(poems from the Chinese translated by Arthur Waley)

Last night the clouds scattered away;
A thousand leagues, the same moonlight scene.
When dawn came, I dreamt I saw your face;
It must have been that you were thinking of me.
In my dream, I thought I held your hand
And asked you to tell me what your thoughts were.
And you said: ‘I miss you bitterly . . . “

As Helen drifted into sleep the source of that imagined voice in her last conscious moment was waking several hundred miles away. For so long now she was his first and only waking thought. He stretched his hand out to touch her side with his fingertips, not a touch more the lightest brush: he did not wish to wake her. But she was elsewhere. He was alone. His imagination had to bring her to him instead. Sometimes she was so vivid a thought, a presence more like, that he felt her body surround him, her hand stroke the back of his neck, her ******* fall and spread against his chest, her breath kiss his nose and cheek. He felt conscious he had yet to shave, conscious his rough face should not touch her delicate freckled complexion . . . but he was alone and his body ached for her.

It was always like this when they were apart, and particularly so when she was away from home and full to the brim with the variously rich activities and opportunities that made up her life. He knew she might think of him, but there was this feeling he was missing a part of her living he would never see or know. True, she would speak to him on the phone, but sadly he still longed to read her once bright descriptions that had in the past enabled him to enter her solo experiences in a way no image seemed to allow. But he had resolved to put such possible gifts to one side. So instead he would invent such descriptions himself: a good, if time-consuming compromise. He would give himself an hour at his desk; an hour, had he been with her, they might have spent in each other’s arms welcoming the day with such a love-making he could hardly bare to think about: it was always, always more wonderful than he could possibly have imagined.

He had been at a concert the previous evening. He’d taken the train to a nearby town and chosen to hear just one work in the second part. Before the interval there had been a strange confection of Bernstein, Vaughan-Williams and Saint-Saens. He had preferred to listen to *The Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. There was something a little special about attending a concert to hear a single work. You could properly prepare yourself for the experience and take away a clear memory of the music. He had read the score on the train journey, a journey across a once industrial and mining heartland that had become an abandoned wasteland: a river and canal running in tandem, a vast but empty marshalling yard, acres of water-filled gravel pits, factory and mill buildings standing empty and in decay. On this early evening of a thoroughly wet and cold June day he would lift his gaze to the window to observe this sad landscape shrouded in a grey mist tinted with mottled green.

Andrew often considered Berlioz a kind of fellow-traveller on his life’s journey of music. Berlioz too had been a guitarist in his teenage years and had been largely self-taught as a composer. He had been an innovator in his use of the orchestra and developed a body of work that closely mirrored the literature and political mores of his time.  The Symphonie Fantastique was the ultimate love letter: to the adorable Harriet Smithson, the Irish actress. Berlioz had seen her play Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (see above) and immediately imagined her as his muse and life’s partner. He wrote hundreds of letters to her before eventually meeting her to declare his love and admiration in person. A friend took her to hear the Symphonie after it had got about that this radical work was dedicated to her. She was appalled! But, when Berlioz wrote Lélio or The Return to Life, a kind of sequel to his Symphonie, she relented and agreed to meet him. They married in 1833 but parted after a tempestuous seven years. It had surprised Andrew to discover Lélio, about which, until quite recently, he had known nothing. The Berlioz scholar David Cairns had written fully and quite lovingly about the composition, but reading the synopsis in Wikipedia he began to understand it might be a trifle embarrassing to present in a concert.

The programme of Lélio describes the artist wakening from these dreams, musing on Shakespeare, his sad life, and not having a woman. He decides that if he can't put this unrequited love out of his head, he will immerse himself in music. He then leads an orchestra to a successful performance of one of his new compositions and the story ends peacefully.

Lélio consists of six musical pieces presented by an actor who stands on stage in front of a curtain concealing the orchestra. The actor's dramatic monologues explain the meaning of the music in the life of the artist. The work begins and ends with the idée fixe theme, linking Lélio to Symphonie fantastique.

Thoughts of the lovely Harriet brought him to thoughts of his own muse, far away. He had written so many letters to his muse, and now he wrote her little stories instead, often imagining moments in their still separate lives. He had written music for her and about her – a Quintet for piano and winds (after Mozart) based on a poem he’d written about a languorous summer afternoon beside a river in the Yorkshire Dales; a book of songs called Pleasing Myself (his first venture into setting his own words). Strangely enough he had read through those very songs just the other day. How they captured the onset of both his regard and his passion for her! He had written poetic words in her voice, and for her clear voice to sing:

As the light dies
I pace the field edge
to the square pond
enclosed, hedged and treed.
The water,
once revealed,
lies cold
in the still air.

