There's a postcard on the mantle.
Where did they get to this time?
Egypt - They're cruising the Nile,
touring temples, pyramids, tombs.

They've come a long way from Blackpool.
They won't see the tower.

Will the pharoahs mind?
There treasures picked millenia ago,
deprived of their worldly needs
for a market in plunder.

Still there won't be a space for my charriot.
I don't expect to cross the Styx
or see Akenaton's face.

Postcards don't give you the smells and sounds,
the moments effect of light and dark,
the lift in spirits as you gaze on each new view,
the urge to closely observe.

Why go to this broken landscape
  to claim you've been there you've lived
  to add the graffiti of your presence to these precise hieroglyphs
  to see an unusual land that's been usual for centuries past?

It's Blackpool by the sea for me.

I'm told they marvelled
at the winter sun
rising through the henge
symbol of times gone
times to come, longer days
renewal of life's ways.

We think we understand
the coming and the going
the passage of the seasons
nights days fortunes made lost
death's cost and yet we fight.

A short eight line poem
promise of things unsaid
or complete in its simplicity
stretching my imagination.

Do I read between the lines
try to search the poet's thoughts?
I cannot help but sour my own
sown like weeds among his vines.

A light tea before her reading
so I can focus on her words
seek out their meaning
refrain her rhythms
define her rhymes
listen for her killer lines.
A music too rich to revise.

Are those tiny strands really me?
They say each set is unique
but no one is anonymous
like an inherited trace book.

I carry my history with me.
No wonder I'm overweight
celt viking or anglo-saxon
or two out of three a cross breed.

I even passed this burden to my kids
left slivers all over the place
though I was always told to tidy up.

They only talk at night
all else is quiet
facing each other
at more than two sword lengths.

Opposite sides of the House
on opposite walls they parley.
Seeing them during the day
you'd swear they smiled above you.

Wishing you cou could have eavesdropped
learned more of what they think.
They stand aside from you in that gallery.

A peaceful morning
snuggling within myself
piecing together feelings
of well-being - inner cleaning.

The day viewed from a telescope's
objective lens suppressed at length.
Multi-screen imagination
until incursions grey the frame
mediating reality.