Composed on a walk this morning and jotted down on the margins of a Killer Su Doku book while sitting in the Rock Gardens on Southsea seafront (for anyone who’s interested in how I write my poems).

Blue skies and bright sunshine
lure me into the paths
of bitter darts of cold,
flung into my face
and sapping my body of motion.

Broken blossoms scatter and skitter
along winter-cracked pavements,
crushed like yesterday’s promises.
At least the autumn leaves
can be satisfied in knowing
that they’ve had their time.

Brief patches of shelter
bring moments of balmy reflection
on better times to come,
until the onslaught recommences,
and I recall that springtime
can be the cruellest time –
as someone almost said.

Linda Rushby Saturday 23 March 2024

This is just a bit of word-play inspired by a recent conversation about Jung’s idea of the shadow which dwells in all of us, the side of ourselves we want to hide from the world.

I don’t often write rhyming verse, but I do like to use alliteraton and slant rhymes.

The Shadow

You cannot see me,
I am an empty space,
a void, a vacuum,
a black hole,
beyond the bounds
of visibility.

A nullity, a negative,
a nothingness,
I slip beneath your notice,
and past the perimeter
of your perceptions.

Linda Rushby 16 April 2023

Memorial

Bronze plaque on a wooden bench
commemorates a life.

A woman,
born two years after me,
died a quarter century ago.

‘Loving wife and mother,
who loved this place.’

Some of us are blessed with joy,
and some with time.

Linda Rushby 5 April 2023

Spring Walk

Bare branches inked
against a pale sky.

Hawk hovers,
then passes over me.

Under the trees,
sounds of birdsong,
earth-smells of leafmould;
rotting remains of
last year’s life
nurturing new generations.

White chalk crumbles
over smooth grey flint,
prized by our ancesters.

Everything is held
in potential.

Linda Rushby 5 April 2023

A couple of days ago, I got a notification on Facebook that there had been two visits to my Solent Green FB page – which suggested to me that someone (I think I can guess who) had visited it to see if I’d posted any more poems.

I hadn’t, although I did actually write two more in the days following the last one I posted – scribbled on a scrap of paper when I was out for a walk while staying at the family holiday cabin in the Surrey Hills. When I got back to the cabin, I found there was a problem with my laptop (which has since resolved itself), and the next day I went to stay at my daughter’s for my birthday/Easter weekend, so I haven’t done any more since – until this morning, when inspiration struck again.

So I thought I’d rescue the scrappy piece of paper from my handbag and type them all up.

Blocked

I used to have a writer’s head
but when I looked, the muse had fled.

I thought I had a line today,
I tried to chase another one,
but then the first one ran away
and I was left with none.

My brain is locked,
my writing’s blocked.
What else is there to say?

Linda Rushby 4 April 2023

Open your door and snuff the air,
like a fox emerging from its earth,
survivors from their dugouts.
Like a curious cat,
scenting adventure,
or a cautious one,
checking for changes
from the familiar.

Under those lowering skies,
between those scattered showers,
seeking the truth:
bright patches of colour among dark leaves;
snatches of birdsong among the traffic.

Like a heart waiting for hope.
Like a lost poet, seeking the next word.

Linda Rushby 2 April 2023

The Last Bridge

You crossed the last bridge
and here you stand.
Nowhere else to go,
and nothing to change
except yourself.

You wanted to know her better,
you thought that was the way
to find some kind of peace,
and reconciliation.

But what you learned did
nothing of the kind.
She is just as stubborn,
and you as confused,
as you always were.

You are both as bad as each other,
you and your own worst enemy.
You cannot change her,
and you cannot love her.

You have crossed the last bridge,
and there’s nowhere else to go.

Linda Rushby April 2023

If I started writing again… every now and then…

The above is as far as I’d got before I decided to a) make a coffee and b) have my morning crap, which entailed finding my Kindle and reading the next chapter of The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde while sitting on the toilet (and incidentally downloading a sample of The Terracotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri, which came up as a ‘you might enjoy…’ recommendation. I discovered the other day that at some point in the past I’d read the first of Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano books, but I couldn’t remember when or why or anything about it or why I hadn’t chosen to download the next one. So, if I have the sample – and the title did catch my attention – I might read it sometime and decide to buy the whole book – or not, but if I don’t I never will and that might be a shame.

Anyway.

What was that first sentence again?

‘…every now and then ‘ I think maybe I will (start writing again), or perhaps it was going to be: every now and then the thought strikes me that maybe I should, but usually I get involved in doing something else and time passes and it goes away again without me doing anything about it. And reading that back, it occurs to me that it could be a metaphor for sitting on the toilet (or vice versa)

Anyway.

I think I was going to make a serious point, and end up with sharing a poem I wrote a few years ago, which may or not be relevant. A point about making goals and plans for the year and trying to satisfy other people’s expectations (which is a hiding to nothing, it seems to me).

I don’t do goals and plans any more. I never was very comfortable with them – I’ve blogged about that times without number – and at my stage of life, honestly, why should I? Who cares what I do with my time, if I don’t?

There are, in theory, at least two books which I ‘should’ be trying to finish. The start of a year is supposedly a spur to effort, but at my age it is also a reminder that my remaining stock of years is steadily going down, and raises the question whether it really matters that much how I spend them? It’s not as though the ‘dreams and plans’ I’ve made in the past have made much difference to the world.

So here I am, a week into 2023 – not even starting on the first of the year, as far as those things matter, fifty words short of my arbitrary target of 500 per day, and not even having said what I was intending to say. I’ll see if I can find that poem and share it.

#notwriting