Stairways at Eleven

Creative Writing Ink Exercise August 23



Slanted days arranged like
the lines of your pictures
so hard to know whether you

were coming or going


what drew you to those places
edges emptied but framed
witnessed by the leaves
and shadows of people
walking the unknown

Blue Tongued Day: Creative Writing Ink photo of August 3

Sky Fields

She took him to the edge of the field
where the blue flowers had begun their bloom

He was blind. She moved his hand
to one of the flowers. He sighed as his fingers

first one then another, touched the outburst
of blue; a shiver ran up his spine; a lone tear

bubbled. How many are here he asked. Enough
she said and moved his hand to where there

there were more. I can feel them going into the earth
and talk with the air; they are rich with sun

He stayed still, quiet now so she steadied him
her hands on his back and shoulder. The land

tilts, he said. I can hear the clouds. There are people
buried here, close, long ago. This is a dreamers

sky road that goes past the trees and the mound.
The earth remembers. Yes she said, you are right

here you are buried, here you return.

Writing Exercixe: Creative Writing Ink (Ireland)

How many shadows to a life?

The Unsaid : Word Spaces

The unsaid often hangs heaviest in conversations. What people stop saying; what they don't say out aloud but think to themselves.

That may be negative or positive statements/thoughts.

Then there's the gaps between words. But today I am going to make sure I have words of praise, the shopkeeper who has a good supply of a favourite organic cocoa. Ted at the post office for having my mail ready and guiding me when I get confused with forms. My wife Dorrie for her huge commitment to me and to our son and grandson, that we all be well.

I'd love to hear how others experience the unsaid, the gaps, what they praise.

Word Shavings: Reverie

I've started reading Thomas Ogden's 'Reverie & Interpretation : Sensing Something Human (Karnac Books, 2005 edition). It's a great book about psychoanalysis.
He has some very astute, useful comments about the psychoanalytic process and the importance of language in that.
'Words and sentences', he writes, must be allowed a 'certain slippage'.
He cautions against stifling imagination by insisting on trying to define what we mean by 'ever increasing precision'.
"Imagination depends on the play of possibilities' (Reverie & Imagination, p3)..
Slippage, I like that.

Word shavings: the earth as keeper

There are places that have me come alive more, sacred places, special places, uninhibited places that I find inside as well amongst rock and tree and deep gorge.The earth is the keeper of so many stories, our stories, others stories, the stories of plants and ants, all forms of life.

Sometimes snippets can be heard like word shavings found amongst the roots of a tree, or in branches held by the wind, gusted too, from one place to another.
Where is sanctuary? what does it look like, feel like?