RAINBOWS AND CHICKPEAS
This morning the day felt quiet as if it was snoozing its way into Bank Holiday Monday, and I found myself almost tiptoeing outside to breathe the air. It was clear and fresh.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a rainbow over a field of tall grass. I say it is a rainbow on the country walk. I also say it is a wonderful sign of keeping going. Colour against grey. My dad always kept going. He was a completer, hardworking, patient. Before vehicles were designed to be plugged in to help find their faults when things went wrong my Dad would work to find the problem and solve it. He was clever, methodical and always determined. I know he wouldn’t have turned around and headed for home when it rained heavily on a walk, so this week I didn’t either. If you tune in regularly to this blog you will know I am very much a fair weather walker, and that I am learning to embrace walking in different weather conditions. (My progress includes learning to be more prepared by remembering to wear the right shoes and take a layer if it’s cold or looks like it might rain.) So I have my Dad to thank for keeping me going this week. As well as the person who wrote to offer condolences and to say, Shine for your dad, Sue. I feel like I am patting myself back into shape, and that keeping going is an important part of this. That rainbow halfway along my walk was a lovely ‘pause, remember and breathe’ moment.
Gratitude too for baguettes from the bakery up the road, for chickpeas, and for black coffee because these things have all accompanied conversations and laughter this week.
Grief has been the perished rubber of a flat tyre, the wrinkled end of a deflating balloon, a dull heaviness to the body, a horizontal. Songs on my playlists have been welcoming me back when I have pulled myself out of my need for silence. Finding colour and light mixing in has given me things to lean in to, something to prop myself up against, a gentle re-plumping.
Reading ‘Hopscotch’ at The Gloucester Poetry Society’s Crafty Crows open mic felt good because I was taking part in things again. And although I shared it on my YouTube channel back in 2022 I had never read it to a live audience so I wanted to give it an airing of its own. Afterwards I discovered that the theme for National Poetry Day this coming October will be ‘Play’. That gives me a prime opportunity to read it again which is good because I like reading it out loud. This news also sent me to my poetry folder to see what other poems I have that will fit this theme and which drafts I can polish in readiness. I look forward to exploring the theme in detail and predict that poets will be sharing some cracking poems on that day.
HOPSCOTCH
The numbers should be in a straight line
like a road, or left to right
with a zero at the centre.
Hopscotching them is wrong
it's not even that the odd ones make a
pattern for your feet to land on.
You say I should be throwing a stone
to tell me where to jump to
that just going from one to ten
is not how it's done.
I don’t tell you I am only doing it
because it's there
or that I think using a stone is wrong.
I like the smoothness of dice and counters,
the satisfaction of rolling fair-weighted ones.
It worries me that the squares aren't square
and what of the chalk with its impermanence?
I fear I cannot hopscotch with you.
It’s ok if you don’t want to play,
you are saying, I understand.
But I don't want you to understand.
I want you to change the game;
adapt the rules
and make it better.
I’ll play, I tell you,
just don’t make it stop at ten.
Make it last longer.
Make the squares as square as you can,
go to one hundred,
and find me the smoothest pebble possible.
We can’t use a stone if it goes to one hundred,
you tell me
as you pocket the chalk.
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