M62 from Hull

Serried ranks of orange reeds,
alongside deep dark-shining ditch:
reflective.

Shortest day

And shorter still by dint of heavy cloud
and the fact of travelling to Europe later today
wherein we lose another hour,
but a bonus in that I can stride out
without fear of flipping over

Brown on white

Coffee granules,
jogged from a spoon
and falling onto a just-wiped surface,
speed into bloom.

Overturned tart?

Sky the colour of much-handled pastry,
pale apricot filling around the edge.

Socks

Stiff black U shapes
hung overnight
too close to the heat
from the boiler

Finely balanced books

Now my yet-to-be-read pile has reached fourteen
(plus three of the ten lent by my daughter,
at the end of last month)
I am beginning to panic, slightly.

From the bedroom window

A snow-flurry shower of gulls
darned by a single black crow

On my way to buy a morning paper #17

Heading east
puddles pale oases,
turned north
they blacken,
orange-rimed.

Seen in Suffolk from the A14

Polka-dotted seagulls
in a field of hutted, muddy pigs,
beside another field of stripes,
semi-sage and biscuit

change

That I could hear the plane this morning
told me the wind had died

Black versus white

Three dimensions of windy sky space
yet the crow and the seagull
cannot agree to share.

On my way to buy a morning paper #16

Difficult to tell in the dark
whether blackness of sky
is due to lack of the sun
or imminent pouring down rain

On my way to buy a morning paper #15

Turned a dark corner to be met with disaster
myriad blue flashing lights
a moment to realise it's not an emergency
but somebody's tree-full for christmas

On my way to buy a morning paper #14

Frowning to stay upright
I dissuade all morning greetings
and omit to post the letters
I diverted for

Neighbours

Next door's early morning
chopped back apple trees
revealed last night
an unexpected tableau
in a well-lit
uncurtained
hitherto unviewed
back bedroom

No obvious explanation

For ten days now,
a mattress and a divan
brand new, polythene-wrapped
left uncollected
at the side of the house next but one.

On my way to buy a morning paper #13

Fifty minutes late
and no-one says 'good morning'
- we have not the two years plus
of graduated nodding
in acknowledgement

On my way to buy a morning paper #12

Stepping stones of yellow sycamore
stuck to the rain-damp road

At my desk, NaNo-ing

This time last year
red bed socks
and a quilt to supplement
my urgently-donned clothes

A pleasure

The wind again today, southerly
and the north south dryness
of the road

mid week

Blustery wind
so much more invigorating
than still

NaNo Struggling

November sky
still and grey and blank
as my imagination

Is it me that drains the battery?

Sun a pale gold coin
twixt hawthorn hedge and sea fret cloud
and my camera battery empty
once again.

and I've never liked spearmint since

Half a moon,
half a sixpence:
a silver threepenny bit,
spent when I was six
on a hitherto untasted spearmint ice lolly

Conjunctive confusion

Crow, raucous at the top of a silver birch,
and I hear the central locking of the car parked underneath click open
'Clever crow' I think.
But no.

On my way to buy a morning paper #11

and the sky this morning
wet on creamy-papered wet
Paynes Grey and a touch of Burnt Sienna

Prompts for a gruesome tale?

A slew of eggshells
pale and slimy-stuck to tarmac,
adherence for a cast-off car key

Did no-one remember to tell us?

The entire morning
cadmium and grey,
still, and so empty
that the world might have ended.

Splash of colour

Cross and scratchy dusk walk mood lifted temporarily,
by purple long and tangled hair
of black-clad teenage girl.

Cheating at Pelmanism

Female blackbird
practising solo
with orange leaves
on the back lawn

False promise

Mediterranean colours:
the bonnet of a turquoise car,
scattered golden leaves
rime-edged and frost-adhered.

Brainwashed by Photoshop

'Inverted' my first thought
when the sunlight bleached the factory roofs
and beyond, the forthcoming rainstorm
dyed the sky to black.

But I was wrong

and the tablecloth's now hanging in the sun,
indigo turned a faintly burnt sienna

Soaking seeming ineffective

The red wine stain
on last night's biscuit-coloured tablecloth
has now turned indigo.

Realised with mild shock

In the dark, my feet still do not know
the number pattern of the stairs,
even after thirty-seven years

On my way to buy a morning paper #10

Absence of blanketing wind
enables tiny, coloured stitches of sound
to be heard, as background pattern.

Treating effect not cause

In half-term week
three speed bumps
black with white triangles
are built in the road beside the school

On my way to buy a morning paper #9

Spat of rain and rustling raincoat,
squelch and slick of squeaking boots,
detract from silent dark and thoughtful contemplation.

Seven in the evening - hooray?

From the east, across the night-dark Tees
an ice-cream vendor plays a tune to tell me
that the sun is coming out to play

Seen while watching rugby

Man with dirty white-grey, dark-grey little dog
appears to have another on his head,
this one with ear-flaps.

What a waste!

Doorbell rings, mid-sentence
Run downstairs - delicious young man,
collecting for charity
Damn!

Blows the wind, southerly

and the sound of the fair, raucously loud, intermittent
flies up the hill,
dragging smoky dark-eyed and long ago memory:
ignorance swirling with premature ache for experience.

Speedy alsatian

Alternate light and dark,
as he passes a paling fence,
stripes the dog "go faster"

On my way to buy a morning paper #8

Semi-circle moon above my head
bleeding brightness
onto a blue-grey blanket.

On my way to buy a morning paper #7

Two overhead geese,
ten degrees apart,
noisy enough for a 'V' of a couple of dozen

Monday morning wasn't grumpy to start

Congenitally concept-free of consequence,
the woman on the corner has parked her 4x4
across the path, again.

static

I am a point of stillness
as my daughter whirls around me
making contact at Hong Kong
and from Schipol.

Untrained

Volunteers in charity shop
wash up the cups
and do not see the waiting customers

From my window, as I vainly seek inspiration

The merest smudge of dirty apricot:
a hem below the rigor mortis sky
and only two leaves moving

On my way to buy a morning paper #6

Half-light
half-dressed woman
high heels and a towelling dressing gown
searches the boot of her car
for clothes

Routine

Paper shop shuttered
paper not bought
shape of the day
dislocated

Coincidence

The grey of the clouds
blowing up from the west
match exactly the towels
I've just hung on the line

Enthusiasm?

My dentist
talks about the weather
as if he will not repeat himself
three times an hour,
every hour,
every day.

Uncertainty

So contrast-cold this morning
that I check the condensation on the car
to make sure it's not frost.

Influence of the wind

Yesterday's scampering, truant-playing leaves
close circle-scrummed damp this morning.

Minor irritation

Black grit-stones from BT's pavement-patching tarmac
stick to soles of sandals,
tread into house.

discomfort

The motorcycle instructor
sits on the sharp end of a red and white stripe cone
and shouts across the carpark
at his girl trainee

A pondering

What exactly is it
that turns random objects
not especially arranged on a windowsill
into a Still Life?

And how could we have told him?

The owner of the retaurant
might have exuded less bonhomie
had he known he'd left his flies undone

Forty-fifth wedding anniversary

Five then seven geese flew overhead
clanking and vociferous
Then the world turned pink

7 a.m.

Clear sky pre-dawn glow:
fuzzy feel of apricots against the skin,
taste of Milk Tray Orange Crème.

Post pruning

The upraised butchered branch of plum tree
gesticulates and casts a witch's curse.

At the hairdresser

Not facing the window is boring

definitely a great deal more flattering

my face in shadow, backlit

grumpy me?

young mother steers child in pushchair
and a dog
with mobile clamped to ear
and I wonder when child will learn to talk

On my way to buy a morning paper #5

Splendid pile of fungus:

griddle scones awaiting maple syrup

Old 'technology'

Somehow a surprise
to see egg-box type packing
protecting my new laptop.

Triple drama

Crimson embers burst beyond the blackness of the hawthorn branches,
Ireland's Ronan O'Gara converts another try,
and an over-large spider sprints across the floor toward me.

