to oblivious, but rare times I catch the random colour clash of the universe, look up to see the lurid pink/blue clatter of my bike stand neighbour. Wish I was more aware of combinations and fusions, the great horde of hues on nature’s palette. Tangerine, turquoise, bottle-green and jet. Verdigris and silver, carmine, violet. If I could read the colours I might decode de Kooning, rather than stand there gaping and shamefaced in cement-shoed bafflement.
back in harness, you have to chase after that distant flash of anything’s possible on waking, cling to it as the storm gloom swirls about the house and the ancient debts and challenges bob up from deep mind, bristling, rusting sea mines grey as the waves. I stay cheery, sip my coffee, got it down to 70 cents in Ribeira Quente, growling like a local salt, 40p for a double shot at the Grange. It keeps me jangling as I slip between the raindrops.
out to bob with the whales and sky-gaze over a glass of Basalto. A story to write on mountains and not-quite lost causes.
to find the summit, cloud rolling in, the blue streak of the sea and horizon a floating balance line against the broken slope. Four hours up to the crater, five hours down, hurting. Lunch in the high atmosphere, island slabs in the ocean, beers and biscuits down in the warden’s office, licking wounds. The volcano visited. Another glimpse of the secret energies, the planet’s pathways and the torrents that drive us on to make, go and see.
on the islands in the sky. But will my ascent be thwarted? Do the whales also chart their passings by a breaching glimpse of its white cap.
when the towing paths get busy with joggers and tourists, takes the David Jones up to a quiet stretch in the Heyfords. He asks me to visit him at the Rock of Gibraltar, then after the jars he points to the tiller, take us out, Henry pal, find us the quiet.
and I tread water in D’s pool.
of island gather here, this house squared with high trees and the rim of the sea just proud above the fields. I read Frankenstein, the child rejected, and dream of the volcano hump of Pico, the climbs and breezes to come.
to the breakwater and back, scared the hell out of me, taste of the sea gives me renewed appetite for the land.
it’s crossed my mind a few times. But I can’t let myself go with it, I’m too stamped through like Ida Arnold. Doggedly me for better or worse. I had a friend who scoffed at the idea of seasonal reimaginings of self, he confessed he did it by the minute, by the second. For him a thousand layers of new paint and colour went on, but his old faults and habits would scrape and flake to surface show. Any heavy knock or upset would reveal the cast metal. He wrote poems that flashed the first colours too.