At its bank,
solitary,
I let my thoughts of you
float on the surface.
And like two boats
moored abreast
at the season’s end,
our reflections merge
in one dark form.

His words he felt were true to the model of the Chinese poetry he had loved as a teenager, verse that had helped him fashion his fledgling thoughts in music.

And so it was that while she dined brightly with her team in a Devon country pub, he sat alone in a town hall in West Yorkshire listening to Berlioz’ autobiographical and unrequited work.

A young musician of extraordinary sensibility and abundant imagination, in the depths of despair because of hopeless love, has poisoned himself with *****. The drug is too feeble to **** him but plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by weird visions. His sensations, emotions, and memories, as they pass through his affected mind, are transformed into musical images and ideas. The beloved one herself becomes to him a melody, a recurrent theme [idée fixe] which haunts him continually.

Yes, he could identify with some of that. Reading Berlioz’ own programme note in the orchestral score he remembered the disabling effect of his first love, a slight girl with long hair tied with a simple white scarf. Then he thought of what he knew would be his last love, his only and forever love when he had talked to her, interrupting her concentration, in a college workshop. She had politely dealt with his innocent questions and then, looking at the clock told him she ‘had to get on’. It was only later – as he sat outside in the university gardens - that he realized the affect that brief encounter might have on him. It was as though in those brief minutes he knew nothing of her, but also everything he ever needed to know. Strange how the images of that meeting, the sound of her voice haunted him, would appear unbidden - until two months later a chance meeting in a corridor had jolted him into her presence again  . . . and for always he hoped.

After the music had finished he had remained in the auditorium as the rather slight audience took their leave. The resonance of the music seemed to be a still presence and he had there and then scanned back and forward through the music’s memory. The piece had cheered him, given him a little hope against the prevailing difficulties and problems of his own musical creativity, the long, often empty hours at his desk. He was in a quiet despair about his current work, about his current life if he was honest. He wondered at the way Berlioz’ musical material seemed of such a piece with its orchestration. The conception of the music itself was full of rough edges; it had none of that exemplary finish of a Beethoven symphony so finely chiseled to perfection.  Berlioz’ Symphonie contained inspired and trite elements side by side, bar beside bar. It missed that wholeness Beethoven achieved with his carefully honed and positioned harmonic structures, his relentless editing and rewriting. With Berlioz you reckoned he trusted himself to let what was in his imagination flow onto the page unhindered by technical issues. Andrew had experienced that occasionally, and looking at his past pieces, was often amazed that such music could be, and was, his alone.

Returning to his studio there was a brief text from his muse. He was tempted to phone her. But it was late and he thought she might already be asleep. He sat for a while and imagined her at dinner with the team, more relaxed now than previously. Tired from a long day of looking and talking and thinking and planning and imagining (herself in the near future), she had worn her almost vintage dress and the bright, bright smile with her diligent self-possessed manner. And taking it (the smile) into her hotel bedroom, closing the door on her public self, she had folded it carefully on the chair with her clothes - to be bright and bright for her colleagues at breakfast next day and beyond. She undressed and sitting on the bed in her pajamas imagined for a brief moment being folded in his arms, being gently kissed goodnight. Too tired to read, she brought herself to bed with a mental list of all the things she must and would do in the morning time and when she got home – and slept.

*They came and told me a messenger from Shang-chou
Had brought a letter, - a simple scroll from you!
Up from my pillow I suddenly sprang out of bed,
And threw on my clothes, all topsy-turvey.
I undid the knot and saw the letter within:
A single sheet with thirteen lines of writing.
At the top it told the sorrows of an exile’s heart;
At the bottom it described the pains of separation.
The sorrows and pains took up so much space
There was no room to talk about the weather!

I wish you could be here now
Waiting for the winter dawn
-too early yet -

Outside - cold black and thin treed
Hard by the Dark River

But here the glow touches each to each

You rise to draw a curtain slowly
- night clothes open softly to the screen -
And I am briefly jealous of Peter Mandleson.

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                           
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

A COLOURFUL FRUIT BLAST        
From the 1st diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.            
            
Hi, my name is Stewy Lemmon and I’m your normal, everyday, friendly, country boy, who lives about 2 hours away from the big city lights. My family’s home is nestled amongst the trees on a hill in a little country village called, 'Shimmerleedimmerlee'.

It's located just a little north west from the famous town of Bearfeet Ridge. Famous of course, because of the mysterious and rarely seen yellow tailed bear family, that is said to inhabit the nearby treed mountain range. The town's people have even given the rarely seen bear family sightings, a nickname called, 'Bearfeet Yellow Tales'.            
              
