Winter to Summer Solstice (4)

Day 4 Sunset 15.43pm

Merry Christmas everyone. It was a quiet Christmas day for us. We got up at our usual time, about 8.30am and opened our presents. Sadly the dogs never got all of their presents as Millie, my 10 year old lab, has sore tummy and we had to cut back on treats and food in general.

After preparing the veg, I had already made the vegan roast the night before, we took the dogs for a walk. I decided I wanted to take a wooden decoration from our Christmas tree to Finlarig castle and hang it on a tree in memory of my Mum. I scattered her ashes there in June, a day before we married there. It was such a lovely winters day that it felt nice to just linger in that space for a while.

I wrote a message on the back so that whoever read it might say her name out loud.

By the time sunset came around we were sitting down to dinner. I asked Helen to pause and we told each other what we were grateful for. It felt fitting when there are so many troubles in the world at the moment.

Christmas dinner.
My wife Helen
I look taller here but I am standing and Helen is sitting.

So there you go, Christmas Dinner at sunset.

What did your Christmas day look like?

Willow

Photo by Sebastian Beck on Pexels.com
There's a wicker chair
In a second-floor room,
Where she sits as still
As the space between the sky and the sill
In her time to just be.

She used to watch the time fly by,
Now it ebbs and flows
As her willow tree grows
In the frame of a big bay window,
In her time to just be.

Then one day in spring,
In her time to just be,
She saw wind tangle knots,
In her flat sheets and socks,
And her fingers - twisted and curled,
Looked like branches of willow.

When summer came,
With sun licked leaves,
And  barbeque tastes
On the tail of the breeze,
She lingered still, calm and at ease,
In her time to just be.

Then summer expired,
In a long exhale,
And from twisted fingers a leaf fell,
Then autumn arrived, armed with a brush,
Painting the land with fire and blush,
But still she stayed,
As leaves fell, and the willow swayed,
In her time to tell.

Now let me tell,
That the land lay still,
With snow thick on her windowsill,
The wicker chair, an empty place,
The willow tree, an empty space,
A fallen branch, lay on the ground,
The snow fell without a sound.
A cold teacup with unread leaves
In a time a to just breath.

Vitamin Glee

blue bright citrus citrus fruit
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

I am filled with vitamin D, with a pink
lemonade kiss and a fancy free
Candy floss smile.

It is a marvellous and menacing mischief
that had now pumped up my heart,
and a vitamin glee that I have swallowed.

Rays of sunbeams are hiding in my sweater
and my unshaven legs – prickling
with joy, how glorious to be shown the light.

I am shimmering and dancing in my pants,
and there is a party in my bed socks –
And they rock, because bed socks do that.

And if my eyes were as blue as the sky
-and they are as blue as the sky,
they would be lost, in disguise and forever.

“What is this poem you ask me muse?”
“What is its purpose?”
“The purpose my beautiful fairy-tale wife,

Is that summer came for a day,
Like sand in my toes and a three wheeler bike
It snapped its elastic on my bum cheek and cheered.”

©Eilidh G Clark

%d bloggers like this: