For you have been remade

To be reunited with your love

And though this loss is bitter to me

I say goodbye knowing you are in joy

Gold

This is the finest gold though perhaps you do not count it yet as a worthy treasure. Yet when the days fall into ruin and the sea rises above your defences in the autumn of your existence you will see that the greatest treasures were ever about you; if you had, only but looked up. 

Red

It must be autumn as the Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric is growing in huge patches around Entwistle reservoir. They never get to full maturity as people always destroy them, but you would have to eat a lot to poison yourself. It is a hallucinogenic first and foremost, which thinking about it actually might explain a lot. I wish they would grow in my garden as they add a feeling of enchantment and colour to contrast against the decay of the season.

What grows in autumn between wall and wood?

Rises from the night in a fresh-dewed awakening

Tis a red opulence that blooms like fortunate treasure

A scarlet caveat and yet welcome sign the world is well

And is there not a comfort to see such dangerous things

For if, we are to be made safe from everything harmful

Then tomorrow may wait for its protected correlation

For no wonders in crimson disguise would ever come  

War

I think, therefore I am

But if I would use flesh to live

I become a thinking fiend

And thinking makes untruths

And I have thought up such lies 

With my dimming finite sentience 

Infinitesimal and vulnerable

Ere compassion could coalesce clarity

And we could never live long enough

Not even if we had a thousand years

To see what monsters we are become

And this is the tragedy of man

In his war against the animals 

Surely it is time to make a peace

Halloween

Hollywood enters  Halloween

Theatre meets its theurgy

And tis a horror best left unseen

For who can make such a fun

Of these frightening things

When by terror are we all undone

Yet I cannot suppose we care

If evil should indeed be seen

Already in our world it is there

So if you will enjoy the evil day

Make sure you have a mind

Your pretend dread will go away

Wither

Time now becomes witness

To a splendorous withering

The flowers are all fading

Desiccating as autumn leaves

Naught can restore their colour

For their vibrant instance is over

So let the wind blow and rage

Cast sepals and petals to earth

For what remains is ever, intact

The seeds endure and can wait

For new days that come again

And spring occasion births them

Flicker

The honey has dripped away

Bitter is this winter to come

The sharp days dull like pain

Blur around a growing dark

Beauty withdraws its grace

We are become winter bees

Inside fragile hives of dreams

With only flickering firelight

To draw memories of better days

To Rest

Rest now upon the ages

Night has come

For a child of the sun

She withdraws her light

That shone upon us all

And our days shall become darker

But in this unwelcome gloom

This unlooked for quiet

She may find sleep now

Become a ship becalmed

Slumbering through ages

On an ocean of flowers

She may take her rest

On her long missed lovers arm

And wait for sweet reunions

That one by one

Will come to her

When our winters' fall

Fury

These days come upon us wet

A feral water crashing in fury

Upon the tall, wooden cliffs

Shore and tree line lock to furious battle

As the wild seas break like awakening

Winter comes home from the west

Skyward look as leaves fall like comets

Shadowy snowflakes slide down glass

Liquid stone rupturing upon heat

New days are made to slumber in

As wasps crackle and wither in starry airs

Wit

Granted it is a sharp barb, but no blade of dignity is this lesser part of courage we choose to call wit. It is the refuge of the scoundrel who would seek to usurp reason with jest and inconsequence than be ennobled by kindness. 

Mermaid

Today was made for the mer-people. Water swirls around my feet as though it would wish to make a fluid knot and slowly unbalance me; drag me down into a mermaid's arms. Is it not told that in the rain they come to the surface and watch us but that all we humans ever see are signs of decaying ripples left by these aquatic fairies. Expanding circlets of wonder left as they dive in their silvered robes, flashing long tails of black lined scales. Moreover, if you could hear them, they sing of the perils of the sea. A long slow lament of deep water and fading light within bottomless oceans. Though I must confess I have never seen a mermaid the legends makes their possibility all the more real;  for as science expands it seems only the mysteries that remain hidden and unexplained are the greatest enchantment still.

Kate in Manchester

Some pictures of Kate and William in Manchester last week taken by Mike and others. She looks so different in the top and bottom pictures.

Casualties

When I put the kitchen light on this morning, I could hear a tapping on the window. I opened the blind to see about thirty wasps flying aimlessly against the glass in an attempt to get to the light. The nest is breaking and anarchy is the queen now. The males have been evicted and the workers wander aimless and lost.

I make a light in the night and then shrink back

And tortured, purposeless they come to the window

Winged warrior queens in a vain and futile fluttering

The wasps are fading into the dawn in swarms of pain

Raging yellow- black stains on late summer's glassy page

Their summer almost done; they curse the new days

They now reject its unsolicited options like a tragedy

And were they to touch me they would surely strike

In a jaundiced ill that seeks only to assuage its pain

Piercing me with a sting, I could not draw out again

So I damp the light and retire into shadows once more

Let them rage and batter the glass for I cannot help

These bittersweet casualties of winters war against us

Halloween

It's a little early but i'll probably do another later. I made an animation to go along with it. 

Shadow on ceiling, window and wall

Monstrous silhouettes to chill and appall

Flickering shapes that form in the night

We hide under the covers; shake in fright

For what might slither from under the bed

Or lurk within a closet to fill us with dread

Vampires and werewolves, ogre and witch

A bestiary of monsters to our reason unstitch

And once the fiends your own eyes have seen

You will begin to believe about Halloween 

Fall

This folly, this whim, this optimism of day

Till dusk when I settle still to fade and fall

And so I lie, as the night flies soft about me

But still my dreams burn and rage against time

These hopes and wishes set ablaze in the hearth of day

To now be consumed in such disenchantment by night

Yet still I settle and still and I fade and fall

And in such a state am I revived again to rise

To rekindle the sweet anticipation for tomorrow 

Early October

Endgame

The last new hornet queen leaves the nest to make her way into the autumn as two of the workers watch by the entrance.

Vespa:   Well that's the last of them gone; finally we have some free time for us. It has been a hard summer getting all the new queens raised. You'd think we'd get a bit of gratitude from the old one, but no; might as well wish for jam everyday instead.

Crabro: If you think there will be any free time then I suggest you make the   best of it. Have you not noticed how cold it is becoming, or that the light fails ever earlier these days?

Vespa:   Hey I've been busy you know. Feeding these ungrateful new queens was pretty hectic. So what if the days are not as warm now.  We will fly only on the sunny days and spend the other time here at home among the family. Though I have to say the mood of the hive is so much gloomier of late. You think everyone would be happy to see the end of our great work.

Crabro: And there you have it. It is the end of our great work and also it is the end of us. You do understand we won't see another summer sister? We have completed our task in the great scheme of the world. We are not fertile and we cannot feed in the winter. We are expendable; there is no food and even if there were, we cannot survive its cold. We shall linger a few weeks more and maybe the frost will come late if we are lucky.

Vespa:    It doesn't seem to be very fair then. We do all the work and then die.

Crabro: Fairness is immaterial. The queen is worn out and ready to rest as are also most of us. The new queens have mated and will feed and then sleep till the days of spring return. Then completely alone they must begin all this again. Do not envy them sister for theirs is the hardest task of all.

Vespa:    What of the males then. Will they survive?

Crabro: The males who mate die soon after and the rest well they follow pretty soon after. They are bred for a single purpose and once they have left we do not let them back again.

Vespa:    How come you know all this happens to us sister and yet I do not?

Crabro: Because sometimes due to chance one of us workers will survive the awful winter and emerge again in the spring. I remember I fed and then I slept among the paper cells till the new queen awoke and then I was able to serve her.  This is my second year. I am older than the queen herself.

Vespa:    You know I always thought your wings were ragged. But I didn't like to say.

Crabro:   May I tell you a secret sister.

Vespa:    Of course

Crabro: I layed a single egg once and watched it for weeks till it hatched. It was a male and it was raised and in the autumn it flew out to mate and I never saw him again. I remember it had silver antennae which is very rare for us wasps. Normally they are completely black.

Vespa:  Can we lay eggs then? I thought only the queen could do that.

Crabro:  Normally that is the way of things but sometimes if we wish it enough we can produce them.

Vespa: I wonder what happened to your boy?

They sit on the paper comb silent and the old queen comes over.

