Here begin the long days,
where time stands still
For a nation.
Endless tea and snacks
and never quite getting dressed.
Here begin the long days.
When we sacrificed a lot
Here begins the times,
so we don’t sacrifice the many.
I welcome the long days,
I welcome the quiet.
I welcome the long lives
The long days will give us.
I could probably write a whole book about tea, and maybe one day I will. It features in every single book I’ve ever written and despite the thousands of cups that have gone cold in my time – the next cuppa is never far from my mind.
There is a deep
ache
a lostness, a verge
upon the sea
of confusion
that solved,
has but one answer –
Tea.
It snowed properly for the first time this year here in Essex and I am ever reminded how beautiful and dangerous it can be.
A field, full of armoured tanks and soldiers and guns – covered in beautiful, cut and wild flowers.
We march past, and people stop to take photos – turning war into Instagram.
We are flowers – once growing and beautiful but cut for the purpose of display and beauty, so we die. We add chemicals or dyes, we flatten and press them to try and preserve the life we have already taken. But we are flowers – once cut from our stem, we perish.
And as is the way of things. A beauty designed not to last. We are ruined by the spoils of greed and war – wanting more world than our home grown field. But one flower only needs one home to nurture it.
We long for youth and beauty and longevity- but they cannot co-exist. Time will make graves from us all.
You fall asleep,
My hand to your cheek
At first it seems sweet
Then I think of blander motives
Am I interrupting your rest?
Is this just a unwillingness to move?
Then you pull my hand to your chest
Bringing it to rest, part of me on you
Where I should always have been,
And I remember what love feels like again.
Looming, you wait
around the corner,
crossing the dates
from the calendar;
taking the time
from our grasp
until the scope
zooms in fast,
and all too soon
it’s deadline day.