My family is made up of one much younger brother, named Lemmy; two much older, identical, twin sisters named, Emma and Jemma, and my proud parents, Archie and Flo.            
              
On Christmas day this year, I received a pet mouse as one of my presents. I quickly named him Smoochy, after he suddenly jumped up and kissed me on the cheek, then fell into my top left-hand side pocket. From that moment on, I knew that Smoochy and I, would have such fun times and great adventures together.            
              
This Christmas afternoon was especially hot, so my Mum Flo cut up some healthy and yummy assorted fruit for the family, as a snack and placed it on the table, which was placed in between, the two large trees in the backyard.

I especially love bananas, apples, oranges, grapes and lots of watermelon mixed together in my bowl. I named this creation 'A colourful fruit-blast'. It’s so much fun to eat, although, my little brother Lemmy only likes bananas in his bowl, with a dash of sweet honey.            
              
My two much older identical twin sisters named, Emma and Jemma, love to eat only green celery sticks and plain yogurt on hot days. Smoochy also ate some of my delicious, colourful fruit-blast and even drank a little of my icy, strawberry flavoured, thick shake, through his very own, home-made straw.

My Dad Archie, is very handy at making things out of wood, metal and even plastic and loves to paint unusual designs on whatever he makes. Dad does all of his, building and painting in his unusually built and outrageously painted backyard, outback shed.            
              
So, after he had some of Mum's afternoon fruit snack, Dad built a mouse house, for my grouse, new pet, mouse called, Smoochy. Dad even hand painted it with such colourful flair, from using his artistic nous. But, when I placed Smoochy, into his newly painted, mouse house, the paint wasn't dry enough, and he got yellow paint all over his, oh-so-cute tail.  
  
After my Dad Archie, had finished the grouse, new pet, mouse house, he thought, what could he make for me, as a New Year’s Eve surprise present. He quickly thought of a great idea and headed off to his, unusually built and outrageously painted, outback, backyard shed.            
              
Dad was busy for days, coming and going from his backyard shed and snoring so loudly, while taking short naps on our backyard hammock.            
      
Also, Dad kept taking pieces of Mum's colourful fruit snack, but only very small amounts at a time, from her ever so clean kitchen. Then, sneaking it all back into his, very hard to say shed. You know, the one in the backyard.  
  
My Dad had finally finished building my surprise present, just in time for New Year’s Eve. Then, because we were hosting a party at our house, at about 11.50 pm, my entire family, neighbours, friends, Smoochy and I were all waiting outside, in the backyard for the clock to strike 12.00 midnight.
  
With only 10 minutes to go my Dad, rushed off to his, you know where. Yes that's right, his unusually built and outrageously painted, outback, backyard shed and brought out my surprise. You will never guess what it was, for it was radically recycled, rather refined, remarkably robust and really red. Have you guessed correctly? Anyone? No? Okay, I will tell you what it was. It was my very own really red, reusable, retro rocket.            
              
When I saw the rocket that my dad had built for me, I was over the moon with happiness and I had a smile on my dial, that felt like it was almost as long as about a mile.            
    
All of a sudden, all of my family members, neighbours, friends and I started screaming out 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. We all shouted out together, at the top of our voices HAPPY NEW YEAR. Then my Dad helped me light my, really red, reusable, retro rocket surprise and we both stood back, to see it take off and fly into the sky. My Dad told me, it was especially built to create, a fireworks display in the night sky and then return back to us. All so we could reuse it again, for next year.
  
All of a sudden, it took off so high into the night sky, I thought my new, radically recycled, rather refined, remarkably robust, really red, reusable, retro rocket surprise, was going to the moon and may never come back down to earth.            
              
But then we heard a loud bang, the top of my rocket separated from the main body of the rocket and exploded into bright colours all over the night sky.            
              
After a while though, my entire family, our neighbours and our friends, felt things dropping onto their clean party attire. People had red blobs on their backs; yellow splats on their shirts and even some on their skirts; small orange flecks on their faces and a few people had small black bits, dropping into their top, left-hand side pockets.            
    
"It's my colourful fruit snack, coming down from the night sky", yelled Mum. So she went searching through the crowd for my Dad. When she found him, he was chuckling with laughter.

He told us all, ‘That he had packed the radically recycled, rather refined, remarkably robust, really red, reusable, retro rocket, full of Stewy's favorite fruit. Also, because fruity, firework explosives would really make the sky, so much more colourful to the eye, and ever so tasty in our mouths’.
              
My Dad wanted to make as many colours as he could for the fireworks display. He used some of Mum's colourful fruit, which included, apples, bananas, watermelons, grapes and oranges.            
              
