Small stones: an exercise for January

[Ros]

Small Stones:

pebbles.jpg (7.04 KiB) Viewed 1100 times

The idea is that you write a small observation each day about something you've noticed - something that has caused you to pause and pay attention to it. Just a few lines.

Add your contribution to this thread every day in January (or as many as you can manage). We can also comment on each other's observations.

The plan is to do this throughout January, but if anyone wants to start immediately that would be great.

Ros

[bodkin]

Just replying so that the thread will appear in "my posts" and remind me to do it...

[Antcliff]

Away we go...early morning report before New Year on the island

Rain pitters in the pat.
There’ll be no seaweed
lifted. Fishboxes float.
Gloominess resisted.

[David]

Away we go...early morning report before New Year on the island

Rain pitters in the pat.
There’ll be no seaweed
lifted. Fishboxes float.
Gloominess resisted.

That's a very good start, I think. Takes me there (or where I imagine there to be, which probably amounts to pretty much the same thing for my purposes).

Away we go...early morning report before New Year on the island

It feels like a liminal zone, doesn't it? As though some door has been left open, briefly.

[camus]

Waiting on a boat to Koh Somet

Crushed cans clash
in bile white surf;
the boat gently sways.
The island lights smile
so favourably far away...

[bodkin]

A wall,
a damp patch,
a pipe.

[camus]

a torn sleeve,
a son asleep,
a fag packet
nearly empty.

[Ros]

Christmas tree -
baubles, tinsel, lights.
So very still -
it's unnatural

[camus]

a cat died today
it was a family cat,
a family who had
broken. I felt hugs
and tears were
appropriate, but
we kept our inevitable
distance, mourned
with our eyes and englishness.

[Antcliff]

mourned with our eyes and englishness.

Good line. English/British are indeed feeble at mourning.
Ant

[Antcliff]

It isn't just the wind,
but salt in the wind.
Landscape of stubs of
plants and trees,
green salted away.
Not at their right angles,
slashed, like aftermath
of medieval battle.
Not clear yet which will survive
and which will die.

....liminal, yes.

[BenJohnson]

Buds like corn unpopped,
await the growing heat
for their fusillades of green
to rattle against the sky;
at which point
we will jump and point,
Look, Look at the leaves.

[bodkin]

even on the way back, sheep
are still piled on the silage rack

[Ros]

for a moment, the clouds
are edged with pink
before the rain returns

[RichardSanders]

Weather forecast;

Localized vertical fog rising,
expanding with the winds.
Soon to cover the country in sulferic smell.
To light our way with magnesium glare, into the new year.
A year of ecological conscienceness?

[Oskar]

9:05 A.M. New Year’s Eve

Suspected gas leak
Clearing path to meter in the garage
Plumber on the way
Muffled “Exterminate”
Heard from under books and boxes
Dalek resurrection?

[BenJohnson]

Sky the colour of a dirty duvet
pulled over our heads
even the light is stiffled

[bodkin]

layer of glass
layer of rain
space
layer of tree
sky

[Ros]

the day divides
into cups of tea
event markers
like standing stones
on a day of walking

[Antcliff]

Walk the soggy beach with my father
both thinking of lines of verse.
Turn back in the rain.

[Nash]

.

We dismantled winter today,
packed her safely away in the attic.
I see Aldi have daffodils for sale.



.

[RichardSanders]

I saw a duck with a broken leg
flopping his wing on the ground to compensate,
as he was chasing a female across the grass.
With every second step-and-flop,
he strikes his competitor hard on the head.
Disability revealed in slap-stick comedy.

[BenJohnson]

The docks I dug two feet under
have sailed beneath the soil
through the whole of winter
they slide tubes among the void
to peer through waves of mud,
before rising from the black
depths and slowly they are undug
to unfurl their great green flags

[Ros]

Bromeliads in the hothouse
turn part of their leaf pink
to indicate a flower coming.
Part of a leaf? Seems
penny-pinching.

[Antcliff]

Yet more wind.
Blank faces at the pier.
Fisherman are no longer
joking. This is hard.