Queen:    Come on girls, you know the rules; no loitering at the entrance. Away with you both; there is still some nectar to be had yet. She flicked them playfully with her silver antennae and they bowed and flew off into the dawn.

Vespa:  did you see; her antennae are silver

Crabro:  I always wondered about that too.

Forget

But I could never forget you

Like mist on a summer morning
Softer than all my whispered lies
Memories wreath my footfall
And if I stumbled and fell
I would not stay down
For you taught me to rise up
And disperse into dawn's bliss

Wait

The warm wolf of inclination comes out from night. See her come swift upon us and feel her humid breath exhaled from between the fangs of growth; for summer is here. But she will exit as fleetingly as her entrance just as we become accustomed to her warmth. For as soon as we come to love the heat that drives down like a hammer upon us; we, the temperate nails fashioned from the 'joie de vivre' of spring she is gone and winter will return. Then we will shrink to the warmth of hearths and kitchens but we will not wither. There we will rest and plan and wait by the well stocked larder for another summer to bring forth its bounty.

The Doors of Moria

From the first book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J R R Tolkien


The Moon now shone upon the grey face of the rock; but they could see nothing else for a while. Then slowly on the surface, where the wizard's hands had passed, faint lines appeared, like slender veins of silver running in the stone. At first they were no more than pale gossamer-threads, so fine that they only twinkled fitfully where the Moon caught them, but steadily they grew broader and clearer, until their design could be guessed.

At the top, as high as Gandalf could reach, was an arch of interlacing letters in an Elvish character. Below, though the threads were in places blurred or broken, the outline could be seen of an anvil and a hammer surmounted by a crown with seven stars. Beneath these again were two trees, each bearing crescent moons. More clearly than all else there shone forth in the middle of the door a single star with many rays.

'There are the emblems of Durin!' cried Gimli.

'And there is the Tree of the High Elves!' said Legolas.

'And the Star of the House of Feanor,' said Gandalf. 'They are wrought of ithildin that mirrors only starlight and moonlight, and sleeps until it is touched by one who speaks words now long forgotten in Middle-earth. It is long since I heard them, and I thought deeply before I could recall them to my mind.'

'What does the writing say?' asked Frodo, who was trying to decipher the inscription on the arch. 'I thought I knew the elf-letters but I cannot read these.'

'The words are in the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-earth in the Elder Days,' answered Gandalf. 'But they do not say anything of importance to us. They say only: The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter. And underneath small and faint is written: I, Narvi, made them. Celebrimbor of Hollin drew these signs. '

 

Picking up his staff he stood before the rock and said in a clear voice: Mellon! The star shone out briefly and faded again. Then silently a great doorway was outlined, though not a crack or joint had been visible before. Slowly it divided in the middle and swung outwards inch by inch, until both doors lay back against the wall. Through the opening a shadowy stair could be seen climbing steeply up; but beyond the lower steps the darkness was deeper than the night.

My picture take on it

Waiting

The softest footsteps I must ever tread

Are within slaughtering halls of dread
Here no cow will ever again run free
Never anymore sun, rain or grass, to see
Brown eyes gaze from out steely bars
And this sad sight upon my soft soul mars
And all is still save pant of loamy breath
That waits patiently for ignoble death

Touched

Nothing has changed

And yet like a tenderness
Prophesy is served
But I am not in Delphi
This is no revelation
And I am no oracle
Yet even I now know
Though the same sun rises
And birds still sing
We are being touched
By the madness of history

Gild

And so there is no more art

No soft soul to now capture
All is now silhouette
Shadows that flicker
Upon greying sheets
Fading in dimming light
They talk of waning dreams
In ever diminishing splendour
And wither can I look?
We cannot gild memories
Burnish them ever bright
See them like clear flames
Rather than slices of time
From cake gnawed by instance
That all our dreams decorated

The Two Trees of Tolkein

I made a picture in Photoshop of the 2 trees of Valinor. They are Laurelin (the gold tree of day) and Telperion (the silver tree of night) with the phases of the day.