Even Smoochy was getting hit by the furiously flying, fast falling, fantastically funny, fabulous family fruit by Flo, through the small gaps, in his newly built, freshly painted, grouse, pet mouse, house. It was the best surprise I have ever seen, come out of that unusually built and outrageously painted, backyard, outback shed.            
              
Oh, what a fun and tasty New Year's Eve party we all had, on that, oh, so wonderful and colourful fruit blast of a night, in my little country village of 'Shimmerleedimmerlee'.

Pine treed mountains
mid winters grip
Frigid blast
blankets all

Victuals scarcity,
wildlife hungers
Wolves scavenge
aimlessly

Eerie silence settles,
storm passed
Quiescent solitude
seemingly abandoned

Vicious temps split
frozen tree bark
Sounds, sudden
percussion

traffic backup,
    roadwork signs.
drive down road,
    little houses
treed yards.
    brown leaves,
first sign of fall.
    kids about to go back to
school\parents
    return to work. rolling
on the seconds go,
    ticking by faster
each year so it
    seems.

cars piled up,
     to slow, won't go.
tiny dancers in the
     wind blow on to car
windows,
     another sign of coming
Harvest Season.
     people resist the clear
trademarks
     enjoying the fall,
but resenting the
     winter.

I can't understand
     New England birds,
you're housed in
     cocoons like caterpillars
that guard against the
     elements,
not freezer coldness
     that animals call home.
I'm not sure the memo
     reached you,
but this isn't the
     South.

trees like snakes,
     shed their
rainbow skins, as
    "Old Man Winter"
kicks in. the sound of
      leaves crunching, cold
on the floor under foot.
     Autumn's death has
no memorial,
     birds flying South
a eulogy.

I was 'bout a haf mile down Shadow Holler, lookin' for my dog Jack.  I rounded the bend long the river and thar he sat just lookin' up at the moon that was back dropped behind him.  I was so entranced I stood stockstill in the chill evening air.  He raised his head and let out with that beautiful soulful baying only a huntin' dog can make.
Then he took off tearing through the woods like his tail was on fire.

Well, I commenced chasin' ol' Jack down, but I swear evra tree in that holler was out to get me.
My clothes, they was ripped up and my feet were on fire from being torn by briars and such.
I finally, upped and caught up to Jack.  He was pacing the bottom of a Sycamore that was glowing white in the moonlight.  I heard some cacklin' up in that tree and I looked up to see a sight that I nev'r saw afore.  They was a **** up in there just grinnin' down at Jack like he was playing with him.  Now Jack was in a right tizzy over that ****.  He leaped up the side of the tree as high as he could, barking treed as though his life depended on it.  That **** was doing a bit of glowing in the moonlight itself.  I'd never seen a Cinnamon colored **** before, but thar 'e was, bigger 'an life.  And while it was grinnin' it was busy collecting some twigs.  Next thing ya know it was chattering to beat the band and throwin' sticks at ol' Jack.  Well, I can tell you, Jack didn't appreciate the humor in this sitcheation.  He backed up and made a leap so high I thought shore he was gonna take flight, but he got nothin' for his trouble but a whack in the head as he collided with a big ol' twig thrown by that ****.  

Thinkin' that Jack had had about enuf I tried coaxing him home, but he was havin' nothing to do with it.  So, I told Jack I was heading home and he could come if he had a mind to, but I wasn't staying out in the woods all night while he made an *** of himself over a **** that was makin' fun of him.  I started off and then heard a loud yelp.  All of a sudden Jack came blastin' past me, and not far behind was that old Cinnamon **** giving it all he was worth.  Well, as he was headin' towards home I followed along.  Just at the mouth of Shadow Holler, and not to fer from home I found ol' Jack.  He was up a low slung tree whimperin' like a puppy.  That **** was pacing the trunk, back ****** up, teeth bared and laughin' out the side of its mouth.  As I walked up on this pathetic scene, ol' Jack took one look at me and started crying fer help.  Well, I took pity on the poor fella and walked up on that **** with a right big stick.  And right afore my eyes it just faded into nothin'.  Scared the bejeebers outta me!

Took me an hour to coax ol' Jack outta that tree.  And then I couldn't keep up with him once he headed towards our cabin.  At home I told Pa all about our lil adventure, and he bout whooped me fer even goin' into Shadow Holler.  He said, "Son, I tole you to stay outta that holla.  They's ghosts and spooks down in thar.  Old Lady Jalson disappeared never to be seen again until the Smith boys saw her wanderin' a trail down there.  On'y problem is they cud see through 'er.  They's all sorts of stories 'bout shadows roaming free and playin' tricks an' worse on folks."  

Well I never seen my Pa so scairt as when he was tellin' me that, so now I just keep away from that holler.  And, ya know what?  I ain't never seen ol' Jack even turn in that direction since that night.  Musta learned himself somethin'.

I put the dream catcher at the head of my bed
Where bad dreams dare not treed.
It captures just my good dreams and hopes and prayers
And with the angels it is shared.
What better carrier than an angel with wings
Who can handle most anything.
Your prayers and dreams have been seen and heard
Every dream and every word.
The dream catcher must start again
Because your dreams may never end.
© L. RAMS 020415

From this island
water and more tiny islands
heavily treed with Douglas fir
landing ground for ocean otters
while orca whales glide by
spout and spray
the beach, broken shelled
puddled wells of tide pools
filling, spilling over again
brown bauble seaweed mingles
round algae rocks, barnacle shingled
here where the air breathes salt scented
water running wild with salmon.

Princely treed blue jay  .  .  .
Hopping up boughs of old spruce,    
  .  .  .  Both have crested heads.

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                                    
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

i wonder which road taken is the road that should be taken
that should be treed by me and my friends
for years we wait till forever
to wash our hands into the river of misfortune
unfortunately for me and you
we are all the same
for lack of a better word
we are all human
why don't we start acting like it
intelligence isn't just a state of mind
you have it just like me
and that homeless guy living on the street
don't let your fear hinder what road you treed
choose by what gets you blood pumping
boiling
running through your veins
as if flowing is the only thing left to do
to be free and wild
to be a spirit
an energy
a warm light
be all of those things
while following your dream
trust me
it's worth it
and if it's not for you
then don't let your misfortune be another persons torture

I dreamt my tower before my tower
Arose from oak-treed woods,
And standing far above a sparkling sea
Providing welcome space: a home
From where to think, compose,
Be quite alone.

When becalmed by night, the youngest girl
Of three and yet *****, I sat and pondered
Many silent hours, the house quite still,
(No music sounding out, or I to give it sound)
And sitting so did spin a future for myself:
A castle-keep upon a point of wooded land
With sea to either side and hills behind,
No, mountains surely, and across the water
A sprinkle of isles all shapes and hues,
Their aspect changing hour on hour.

It was not arranged that we should meet,
'Twas a love match made by Cupid’s hand.
At Mrs Morran’s weekly dance he came,
The second son, a slim, dark soul,
Rich in silence and sharp looks
He did at once unlock my heart, so seated
At the instrument my hands did briefly
Falter at the keys to see him frown then look
When I began a *Menuet from Playford’s book.
I sang, but now cannot remember what,
My voice seemed strangely not my own,
But distant, far away and lacking tone.

Faining not to dance he later came and spoke
Of Mr Handel whom he’d lately seen and heard
On that great man’s brief sojourn in our city.
Masterly playing, he said, rich in invention
And delight. You know his work? Oh yes I cried,
Of course, of course I play his keyboard Canzonets
Until my sisters scold me and my finger sore
With trills and turns and ornaments apace
Such grace this music . . . and he laughed.

Six months later we were wed,
He, a most Honourable son by birth,
I, his Lady came to be.
Through music our love begat
An heir then daughters three
Before five years had passed.
And then . . .
With swiftness hardly comprehending
He became the heir and Laird
Of 20,000 acres in Bendeloch, Mid Lorn,
His father and his brother dead, their ship
The Coral foundering in Atlantic storms.
And so did Lochnell, newly built,
Become our home, its policies
******* broad Archmucknisk Bay
That favoured to the west the Isle of Mull
and to the north Argyll and Bute.

As children grew and wifely obligations
Changed I became again a dreaming soul
Returned by degrees to that first love,
My music, that had brought to me such joy,
Affection, happiness, delight.
My husband busy with affairs abroad,
I filled the house with Mr Handel’s
Strains and finding I could improvise
Upon his grounds, discovered too
That I had tunes a’plenty, and not only
In my fingers, but in my restless mind.
Whilst other ladies write and paint
I scribe the symbols of my art, and then
In music’s script composed and scored
To paper with a draughtsman’s pen.

Each day I went to seek my muse,
Would find her form in nature’s grace.
My garden walled in granite stone
Held leafy treasures safe from wind and storm.
But ascending thence through oak woods
To peninsulary heights I glimpsed afar
A fine, majestic view towards the Highland
Ranges so rich in Gaelic names (and oft in May
Still topped with ice and snow).
Such sublimity I felt when gazing
On the aspect of these distant hills
That music came unbidden to my waiting hand
And, returning to my study, I would play and write
My manuscripts till late at night.

My husband smiled at such full-fancied thought
Then hid from me a brave intent and plan.
Whilst away one spring we travelled south
To Venice and Milan, he ordered built
A tower to rise above the trees
With winding stair and tiny chamber
At its top where my small clavichord
might rest and furnish me with
With gentle sounds to speak of music
On the very peak of Gardh Ards.

