From my window as I drink coffee

Skeins of dirty sheep dag clouds
Dry hawthorn undramatic brown
Through which a serrated glimpse of golf club green
To the soundtrack of BSA A 10.

On my way to buy a morning paper,

Over-optimistic blackbird
singing that it's Spring

Fifteenth of the month

Not a quadruplicate of babies' skulls

November coloured

eyes and mouths rehearsing Christmas carols

e’en as they lay, battered in the gutter

but an egg carton, fog-sodden and forlorn

Loaves not fishes

Late-woken from a dream re-formed

from the dough of Thursday’s memories

to red dot flashing of bread machine

and a butter yellow sky.

Low tricks by the sun

Long slender legs extend my arrival in a kitchen where

crumbs are boulders, windows blind with grime

and I wish, not that I was less a slut at housework

but had been more so, while my legs were still that long.

On my way to buy a morning paper #50

Close to the ground:
not an exotic creamy toffee crunch dessert
but once-white, now-dead hydrangeas.

Hamnavoe in Hamnavoe

The rising sun, at half past six
still low enough
to be blotted out
by the ferry passing my pier

From behind closed curtains in Inverness

Seagull's single bark of surprise
followed by cruel laughter
like he'd discovered his best mate
shagging the barmaid.
The one they'd both agreed last night
was minging.

From my office window

Several dozen starlings suddenly alight
for a frenzied twenty seconds' gorge
on scarlet rowan berries.

Satisfaction

Turning the tumble of too-fleeting words in my head
to eight hundred words on the screen -
and all before breakfast -
means the rest of the day should be good.

stepped out

Filigree satellites
planted overnight
on our front lawn.
Listening to our every conversation?

Misheard

Not a trundling of dozens of wheelie-bins, on cobbles
but thunder from a pale grey sky.

Lesson temporarily re-learned

An optimist with a short-term memory
is doomed to disappointment on repeat
disappointment on repeat

Last Friday

Long drive
fast goodbye
still leaves loss

HoW5 Thursday

Three at laptops catching up on challenges for the day
while thunder chunders from above
and the rain stotts down.

Last night

Hilarity occasioned by the absence of a corkscrew;
Relief at the return from town of Mike
(by which time a toasting fork and a wooden spoon
had mostly done the trick).

From the back balcony

Broken tree
leafless stubby branches
building a ladder for suicidal lunatics;
disappointed by the relentless determination of the stone-dropped rain.

Tennessee post catfish and fried green tomatoes

Straight down rain and little thunder,
sky paler than butter
bleached the leaves by several shades
burnt the tree trunks black.

Tennessee supermarket

Pleasure at the young man's interest in my Englishness,
his telling me of relatives in Grantham
(I didn't tell him what a dump I found it)
was more than a little dissipated when I discovered, on reaching where we stayed,
that he'd rammed the sharp-cornered cereal packet
into the foil lid of the Greek yoghurt,
and sliced it in half.

~On the way to Donegal

Girl with blue headband, dark glasses and a dog
carrying a bunch of long-stemmed daisies
picked along the road she walked.

Enjoying the job.

Playful curving tide-line left by a street-cleaner,
navigating past cars now gone away.

Just pretending

Glossy, wind-blown, vagabond crow
atop the tiles;
playing the part of Heathcliff,

On my way to buy a morning paper #49

Flattened skein of goose grass
giving an impression of some exotic lizard.

Eight a.m.

Peal grey clouds dancing seven veils with the sun

On my way to buy a paper #48

Sudden, secret flowers,
shyly craning buds above blades of grass.

Just after I'd hung the washing out

Hailstones leaping from the shed roof
like lemmings from a cliff

Tree

Sunlight and lichen
gold-leaf the branches
in broad and erratic stripes.

Long gone

Sometimes, stepping out of my bedroom,
my delight in the morning sunlight spilling across the landing
is diluted by the open doors
indicating children are long gone.

Reflection

White sky-reflecting puddle
at the base of a slender tree
fools me into thinking, for a moment,
it might be snow.

On my way to buy a morning paper #47

Metallic clattering of Co-op cages and grumbled rolling of their wheels in the pre-dawn dark fails to dissuade a joyous blackbird that spring is – will surely be – on its way.

from my window

Frozen patterns -
chestnut tree leaves
overnight engraved
on the roof of my car.

Woman with a deep pink scarf

Yesterday, a woman whose face could only be described as 'striking'
Shoulder-length imperfectly white hair.
Hooded eyes in a well-lined, olive-skinned face,  expression verging on the sort of arrogant that comes with a certainty of who she was.
I smiled.
She, almost, didn't.
And I envied her her self-possession.