The only prompt used today is self-pity.
streaming nose and
ticklish cough,
thermostat
completely off.
spluttering,
our friends rebuke us.
body keeps producing mucus.
throat is hurting.
feeling old.
God I hate
the common cold…
I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with my grand daughter. A couple of days ago there was a NaPoWriMo prompt for a “charm or spell “. This is Amelia’s spell. She’s the King Canute of moving air…
(for Amelia)
blow, wind
dry the sweat of my brow
cool my head
lift the wisps of hair falling on my face
blow, wind
move green leaves so they dance against blue sky
blow, wind
bend the trees
blow, wind
blow today’s weather to yesterday and tomorrow’s to today
stop, wind
that’s enough.
stop.
good job, wind.
Had a spa the other day and this memory floated to the surface:
we exhaust his few words of English and my Japanese in the first minute.
his thin eighty year old naked body next to my potbellied western
version in the public bath at Taisho Pond. He tries to ask me questions
in nihon-go and I eventually shrug shoulders protruding from the
steaming waters. “Gomenasai. Nihon-go… muzakashii!”
(Sorry. Japanese – too hard!)
He replies. “No. English muzakashii!” We laugh and
lapse into a comfortable silence. Then he drags
his old body from the supporting arms of water
and squats on the stool, scrubbing himself all
over yet again. And begins to hum what I
guess is a Japanese folk song. Before long he is
singing full-throated and his thin speaking voice has
transformed into a baritone reverberating around
the stone walls of the onsen as it may have hundreds
of years ago. I try to memorise the notes to
reproduce it later, but the song now is just
a memory drifting upwards,
impossible to hold,
like steam from
bathwater.
she is maker and destroyer. shiva and vishnu in one cute package
can’t decide whether she prefers building sandcastles or
smashing them down and after twenty repetitions
the castle becomes a head with seaweed hair
and cockleshell eyes until this is no longer
a challenge so she runs into the wind
and flaps her arms at her sides
and becomes a seagull
and flies away.
children parade home-made lanterns,
glow-worming their way along the banks
of the Torrens.
a helium balloon lets go of its child
returns skyward like Kaguyahime.
i blink and it becomes Tsukuyomi,
a full moon.
rob walker