Arriving home in burnished autumn’s wake
He led me to the very top, and there
Above the forest sward, rose up a tower,
A tower from whose fine granulated heights
A Lady who wrote music might imbibe
A richer view, and then in silent meditation
Take from landscape’s glory all and more.
And so inscribed upon a plaque reads
*Erected for Lady Campbell anno 1754.

There are days I wish I could remember
what is was I said in a state of stupor
and haze. The times I tipped bottles
back and poured them into my soul
releasing demons and their lovers
into the air around me like smoke
rising. Stumbling in and out of sentences,
incoherant thoughts, and blurry vision.

There are nights I wish I could recall
what you felt like,  a bare treed forest,
wet with morning dew, and the sound
of echoing geese. We awoke
to the distant whines of lonely dogs,
and the knowledge that it would be hours
before we could meld into each other again.

The memories I have, a muffled question
to dance, an honest eyed I Love You marked
by bloodied hands, chewed puzzle pieces,
and freezing to death watching men chase
pig skin down damp turf. I lift my hands
and chase them like fireflies in the dark.
Hoping to catch them and keep them
in tiny boxes beneath my pillows.

But as butterflies do with nets, they slip
slowly through aching fingers,
like the waves tease the beach, washing
against it and then disappearing again
into murky depths. I would have let you
band me, keep me wrapped up in your
tattoos and scars. I would have fed
hungry mouthes and slipped into
secret moments stolen between sheets.

There are days I wish I could remember
what it was I said. And there are nights
I wish I could forget, what it was you told me.

We start.
Talking
And sort of...
Running.

At the first climb
We stop, breathing
Heavily - both dead, but for a comma -
And look at concrete under our feet
and windmills turning distant on the hill.

You OK?
Yes.

Start again.
on the Way now
Hawthorn and mud beside us and new green in the fields.
Easier victories of pace and breath alongside talk.
Of Warburtons and nuts and bolts.
Getting into it now
Feeling good - seeing green, paces flow
And rocky styles and sloping fields made possible.

'To that edge?'
'OK'
- Our version of sprinting -
Across the hard ridged grass
To an upward sloping wall corner,
And now the first real pain in chest and legs.  Briefly desperate.  
But another topic turns words to distance
Along a gully and narrow treed ridge
To another climb.
Our brief paces stab the ground.
Paces
To
Keep
Going

No words now.
Nothing but
Splitting lungs.
We push unforgiving gravity
Up a turning track
Going up
Still going up and around

The agony of contrasts -
Pale glorious clouds lift late sky colours of rose and blue
- While we are slow and heavy torments of road, and stones, and bones.

Can see the lookout now at Royd
We can do it
We can.
Can I...?

*******

Christ.

Doubled up gasping clutching the wall
Try to read the tourist sign's shaking print -
- may it stop the pounding -
But hearing also that eerie sweeping close now, and the gears -
A dizzying look up at the spinning blades

Can't believe we've got this high...

But no rest - chill of early Sping
Tells us not to linger with our light going:
Shadowing will be the woods:
Drawing up dark between the trees,
And we're not there yet.

Easy now.  
"Doing OK?"
"Doing OK."
We float along high fields and farms and light and words
How many milliseconds for hot cross bun dough?
How about a Triumph Triple?
(And you can forget electric scooters in Brighouse)

While late March branches hint at leaves
In the narrow lane we half run-walk
- Across another field - and under a quietening sky
A dark downward flight through trees to tarmac, street lights and...  

The Big Finish

- Aches gone and tiring feet forgotten
In a final dash to the pub.

Briefly arching for air over the car.

"Not bad -"
"No - Not bad at all"
Whose turn is it?
(That Third Person never buys a pint)

Lager?
Yes.
Nuts?


Definitely.


*                *      ­          *


Postscript:
          -  And however long or short, I will still have run with Neil                
                                  across those sloping fields with the light
                                          and the words and the hedges -

Who will create tomorrow?
Is it the leaders of today?
The ones who reach, posses
Overachieve?

Is it the dreamers
For whom the beauty of imagination
Is what springs hope for the future.

Is it the followers?
The ones who believe in
Others ambitions and dreams?

Is it the pessimists?
Those who treed on
The hopes, dreams and
achievements of others?

Who do you think it is?

