Look

the shadow of a blue bush

falls onto the midday street

like a bag 

full of dancing holes

and I could click

zoom in to capture

or sketch it with a scratching pen

hurrying upon a page creased in my back pocket

from where I lean against the cobble-eyed wall

but it stays clearer 

behind my eye

if I just stop

and look

right now

Welcome to my desk

Until I tried again, I didn't know if this would work or not. It's been a while since I sat there and last time, it only made me want to hit the beach.

I cleared away the papers in my little writing corner, set free a bit of open space on my desk, made a cup of tea and sat down beside a window open to the street.

A carpenter was working outside in the sun and I liked the company of his rasping uneven saw and the long silences between it and the grimacing scream of his plane, sounds that seemed to mirror my mood.

In an attempt to get more words onto pages than is happening naturally lately, I tried tempting myself to sit here for an hour.  Within five minutes, I was moaning about the chair, telling myself that I would be much happier sitting on a rock or lying in a meadow, that I felt too wild for furniture that didn't give enough knee room and I couldn't possibly work without a bigger view.

I solved all of that by giving myself a cushion to sit upon, opening the window wider to hear the breeze in the trees and floods of birdsong behind that drill, turning sideways to the desk and gazing out at a row of back gardens and the view of enormous purple and white clouds that loomed above the Downs. 

I looked at the little figure I keep on my desk of a man with a lovely smile, carrying a heavy gourd on his head, and the dried sunflower from last Summer that is slowly disintegrating into transparent feathery flakes. I opened my pages and began to write.

Two hours later, I noticed the clock. 

One lovely blog award

Juliet aka Crafty Green Poet has given Ink haven this blog award and I am so pleased. Thank you, Juliet.

The award is to be passed on to 15 good looking new blogs, so I have listed links to the new blogs that appear on my blogroll and I've shared it with some of the blogs I follow that I haven't passed on an award to before.

Fancy a good read? Click away!

• Strictly writing
• Tumbleword
• Bolts of silk
• A longing for the impossible
• Follow your bliss
• Nina Johansson
• Ruminations and rambles
• Sacred artist
• Street photography in Tunbridge Wells
• The poetic artist
• Poga poetry
• A handful of stones
• Urban sketchers
• Dancing with the waves of the sea
• Sarah's writing journal

Seen from a train

Heading West. Runaways. Oxeye daisies. 

White cap of wingless mill on the hilltop, unable to brush the breeze.

Black river under the trees cracks to reveal a blue mirror of sky.

Wild poppies flood down the railway platform, happy that no-one did the weeding.

Far from the shore, beached against an old wire fence, a boat is wrecked in a high sea of grass.

The big sleep. Pigs in the sun.

Fast train glides past snaking lane beside the unconcerned river.

Upwards

I was out when they did it. Came home to find they had reached the lid of the propagator. All since I had watered their 2 inch stems in the morning.

Sun blast. Indoors and out. 

I love it's absolute enthusiasm, how soon it can grow taller than me, even with little rain. I love the pale feathery flower heads, and the way the leaves grow papery through the Summer and rustle in the breeze. I love the damp fruit that hides inside layers of wrappings, and the first one that I can never resist eating raw. We always leave them long after the last low fruits have been nibbled by a mouse on tip toes, and let them stand a few more weeks longer, enjoying the sounds and the lovely screen they make. 

And when it's finally time to take them to the compost heap, I'm always fascinated by the reptilian look to the top part of their roots, how it almost looks like stone.

They have the high roof of a greenhouse to aim for now. And in a few more weeks, they will be planted out to start looking at the sky.

Baby corn. One of my favourite veggies to grow.

Found

The rain washed everyone away from the seafront on Sunday afternoon, leaving just me and a distant dog walker on the sky mirror of the promenade. I hid behind a wall as the sky came close to earth and looked around me at the bits of litter being blown beside me.

On a scrap of peach coloured paper that was splattered against the wall, written in capitals in a thick dark brown felt pen, it read like a wish list. It was too saturated to put into my pocket, so I copied down the words.

Domino

mistress

tuexo

fit

tyla

pullin

simultaneous

jungle boogie

rebel

kimidoon

delgetti

honeycomb

mystical

chameleon

pocket

silly

MJ

And I don't know why, but I just like it.

Dens

Out in the woods today, sheltering from the wild weather, I came across something I used to dream about - a woodland den. 

Just high enough for me to duck inside without dragging my legs in the sticky mud, I found it to be everything a den should be, except for the leaks. And I wanted to sit down and make myself at home, listen to the comings and goings of the blustery wind and pull out my notebook without seeing my ink running away down the pages. 

Not the right sort of day for any of that. The stooping was uncomfortable and it gave me a view of mud, broken branches and shattered hunks of chalk instead of the last few lingering bluebells, and the forget-me-nots and speedwell that ran riot in all the places that still had a clear view of the sky. A sky full of rain. It seems that blue flowers like it best here.

I quite liked it as well. I stayed until the rain eased off and then climbed out of the valley, overdressed for the exertion. The grey rain blanket tucked in low, made the edge of the visible world seem too close.

Onward

Strange, never to know what became of it. Did it hit the shredder early or late in the proceedings? How much of it was read? Was it thrown into the waste bin straight away or did it get to sit on a desk in good company before being cast aside? Was there anything of promise in it?

