Ghosting and weaving into the dark future

My old silver bike broke at the front fork, after decades of faithful and reliable service, so I went to Bristol and bought a desirable new light greyish one, and set off across the dark city on a mission of visitation. The gears had not been adjusted at the shop, so I had only one gear with an embarrassing chain rattle, but apart from that, it was a dream. Cycled carefully (not used to Bristol) among the crowd of dangerous tin-ton motorised enclosed mad poisonous sinking quadricycles and stopped at a red light. A cyclist breezed by me, across the stopped traffic and off into the darkness. I set off after him. We floated noislessly along the ragged network of cycle/walkways across Bristol’s bombed out centre, and gathered another three or four or five comrades, ghosting and weaving along the ways, rarely stopping, just working the old forgotten lanes and paths, noislessly without effort, one sometimes leaving another sometimes joining, pushing together into the dark future of our lives, dark alleys picked out by scattered lights until one by one we peel off at our warm, hollow welcome home, leaving the never resting motors to their inevitable doom.

Dolebury Oak

Jamie Dormer-Durling http://www.dormer-durling.com/index.php/how-to-vote-in-an-election/

Part 1

Drawn on the line that runs between
the deepest sky
and the iron heart
of this huge ball our home,
One oak tree stands

like Moses raising arms up to the sky
pleading for victory
you ask the streams that nourish you
and underfoot, the softly yielding earth
you ask and see to it
that life prevails.

Etched on our branching retina
angled in that special way
that oak trees have,
those twisting boughs that
channel the fragrant juice of life
those curling tips
that comb the river of the wind
fashioning
ripples
too subtle to be seen
eddies
too small for us to hear
above the sigh of human restlessness.



Part 2

My grey trunk splits
and dives into the ground
to grasp at stones
and drive on through red earth
breaking the beds of ancient seas.
I snake around each tiny grain of sand
flowing and feeling in a living stream
smaller and smaller yet

seeking the single jewel
that gives green to the leaf.
Down through the centuries of soil
I slip my tiny nerves against your useless gold
I skim another flake of rust
to blunt the sharpness of a long-stilled axe.

Cell by cell, flowing and holding on
my roots will dance a spirit dance with
delicate white hairs of all our allies,
down cracks, following the way of water
drinking the hidden rain
deep in the loving darkness of the earth.

My roots know more than moving men
could possibly make out.

© Richard Lawson

Dolberrow

January 2007