So much **** in my head/ this exact feelin' i dread/ if it ain't one thing it's another/ can you hear the faint sounds of thunder/ betta run fo' cover/ cuz when it rains it pours/ so betta be prepared for more/ stack up your sandbags, reinforce your levy's/ cuz all the payn, can get so heavy/ don't let the water, rush ya/ it has the strength 2 crush ya/ i know you feel the pressure/ don't let it stress ya/ if the water starts 2 rize/ don't be surprised/ just be aware, the current might take waves/ don't be fooled by the size/ it's the force beneath/ that can pull you off your feet/ and take you 2 see all life in the sea/ if you lose your balance don't panic/ relax and treed water if you can manage/ try 2 stay afloat/ hopefully you'll see a boat/ and you can climb aboard/ it may be over now, but stay prepared for more/ there may be a leak in the floor/ and once again, fightin' the force/ bail out the water and find a plug 2 stop the faucet, thats pourin'/ try 2 see what caused it, though it may not matta/ it might help save you from diasta'/ then in your last moment of dispair/ you look and land is near/ try 2 make it there/ jump ship or try 2 make a repair/ paddles or not/ sometimes the boat you must rock/ pull up your anchor, don't jus sit in the same spot/ once you've reached shore/ your not done, be prepared for more/ different obstacles are awaiting'/ don't spend so much time debating/ make a decision, either way consequences are waitin'/ which way 2 go/ we don't always know/ look 2 the stars/ yeah their far/ but they can help show, which way 2 go/ North, South, East, West, i truly don't know who knows best/ Storms will come and go, and some will be harder then the rest, but just remember always live your best.

water as calm as the night that consumes it.
a dock, to never land and away farther again.
wooden water bed atop singing-in-the-wind reeds.

there are family lights here.
near and dear, but pleasant on the pier.

the ducks sit like loon silhouettes on the water.
I found you by accident, but I think I'll stay awhile.
drizzle drops drip-drop-trickle around me, falling on a warm breeze.

bats fly in a sky, full of gray rain clouds.
perhaps they will war elsewhere tonight.

I sit on docks and enjoy night spring before the mosquito summer.
in this is a treed water cove.
the water is like glass ripples:
warm city lights wafting lazily on the water.

and noises of roads too far away to care about.

and I do look back as I leave for it is that I will return.
not soon enough will this place always be calling upon me.
I flee as rain floats on the wind.

with rain clouds crying, and fire trucks screaming, and the flashing lights breaking, midst the thunder booms and lightning flashes.
tomorrow comes crashing down.

good night to you, the still watery pond.

As we travel through the mountains--
our vessel snaking round each mound--
I wonder how we seem to them,
merely ants marching on the ground.
Two by two threading the treed lea.
Man's existence becomes irrelevant.
A leaf on the ground is unique,
yet a forest before decent.
We each are a puzzle piece here
to a jigsaw never complete.

Why is it important that normal people should be passed over for jobs to accommodate crippled people? ~ The preventative, treatment & cure for common acne (acne vulgaris) is vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) and plenty of it. Fear not, you cannot overdose on vitamin B5 as it is water soluble. (This means that what the body doesn't use will end up in your urinary bladder.) Take B5 on a full stomach. ~ Why must people flail their upper limbs when they speak? Shouldn't their lower limbs go spastic too? “Gee Bob, why's that guy on the ground?”; “He's trying to tell me something.” ~ I see you got another cat. Where's your chihuahua?  That is my chihuahua. I turned him into a cat with synthetic cat hormones. ~ PROOF! Put Michelle Obama & a gynecologist in a room for an hour to see what happens.
   .357 & .38 bullets were dug out of John Lennon. Roosevelt Hospital destroyed his bloodied clothes & locked up his autopsy records to this day. His body was cremated within 36 hours. (Lennon had a phobia about cremation. He said so in interviews.) His attention-seeking assassin pled guilty thereby avoiding a trial that would have kept him in the papers & put him on T.V. for months. ~ Jimi Hendrix had massive quantities of red wine in his stomach & lungs. Years later his quiet, blonde, creamy-white girlfriend be-came talkative only to die "accidentally" in her car from carbon monoxide asphyxia. She was 50. ~ L'Wren Scott, who was 6' 3'' tall, hanged herself from a door ****. ~ Thelma Todd “committed suicide” in 1935 by carbon monoxide poisoning. But before she did the deed she decided to rough herself up with a broken nose and 2 cracked ribs. ~ Sonny Bono skied into a tree. There was a stranger's blood on the back of his jacket. ~ Adrienne Shelly was murdered after all.

an intimately vast space
spread out in small pockets
where once a treed horizon
dared to peek out into view
now walls enclose the square feet
so precious to the privileged few
real estate, though nothing real
about it at all, built on dreams
and promises unfulfilled
you can plan your OXO lifestyle
advertised on billboards
of temptation on the roadside
that passes what looks
like a battlefield, nature making
one last stand of liquid mud
to repel all boarders, but to no avail
tarmac veins snake and harden
making new arteries to a future
braver infantile world
of possession and greed

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                            
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'
.

