David Hadley's Blog, page 148

Gone to Distant Lands

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Gone to Distant Lands

There is distance hidden there
in your half-closed eyes.

You are off and travelling
far away on your own blue seas

leaving me behind on these shores
watching your sails disappear

beyond the far horizon.
You are gone to distant lands

while I wait for you to return
to come back home with satisfied eyes

to stretch out languidly
in front of the fire while you dream

of being back again in those places
faraway, where I have never been.

Down the Well

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Well.

Well….

It was there, right in front of us. Although, to be fair it was more like a hole in the ground rather than one of those circular walled things with a bucket, a winch and a little roof.

But it was a well.

I dropped a stone… then, what seemed like several seconds later, there was a loud, echoing - and very satisfying - plop.

I looked at Sue and she looked at me, smiling.

‘Hello,’ I yelled.

‘Hello….’ The well echoed back.

I looked at Sue. Sue looked back at me.

‘That wasn’t an echo,’ Sue said.

‘Not unless my voice had a sex change halfway down,’ I agreed.

‘Is anyone down there?’ Sue yelled into the hole.

‘Of course,’ the well replied.

‘Are you stuck?’ Sue asked.

‘No.’ the well… or who ever it was, said. ‘Although, I would regard it as something of a kindness if you didn’t throw any more stones down here.’

‘Ah.’ Sue said, looking at me the way women look at men when they think the man has done something so obviously stupid it is a waste of time the woman even mentioning the idiocy of it.

‘It landed in my tea.’ The voice added.

‘Tea?’ I said, looking at Sue and shrugging.

‘It made me drop my digestive,’ the voice said, sounded rather aggrieved. ‘It landed in my tea… and now my cup is full of soggy biscuit crumbs.’

‘Sorry,’ I yelled. ‘I didn’t know there was anyone down there.’

‘You never even asked.’

‘Sorry, but I never thought…. What are you doing down there, anyway?’

‘I live here.’

‘What?’

‘Where else would a well spirit live?’

‘She has a point,’ Sue said.

Into Another World

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It was hesitant at first, tentative like some small creature nosing out into a dangerous world. It felt as though we were out there, exposed to all the predators, weak and defenceless after hiding for so long. We opened the door to the shelter, not really knowing what to expect.

While we’d been in there, I’d remembered various media stories about a post-nuclear war world: the devastation, a destroyed world and the dangers for those who survived of a long slow death by radiation poisoning. A world where the lucky ones were those vaporised before they knew what was happening and the survivors were the unlucky ones.

This, though, was not like that, or, at least, that was what we hoped. There was always the danger that someone with the power; in government or the military, could see that all was lost for them and with the self-obsessed arrogance of all those who crave such powers they could have decided to take the rest of us with them.

It was a relief to step out there, though, into a quiet world. A world of birdsong and a noise it took me some time to make sense of - never having heard it before – the sound of the breeze in the leaves of the trees.

We looked at each other, unwilling to speak, to speculate, about this new world we found ourselves in. We could be a new Adam and Eve in what – from the safety of the shelter doorway – looked like a new Garden of Eden now free from the cruel tyranny of all the old gods we'd made and that had failed us.

Illicit Intrusions

Even then it is not always immediately obvious that the forces of government surveillance have secreted a spy submarine in your bathroom, until the tell-tale protrusion appears above the foam of your bubble bath.

Although, such is the suspicious and paranoid nature of modern life, it will often be the case that your bath partner will remain unconvinced by your explanation of the sudden emergence of such a protuberance underneath the flannel.

Anyway, by then of course, the spy submariners will have realised that they are on the brink of exposure and will have made good their escape, leaving you with only a few seconds to come up with a credible substitute for the submarine, or to be taken for a conspiracy-obsessed fool.

Still, there are many subsequent courses of action that can be taken at such a juncture to convince her otherwise, some of which employ either the use of the aforementioned flannel or the bubble bath. Not only that, there are some more advanced gambits which use both, and sometimes – if you are very lucky – the loofah as well.

Subsequent events, especially if they do indeed entail any vigorous use of the loofah are beyond the scope of this article. However, the fact remains that these government-sponsored spy submarines are invading our bathrooms seemingly at will, and yet there has been little or no comment on this matter by the various self-appointed guardians of our illusory freedoms. