Tag: Contemplation

Spilled coffee (poem)

We watch and listen
Gleaning words
Snippets and inspiration served:
The texture of a coffee cup,
The smell of pastries when the oven’s turned up,
Whats the reason for her tears?
An older woman reads and sneers,
Victorian strong man in chequered shirt,
The boyfriend’s shoes are quite absurd.
Then the emails start to ping,
Is there nowhere to escape and think?

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Among friends

The fire cracks in the homely hearth
As memories and stories flow,
Recounting each our winding path;
Long years and days divide, we know,
Yet always we return at last
To ties which bound us long ago,
The memories of childhood past:
Of winter games amidst the snow.

When in some autumn year we meet,
And talk again of years before,
Will we in memories repeat
These patterns which the flames restore?
Of cherry whisky, tartan pleats,
Bad music choices fast deplored,
The plans which may yet come to be
And those that by the wayside fall.

If I should drift across the sea
Sharp memories of this may fade,
But always something here will be
That will not wane with groaning age;
A lifetime built of memories
The sum of which I’ll gladly pay
Whether my life shall set me free
Or drag me to an early grave.

To Moth

A moth flits from the open window and lands on my knee. It tickles. Does he know how short his life will be or wonder where he is going? What the meaning of his existence is? No. He just ‘moths’. Action born of instinct. To do. Not to think.

How quickly I could end him.

I don’t, and he moths away. Fluttering his little brown wings without a care in the world.

Meanwhile I am left sitting looking at him. Trying to work out if it is possible to just ‘human’ and what just humaning is.

Is there a way to be which just embraces every moment as it comes, moves from moment to moment in blissful ignorance?

The moth comes back wondering if my bare leg is something interesting.

Then flits away again.

I sit and read for a little. Wondering if this is what humaning is. At least in part. Sharing experiences. Whether messages and conversations are like the moths as they dance around a candle. Or am I the candle? Burning slowly. Not wanting to burn too fast, too bright, lest I run out of fuel, waiting for someone to come along and snuff me out.
That lingering smoke smell the afterthought of my existence. The reminder of my light and presence. Reminder of the light that was.

The moth flies out of the window.

I hope it finds another moth. It may not be the most beautiful, elegant or intelligent of creatures but it is, just like me. Doing what it does.
Trying.

Sometimes finding what it is looking for, even when it isn’t looking for it.

_______

I wrote this some time ago when thinking and writing a little more than I have been of late as a message to somone I hold very dear to me, someone I always will hold dear to me, always. 

It strikes me that what I said then applies so appropriately to how I am and what is, that it should be something I am more open about. To be, to Moth, to Human; these are things which should come naturally yet we constantly fight against them. 

I hope that for at least a moment every day, with or without anyone or anything else in my life, I might be able to find the ability to just BE.