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                                    
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

As the light dies
I pace the field edge
to the square pond
enclosed, hedged and treed.
The water,
once revealed,
lies cold
in the still air.
 
At its bank,
solitary,
I let my thoughts of you
float on the surface.
And like two boats
moored abreast
at the season’s end,
our reflections merge
in one dark form.

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

.
Ringed by a tall, told wood,
A meadow pond dearly stood,
Deep and dark, the branched lands
Of childhood reaching to forever,
Throughout the growing seasons,
Rich in pines, bane ivy, hemlocks,
Naked columns of the freed bark,
To shelter the treed imaginations
Of running youth, where creatures
Became fabled to the wide open
Eyes tearing into the overgrowths,
Heading by the shudders of caul,
In the shades of the woody owl,
Greatly horned was the sly song,
The never present wails of cold, lost
Nightingale nor snout of woodcock,
Camouflaged in the browned leaves,
The gracing sun smoked in the morn,
And flamed forgotten in leafy eves,
In the needled myths of the roaming
Creatures, the dandy pheasant struts,
The brawned hind in the foraging doe,
Painted turtles, helmeted above ripples
Of parapet stone in soft water breached,
Sparking stars reigned with swirling fireflies
And glow of moon, as ever appeared, shook
The playful fear within, without, belongings
Of the child who spun his own tales, so held,
This, then was begun paradise in a sleepy waterlog
Of vale, outward from the shadowlands of creep age,
Kept, for daze, won, dreamed, in the torrid torching
Stalks, sunlit hold, the flash of painted face, knotty
Brilliance set free, the unmatched strike in reeds.

This mannequin is freer than me
I’m treed to taxes and age
She stands beautiful and pale beyond the beautician’s windowdoor
Glass cannot hinder one’s sight
A primrose crown my daughter made for her naked head now wilts
Still she is unaffected by life, the stoic Apolinaria

~ A.M, F.H.

When you plant a good seed watch out for weeds. They will try to supersede and ***** out all good deeds.

Because weeds only grow to impede and to do misdeeds. Once freed the weeds will procede to take the lead and will have you treed, indeed.

So take heed when you plant your seed don't feed the weeds or they will breed and can make you concede.

Proof read then proceed with Godspeed.

It's late in the evening and the world is winter
and bare-treed. She goes to the window, where
at home it was sage and yucca or some other
pretty ****. But here it has yet to be classified:
it's just bark, stem, seed. And at home the stars
would yawn into being, star by star; rubbing,
stretching, blinking. But here they are one, and
they always come late. Their light they withhold
as if lying in wait, so it's dark till the moment...
she's not quite aware. She just wrinkles her nose,
looks up,
and it's there.

I'm just dizzy.
Spinning like a ferris wheel at roller coaster speed I'm spinning faster faster faster and there you are and there you aren't I need you but you aren't here anymore you won't be you never will be were you ever? Swirling tornado shake me up a little more and maybe I'll spin right out of this mess and roll out like a red carpet affair and be ready for you. Be ready like laced shoes at your doorframe or my pillow bed of feathers and love and our scent but no. my load isn't done washing and don't try to set me out to dry because the soap in my pockets of skin will only leave my skin dry to snap crackle pop and blister in these dangerous days of blazing candles over head and new and old lovers hiding in every shaded nestled spot where the wax is still hot but the candle fire doesn't quite reach just like you haven't quite reached me where I'm up here climbing so high limb by branch by twig by peg by hole in the wall that gets me higher and higher but stop spinning me in this silo so I can get down and put my feet on the ground I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I didn't want to fly yet I told you I did but I wasn't finished as a caterpillar down here but then everything seemed so catatonic no shoes by the doorframe no air or candles or paths just swirls and spins and tossing our places we shared and turning our intimate moments paired and twirling it like a ball on my finger tip to show off my talent of controling a situation that not so secretly is controling me puppet your way over here my dear the strings attached and so easily they enjoy the shame and the selfish beast at feeding time where it doesn't matter anything but territory and well you crosed mine so I clawed and bit at yours thrashing like an animal sickly enjoying everything I used to fear and becoming a monster slowly inside. Brewing and boiling up from these candles and spinning too abrupt stop mixing the concoction before it's done don't let me be done don't let my fumes out they're toxic and yet you lock yourself inside the garage of myself and rather suffocate you take me in with each inhale and each exhale I'm no longer. I come in and transfer to dissipate and find nothing but small particles of myself foggy in air too small to do anything like the ant in the treed army of grasslettes. You just don't get it but I don't either. I don't know if I ever will.