The opposite of page-turners

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the page-turner’s brooding sibling – what might be termed the chapter-jammer, perhaps, the leaf-stopper, the mind seizer, or more literally, the corner folder. 

Handles

I never considered handles before this,  never wondered who’d held my borrowed basket last filled it, gripped it tight, placed it back neat or abandoned by checkout,  unsettling us in its eerie. Didn’t ask, didn’t wonder what those hands did, who they touched waved slapped caressed, ever so tender. Did they stare at the milk…

On the listening ridge

I’m back. It’s been a while. The woods behind my parents’ house on Tickenham Ridge haven’t changed hugely in the last few months – the seasons have cycled through and for now the hill is a shining riot of green in a dozen shades.

An hour earlier I was in these woods in company with my two boys, my sister, brother-in-law, two nephews and my Dad, but this time I am alone and things feel different.

To the top of Tickenham

Tickenham, North Somerset is a long village strung along the B3130 road to Clevedon. On the surface, it’s nothing special, a fairly non-descript ribbon development – the kind of place you either live in or pass through on the way to somewhere else.

Whirling

Magpie Tales blog invited people to submit a poem or vignette based on this picture. Here’s mine:   The moment never stops, its memory left breathlessly hanging, catching witnesses endlessly off-guard Bewildered in half-sight they hear the blood noise spatter before an uncertainty of silence, A chaos of imbalance twists into canvas Polishing a darkened crimson history until it shines A formless…

The Revenant

Magpie Tales blog invited people to submit a poem or vignette based on this picture. She’ll get you in the end, Stretched out and unaware, Or watchfully expectant, She’ll come, she always does. Unable to resist, you’ll slip Down gradually, gratefully, Allowing sky blue water To do its work. Hag-like at times, she crouches, Opening…

Bookshelf invitation – Magpie Tales

Magpie tales blog asked people to write a poem, or vignette based on this picture: To make it tougher, I gave myself thirty minutes. Here’s my response. Every book is unfinished. The secret’s out. There’s something lacking within, And they squat on the shelves going nowhere. Abandoned on the edge of the road. Mere objects…

The Narroways

In you went on foot, down two tight lanes,

ambling, sloping through the allotments,

each earth pocket nailed down like a promise,

with bramble and beanstalk to mark the bounds:

A hundred little empires of roll-ups and potatoes.