Bold Street Writers 14th November...Prompt "Paths of Desire" (Geraldine Snape)

 The term.."Paths of Desire"... was apparently first used in New York because people were not following the designated paths designed by the urban architects for Central Park. You know those short cuts we take in life when getting to our bus requires a diversion from the proper way!

"Keep off the grass", the sign said

a good sign as signs go

well painted interesting font oh

I do love an unusual font

 oxford or japanese, art deco or noveau

I'll stop and take some pics

at a notice board for the font

and the colours if dramatic too

purple on yellow, french navy on white

red lettering on a black backround

fanciful

*

The morning was warm enough for

September though the calender informed

November was already halfway through

and autumn leaves were thick 

on the ground around each tree

tarmac paths leaf-slimed were

making the way treacherous

careful there I told myself no

slipping, broken bones or trauma 

"sufficient unto the day"..

and all that.

*

I slowed my pace and placed

my booted feet as carefully as

any tangoed dancer but

time was short and bus drivers

wait for no woman or man

some further action necessary

if desk and typewriter waiting

in a warm office were to find

a place for my frozen knees

bliss

*

Ever the obedient daughter  

timid friend invisible worker I

stepped out of my role as 

law abiding citizen and 

good girl  

left the slimey black of tarmac

 technically designed in the 

glossy tenth floor office of an 

architects room for minions to follow

abandoned path and stepped on

to the frosty grass 

and oh! what  delight as

my booted prints pressed their shape

on to the way to the bus stop,

 forever.

*

I hear that rather than being designed in New York...Central Park was a copy of the beautiful park in Birkenhead opened long before any New Yorkers trod the tacmac paths of Central Park.

There's a great fact.

Spent Firework...Bold Street Writers

 Thursday morning and we're back upstairs in the Gateway building on Sankey Street Warrington for 

The Bold Street Writers and the prompt from Margaret Hargreaves is...." Spent Firework".

It's the morning after the American Elections..and results...

*

Next morning oh yes the air full

of the smell of burnt gun powder

the garden full of wooden rocket sticks

the early November mist spread across the grass

and after all the excitement

and the frantic preparation

a quiet still emptiness falls on the house

the cats retrieve their normal position

on favourite cushions as they crawl 

out from under a sofa

from under a feather duvet

in the unused darkened bedroom

and curl up knowing

that the time has come again

to do some gentle hibernating

and wait for the blessed spring.

*

And the earth spins as ever

and the morning becomes afternoon

and afternoon becomes evening

and night falls earlier everyday

until soon the world becomes dark.

*

How the seasons turn there is no stopping them

blink and you may miss the moment

when autumn becomes winter then

all the world declares they didn't see it coming

as if it never changed before as if

when taken unawares we feel the panic rise

to fill the mouth with dread though

it's been that way forever and

will be through it all again and

spent fireworks are collected and thrown

on the final bonfire.

*

And sometimes there might be a last trace

of the sparkle that promised so much 

last night that firework of promise that fizzled out

and then was no more.

Spent..Empty..No promise..

Forgotten.

forottern.

Ulster 

On eastern reeds and western boglands

as opposite as a colour wheel from Klimt

a navy blue horizon line meets with

the grind and ground of edge and land.

.

Hard topped eastern tarmacadam roads

are pulled away by rhodadendroned hills

cladding the countries heart and soul

in a purple foreign mass.

Autumn ..Oct 24

 

 

After such a wet summer... now ... a glorious autumn full of colour and sweet spicey aromas,

 and I walk through the hidden garden here at The Potters House Penketh.

There is a change in the light and the shadows have lengthened as the sun dips ever lower in the sky....

Garden furniture is abandoned to squirrels and prowling cats...

...the summer chimenea cools and leaves from the vitis coigntiae their red leaves as big as dinner plates...fall from the height of a single birch tree nearby...

..the last of the roses still bloom in the herb garden...

..greenhouses are emptied of tomatoes and cucumbers and now squat silently in the fogged up windows for winter...

...evening primrose lives on ....

..and teasels tease the gardener...clinging to woollen scarves and bobble hats...to live another day... 

...tucked away in a coerner of the herb garden is the last of the fruit...a medlar tree..it's odd bobbley shape beloved by jokers!!

..saved to be bletted in a window inside until soft enough to make some medlar jelly...

...if the cook remembers!

 

Bold Street Writers Oct. 17th

Bold Street Writers..a group still meeting at The Gateway on Sankey Street each Thursday morning as it has done in various places for 30 years.

 A prompt from Pat Lightfoot for the day one word ..."Travelling" and we wrote for an hour before reading aloud our literary attempts.

I thought of those who take pilgrimages whether sacred or secular. There is a route for walkers and pilgrims taken from Land's End to John o Groats.  And knowing of one who has done this recently...set me off on these words....  

That they could remember a day with rain falling in diamond sheets

And sun breaking through grey skies painting lime green on autumn fields.

Rivers swollen racing over black rocks and tumbling waters over old clay.

Their's alone the joy of alder and reeds as they journeyed as travellers.

They were like foot soldiers marching through unknown lands

Toward
they knew not what  yet they made no questioning.

Only the travelling became the important aspect in their lives.

Sunrise to sunset each step on yet another path covering the miles

Facing north and wondering at a land of rock and fields of moss.

Ducking heads at low branches in dark forests where each tree

Was a guardian of unknown shadows. Travellers they were not

At the start, but travellers they became with each mile that passed.

If a final place was to be sought as they envisaged at the start of  all

That became less and less important, than the travelling itself.

Their travelling became a place out of time, out of season, out of history.

Like another land, it would be hard to point to a time when it changed.

But change it did...............and that changed everything.