Foreboding

A sudden gloom makes it hard to see the page
and I dash outside to rescue the near-dry washing.

Chopping dates for muesli

Long-term, long time, careful observation
yet I still cannot decide
whether fewer, bigger and much more to taste
is better than much smaller and more of them.

And another firing

Two shots ring out
and a pair of would-be joyous magpies
take the pessimistic view

Misfiring Comet

Eventually I appreciated his help

and might have bought the recommended laptop there and then

but for the overpowering reek of aftershave.

Distracted for MudSpots

In search of an aphorism
I resort to Aurelius
and neglect my packing for the weekend

[If you haven’t been to MudSpots yet, do check it out – 250 word tales from talented writers, incluiding me!)

Another cause for regret

Nearly the end of summer
and I don't have so much as a hint, even,
of a watch-strap mark

Regret

White moon high on blue
a perfect circle in the western sky
and I am sad I did not see it rise
full gold, on black, last night

Vivid

Squelch and splash of violent accident colours
when I unwittingly tread on a well-rotted plum

Waterworks

Mismatched triangular plastic pictograms,
(sandbagged today against the strengthening wind)
preceding clicked-together chunky fencing pieces,
red and blue, with stuck-on stripey tape:
Playmobil for children now grown large.

Practical pleasure

A jug I bought because I liked its pale sienna earthy colour,
the darker circled lines that spoke of how it became,
the proportions of its height to its circumference
and the way the handle fitted fingers, gave a resting place for thumb,
pours just as nicely, as it should.

On the back lawn

Toadstools to begin, alarming orange,

then go black.

A scattering of over-night-grown curses

Half-past seven this evening

Sunset clouds, upswept, like blow-dried hair-sprayed candyfloss

surprisingly, in Thurso

Ochre yellow bookshop, words on slate upon the outside walls
Rankin minus Rebus but subsequently read and found compelling
and Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’

North of Golspie

Rooks, burnt and blackened paper flakes,
heat-driven upwards
then windswept across the flame gold trees

Heading south towards Grantown-on-Spey

An apprentice piece, a sampler of exuberant, lively clouds
complimenting the yellow-gold scallop-edged dish of hills,
dashed silver with a streak of wet run roads.

Another story?

Ahead of me a young man, good looking, emerges
slipping silently from behind a tall back gate.
Crosses the road and just as silently disappears behind another
 ... ah, but if he had, he surely would have been more furtive, more dishevelled?

Before I get up

The uneven hiss and faint murmur,
occasional single spot plink,
informs me I will need boots today.

Mistakes happen

Misread the clock.
Up and dressed before I realised it was four not five.
This time a lack of careful observation
Oh well.

Decision time

A need, next week, to write, not type, sets me to wondering what’s best.

I like the fine convenience of propelling pencils
but words too quickly smudge to illegible.
Asked my daughter, who recommends fine-liner felt tips,
remember that roller balls can be so smooth,
and that biros are best not the cheapest 
and realise I need to go to Staples.

Not cricket

Overripe plums, mostly red, some grey with mould,

scatter-patterned across the lawn

less than successfully bowled from the branches above.

Geese again

Even more briefly, no more than a glimpse,

dissension resolved, two dozen or more,

in chevron, pass close by my window.

Briefly

The geese down by the unseen river,
greet the golden dawn
with what sounds like group dissension.

Misunderstood

Those sparrows, mentioned on the sixteenth,
I realise now, were not excited by the pond,
just on their lunch-hour.

Just now - 05.39

Briefly, for a moment, from the colour

the sky old fashioned blotting paper

and the clouds blue-black Quink ink

Waking thoughts, having read in one sitting yesterday.

Picked up from ‘Help the Aged’

a book the blurb for which implies it’s teenage sex.

But it turns out to be multi-levelled;

much more on family and the damage they unwittingly do

and the cloying, clutching nature of a friendship based dishonestly on guilt.

[‘A certain age’ by Rebbecca Ray]

Watched while eating lunch

A dozen or more delinquent adolescent sparrows
dart dizzily from fence to trellis to hedge,
seemingly made giddy by the recent weed-cleared pond.

On getting up at 5 a.m.

First impression through square window,
custard sky beyond the night-dark trees,
so that’s what the raucous solitary seagull
was on about just now.

Sod's law and stains

Is it that we never spill red wine on the crimson tablecloths,
or just that it doesn't show, as it does upon the creamy-beige?

Flo's toes

Three and a half, she notices a damaged toenail.
Sits down, puts foot in mouth and repairs it with her teeth.
Not knowing that one day such action won't be possible.

drugged

Observation lacking totally today
I am reading the sixth in the Lymond series
maybe for the sixth time
but I cannot put it down.

On my way to buy a morning paper #4

Pink neon reflected on the fish and chip shop tiles,

and again across the puddled tarmac of the car park,

a fractured, trailing Isadora Duncan chiffon scarf.

Although not cold enough

My slightly blurred reflection in the darkness of the double glazing,

the blackness of the frantic trees against the pewter sky,

gloomily presage November.

Deceived, deceiving

Winter ice blue sky confirmed by early morning freshness –

and yet it IS still August

7th: New-made elder sister

And Flo becomes a middle child:

vivid, argumentative,

logic unsurpassable

and forehead clear.

6th:  Nine days old

Stupidly surprising,

skinniness of limbs,

bleared blue-grey wisdom.

mouth’s silent enunciation.

5th.: Nurture or nature

Connie so competent:

five years of parenting,

or the mix of her genes?

4th:  Journey south

Clouds high, light and almost blue,

ever-present promise that the sun’s about to shine:

nevertheless there’s non-stop rain

which lasts for hours and hours.

Momentary visual dislocation

Slightly late arising

and a shock to see November fog

at a fourth of August dawn.

superfluous

Do we really need a twice-daily rag and bone man,
abbreviated shouting incoherent
and on foot?

Lunch with ex-colleagues

1.
Sociability, despite enjoyment, can be exhausting,

unlike the communing of loved and like-minded.
2.
Purporting to tell a tale against herself
she draws attention to her skinny arse.

Changes of direction and time

Rain spattering the kitchen window

tells me the wind has changed

from north to south.

I doubt the friend I will meet today

(not seen for twenty-five years)

has changed so drastically

Paperweight stone

Ochre hill

chalk cut hound

hunting companion

for Cerne Abbas giant

Connections

It still fills me with delight to know
if I get up early enough
I can converse with Michael in Mexico,
Gita or Mike in Alabama
and receive photos from Kristine in New York

July's missed and now remembered stones

12^th:  Rare for me not to have that last-night-before-I-leave

final, cowardly thought that I don’t wish to go to sleep in an alien bed

and even though I fumbled with the airport tax machine,

anticipation that I will cope remained full strength

13^th:  And fully justified because I wake up with a smile in Alabama

cocooned in warmly welcome and so easy to be here.

14^th:  Both anticipation of the end of day, the smaller widened circle

tempered with regret that we must leave this place.

15^th:  Waking in a bedroom with my daughter

last seen last month on a station in Berlin.

16^th:  A second day of writers, more new faces to set beside their words,

reading, writing all together, eating too and then so very, very late to bed

and absolutely clueless as to what time I might  awake.

17^th:  Knowledge that today I leave for home lies heavy,

staggered though the parting is.

A day begun with Highland Park and ending with a Maker’s Mark.

18^th:  A day bereft that doesn’t really seem to properly exist

flying high and heading east across the Atlantic

Cross trainer diversion

Their first time at the gym, a couple
with a Fitness Trainer in attendance.
He moderately fit and keen to show his capability.
She sluggish, sulky, lumpy, clearly there on sufferance,
and suffering.

Without scale

Without scale, the desiccated, split and damaged fig tree leaf

becomes an aerial view of urban destruction,

a well-inked with burnt sienna collagraph plate.

A fairness of rooks

One magpie, six rooks.
Five content to let the fight progress fairly,
one to one,
until he looks like losing.

On my way to buy a morning paper #3

Large, empty plastic bottles

spill out of recycling bag.

Don’t they know how therapeutic

it is to stamp them flat?

Under new management

Every day for a month now

the windows wide open

to let out the stink of the previous owners

Joust

A pagentry of or and argent

a mediaeval trumpet fanfare of murrey

brought to mind by honeysuckle flowers

and Boutell’s barely read and mis-remembered ‘Heraldry’

Night sweats

Even when I've access to the whole of the bed
the sheets lose their cool too quickly

Ode to a solitary pansy

Pale face showing tracks of bloodstained tears

solitary and despondent gaze across the black expanse of tarmac

no longer unaware of your misbegotten seeding.

Seen from a balcony in North Carolina

Bracken ancient, arrowed tip resting on part circle drawn in concrete by the dripping from above.
Leaves blinking with a rain-hit tic, a cat's ear twitch at stimulus unknown.

I don't mind solitude but ...

Having landed at Teesside on Monday night
I did not feel grounded
until he phoned me from Germany on Tuesday

eight hours wait at Schipol

Startlingly seen from above on an escalator:
an apparently, abnormally short-faced man with protruding tongue
subsequently seen to be wearing his sunglasses on top of his hairless head

Awaiting an opportunity to dance the polka

Silver, semi-spherical static raindrops on the windscreen
circles echoing and overlaid
by reflected rowan berry clusters,
green and orange.

Presentation is NOT all

A flimsy plastic supermarket punnet
yet the cherries still taste sweet

On my way to buy a morning paper #3 - Replenishment

An over-abundance of pink granite chips

surging tidal round unwary cars

Heard from the garage below my room

Decreasing husky rasp of door support in metal runners
Sharp click as catch slides over aluminium lip
Burble from the radio becomes a sudden silence
He’s finished playing motorbikes for the day

Family history

If I prised up, intaglio-inked and subsequently printed

any one of the kitchen cork floor tiles,

would the resulting image tell the story

of the thirty years we’ve so far trod?

On my way to buy a morning paper #2

A rough, tobacco-damaged, dirty chuckle

conjured up a much-loved and delinquent aunt

who took me apple-scrumping when I was eight

Heard from the garden

Distorted megaphone voice

indecipherable china-sharded words

brief silence

then the grass-blown screams of children

         

            ... sports day at the local primary school

On my way to buy a morning paper

Iridescent rainbow in the gutter

red orange yellow holographic shine

closer, blue green indigo bedazzles

courtesy of Benson Hedges

On the shelf above my monitor

Effie's stone
silver earrings 
wooden egg-cup
and an emery board

Seen in a new light

daily black dog walking man
discussed Caravaggio
in the restaurant last night

Not a silver lining, but a red?

Last night’s spilled wine, imperfectly wiped,

a pattern of alarm on the carpet

and an illustrated tale

Conscience

bed loose and littered with irrelevances
cream wool blankets folded back upon themselves
accusation from the oblong of its door-less room 
of dusty abandonment, careless unthinking neglect ...
my once-single, now cuckolded, etching press.

Pavement art

Carefully right-angled and conjoined

four different greys of tarmac patchings

an accidental, incidental, monochrome Sean Scully

Time to tidy?

Unusually I'm irritated by the muddle of my space:
wires black confusion and the dusty piles,
papers needing replying, books to stand up straight
and CDs to put away elsewhere.

Waxwing

Yesterday’s window-smacked waxwing,

headless by teatime,

gone by the morning,

bar the grey downy feathers
incongruous in the green grass.

July stones and daily discipline

I've missed the daily discipline of three of the first four months of the year: 

A river of stones for January, which began in December with 'Raindrops'  was followed by my personal, colour-inspired stones for February, starting with an explanation and then after a somewhat stuttering March, I took up Jo Prescott's A poem a day for April, the first three of which described my difficulties with Script Frenzy (soon failed dismally).

July won't be completed daily, although there might well be retrospective entries, but I will aim to be as poetically observant as possible