Assassins

Humming to a destruction

To pierce the rising dawn
These yellow-black assassins
With slender rapiers drawn
The wasps have raided summer
But in winter they cannot stay
And we watch their dissolution
Where autumn takes all away
They fly upon a fading sun
Still slender, swift and sleek
But now they are a hunted prey
When the frost arrives this week

Fell

And as each tree was felled

A human came and took its place
But there still stands one tree
A last witness of its sylvan kind
And this single column of wood
A bearer of slumbering memory
Last reflection of the ancient forest
That manifests in day like pain
But at night's veil they will come
And this last sentinel shall fall
But who can tell me this
What will then give them shade?
Be the wide, green lakes, of calm
A comfort among the confusion
When all memory of a pleasing world
Is turned to bittersweet slivers
Till wind comes to blow us away
Into the deserts of a blasted earth
But I am a dreamer, so you said
But not alone in thoughts of sorrow
For once we are subsumed into history
The green shoots will emerge again
Out into a day without people
Where each human stood trees will grow

Grey

Ribbons are not the only decoration

When a triumph calls for attention
Would that we could settle for grey
Have plainer victories of conscience
But people will dance and make merry
With little, or no occasion present
And sometimes they wish for a disaster
Just to celebrate when it has passed

Elves

Now green is no longer queen

At the yellowing of the days
Magic retreats deep into forests
And there till spring it stays
The elves do not like the winter
Though they never feel the cold
They dance under warm moonlight
Never walk upon frosted wold
So look now before the leaves fall
In all the clearings in the wood
For the elves will come at dusk
If your heart is pure and good
And to soft starlight and music
Take your seat upon grassy pew
The elven tears and fairy harps
Will retell the old stories anew

Chaos

Before the evening dew draws down on day's soft breath setting upon the coldness like a dream's afterglow we shall sit in splendour among all this sweet chaos we have nurtured. For are we not artists and sculptors taking nature's rich earth  and working it with eager hands to the shape of magnificence; and if anarchy intrudes, we will let it in, so that we may wonder all the more. For here betwixt this sweet throng of unbridled green richness we may marvel at creation and growth and offer a lost hope for summers touch to linger upon it and us for a little longer.

 

 

Grapes and tomatoes ripening despite the long cold and wet summer

 

Courting spiders on the buddleia

This butterfly looks like it had a narrow escape which took part of its wing

 

Dirt

Rising and falling across void

The universe is conflagration
Stellar nurseries birth chaos
Spew galaxies like new Phoenix
To fly through nascent space-time
To spin and fury, cool and solidify
Till gravity warps and crashes speed
New singularities in dark corners
Yielding life like inexhaustible dirt

History

What is this history?

A long mirror reflecting dark times
Or bright lit reverie guiding us
For we are still;
Gladiator, senator, and soldier
Artisan, emperor or slave
We are the unruly mob
Or the Sabine women
We are still; who they were;
New scions on the bloody tree
Unless we look back to learn
To shape a better future
From these boughs of hate
History is just atonement
For our lack of humanity

Swift

Sighing like memory of forgotten love

May wind blow always its fair kisses
Tender like the touches of spring rain
This aired and soft uplifting breath
That comforts the fast ascending birds
It sets my soul to thoughts of the ocean
And a fast sailing ship to travel within
So let the wind strokes its sails to move
Upon endless blue sky fallen upon water
To follow the birds to their journey end
To a shining land where rainbows set clear
Over swift climbing cliffs and green shores

Sweet

We may all grow old but do we grow?

Whether we loved or fought or wondered
The world is closing in on our adventure
We have thickening moss on our ancient bones
Young hawks may sweep down upon us
But we are not yet their prey for the taking
In slower footsteps of a resigned enquiry perhaps
We can still tread soft and firm upon earth
On enlightened paths where conclusion waits
But how hard is it now to stay off the grass
And walk carefree among flowers once again
Now that we realise how sweet they smell

Women

Upon a rose; this velvet splendour

I would gaze upon its loveliness
And smell the scent of a good life
We all have a rare thing of beauty
Yearn that all could see its charm
Tis no contrived cry of attention
It is the simple wash of desire
To lose control to another thing
Tis not a public want of strong men
And yet in the quiet they wish it
Held in secret thrall to its allure
These men fell, bold and mighty
Held upright by feminine strength
The underpinning backbone of men
Alluring steel in womanly flows
And perhaps if I ruled the world
Held its sway within my palm
Women would be a revered as a rose