On my way to buy a paper #102

 Early morning, squeezed betwixt kerbstone and black tarmac of the road, a solitary poppy. Eight inches tall, scarlet petals damp and creased: impossible to deny it embarked on the walk of shame. 

On my way to buy a paper #101

 Bare-headed, seed-blown dandelion stalks, pale-lit against grass verge by early morning sun, appear somewhat ominous; an invasion of listening aliens from another planet.

The metallic, repetitive  squawk of the pub's burglar alarm merely reinforces the impression.

From my window, 4th May

 How black the rain-soaked branches of the rowan

against the new, bright leaves.

God's early morn?

To the east, towering grey clouds

Shiny-edged.

I wait for God's fingers to appear

clutching, and hoping for another ten minutes

before he has to rise.

After lunch

 A from-the-corner-of-my-eye, unfocused glance

startled by a ginger tabby, five feet up the conifer.

While mind throws up a juggle of lunatic explanations

eye looks again

and sees it is dead branch.

Momentarily mistaken

NOT slow, large-scape gathered drops from the gutter

but occasional, errant, unwelcome snow.

Sense of time

 What I took for granted, until a couple of years ago

was my sense of time: waking in the dark, I could usually guess,

accurate to within ten minutes.

In the last two, three years

It's disappeared.

Golden-plus years of marriage

 There's no place nor sense in having conversations we didn't have courage or vocabulary for

in the early days

Not now we've learnt to adjust.

And know kindness - love - is more important.

Slush shapes

Wet overnight snow

rained upon this morning

forms, in places, circles

as if strained through some heavenly colander

Crowded workshop carpark

 Two or maybe three 

(might all be done by mirrors)

shaven-headed, black-fleeced men

directing my reversing

None noticing I'd barely noticed them.

That song ...

 Ten past two in the afternoon

walking south

unable to tell friend from foe

not that I meet many friends out walking

and even fewer foes

On my way to buy a morning paper #100

 Walking on potentially slippery surfaces -

successfully walking -

is all about confidence.

Thanks, this morning, to seeing how the man in the blue coat was doing it.

... and ... relax

Surprised at the near-addiction which lead me to a never-before binge-watch of 86 episodes of a French detective series, I am equally so at the lack of guilt or withdrawal at the satisfaction of its ending.

Now to books.

Celery soup

 I like the silence of a wooden spatula

stirring onions, celery, spuds and small-chopped fennel

in melted butter. 

Live Throwing Copper in the background

Spirals in the mind

Binge-watching multiple episodes

of a subtitled  detective series

I fool myself into thinking I can speak French.

.

Efficiency rating

How efficient is snow

Straight down, fined to near-invisibility

deposits, in just minutes

inches - three or four - on top of cars. 

Soft-sludged to translucent

snow on ice on duckweed

colour of a much-hated 'tonic'

forced upon me when I was a child

On my way to buy a paper #99

 Late up, late out and lighter

Musing on the character of a character

Knowing her outgoing, loving and giving

I realise she's a Friday child

Add mercy

And have the title of my yet-to-be begun novel.

These days

These days

we kiss when we coincide in the kitchen

On my way to buy a morning paper #98

Mist over the river diverted me to the golf-course path

to see stereotypical stripes of gentle white 

interspersed with Paynes grey tops of trees and distant hills;

wind blades still.

On my way to buy a morning paper #97

From number three to number six
Holywell Green
the road is wet/dry scalloped
where precipitation failed to penetrate
the trees.