Hard not to keep on wondering.....

New ventures for me. Sending work out for submissions and competitions. Lots to learn.

However, there are new projects on the go, lots of clutter on the kitchen table, no shortage of words hitting pages and a huge sense of achievement even if nothing gets selected to go any further. 

At my desk

Out under the travelling sky, when I kicked them up from damp grit, wrenched them from the mud with bare hands and put them in my pocket, still damp. When I sat on a rock and scribbled with a stub of pencil on the damp pages of my notebook, speckled with the first spit of rain. The images were more alive when the wind was in my hair.

Time at the desk brings something else. And it made me think that my "real" desk is the world.

These words came to me yesterday when I was choosing a new image for my blog banner. Tough to choose, but this is a sketch done out on the moor near Malham in the Yorkshire Dales, when the sky was looming low and it was time to head indoors after a productive day in the hills. 

Wild weather was shadowing my back. I remember hoping that the ink would dry before the rain swept in as I carried my paintings strapped onto the back of my rucksack. The words in the notebook came later when I was doing some free writing. 

***

I KNOW!! My photos aren't clickable, damn it. Blogger has some stuff going on regarding Macs at the moment which I know they are working on. Any ideas as to how I might solve it?

Kite

Ever hopeful

he drags a seaweed spine

behind him

like a banner 

soaring higher

koinobori

glossy in the sun.

Festive 

above the beach abandon

he lets it fall.

The weighted nose

drops to the beach.

He finds the mussels

still clammed

like stones.

Elms

I just swept it up. As much as I could bear. Warm in my hands. Fleeing from my grasp without the help of a breeze.

And it would make a fine bed, nestling in the cracked wall near the gate. A place to peep out at the world, safe above the high tide marks of a pavement that turns into torrent as every rain rivers down the hill. 

Brighton has elms. Some 30 000. They line my street. Their seeds lie in soft drifts, cushion footsteps, swirl up at my face in playful storms, find a way into the heel of my shoe, drift down in endless slanting rain that colours the sky's breath, tie flags to the silver lines of every spider's web. Open the front door and the house welcomes them in, sucks up the dregs through a paper straw, satisfied.

And already, the day seems to have blown out of my hands.

Petal rain

Through the backstreets up from the London train, taxis stream away, pour out into the main street, split and run wayward like water finding the best way. Slammed in, captive in the cavalcade, the foot goes down in a cab that has waited half the afternoon. Now it has you, it's stopping for no-one. 

I watch from the broad curve of the kerb, waiting to cross. It's almost festive as the cabs drag clouds of blossom confetti behind them. I watch their red dots progress across an imaginary map.

After they've gone. I hear the sound of petal rain. 

After rosemary

Here's where my Disintegration Project bundle spent part of this Winter and Spring, tied to the rosemary bush on my allotment. I thought it would come home smelling fragrant. It just smells a bit damp.

We have been having a very spectacular Spring, hotter than usual, lots of blue skies and far fewer downpours than we would normally expect at this time of the year. So, despite being happy at seeing wonderful blossom streams running down the pavements and rains of seeds flowing down from the trees, I was expecting my package to be dried to a crisp more than anything.

So, here are some scans showing what I found. The first is the lovely blue rag paper I used as a wrapper which has held onto some of that blue behind where the ties and wires sat. Bleached to almost white on the outside, I love the tightrope walker stick person who has emerged. New character in a story, I suspect, or possibly their ghost or reflection....

A beautiful spider was unhappy to be disturbed from a little hiding place beside some ground up pastels and the bark type fabric I had packed. He ran off with some party makeup down one side of his body. Much as I don't mind a spider in the house, I figured he might not like his sudden forced move to the city, so I put him outside and I hope he might like a front garden full of bluebells better than my flat.

Most of my materials looked pretty much as they did when I wrapped them up. Air dried. I guess I might bury things another time, except having had a bit of a dig on my plot the other day, the soil is as dry as the breeze at the moment and we've had the watering cans out already.

The next shots show the most dramatic changes. Although that red tissue paper must never have got the proper soaking I was hoping for, I like how the luggage tag has blurred. The tea bag is a little world of beauty that will probably 

inspire some poetic words soon. I just love the pink there against the greenish tint from the copper. In case you can't make out the words, they say - words disintegrate but the memory of them remains.

The final scan shows bits of colour bleed. The metal beach finds and the teabags were the most helpful items. I like the speckles. They remind me of old mildewed photos and books in musty attics, the patterns you see on old mirrors.

When I am out-of-sorts, it's usually because I have spent too long indoors, so this is one of my little reminders to do the right thing, and it's great that the colours bled in. I didn't want this paper coming back pristine.

Without the bundle, the rosemary bush is now looking out towards the company of some cane wigwams that wait for the slender fingers of sweet peas to grab hold and start their eager climb towards the height of  Summer. They are reaching out already.

This has been such a great project to take part in. It has generated such a buzz from those taking part as well as those who are not. That's quite something in itself.

You can check out what's going on with the other bundles by visiting Seth's blog The Altered Page here, and later in the year there will be more pieces emerging from what folks have found inside the bundles. 

Cheers to Seth for his boundless energy and enthusiasm for bringing this project together.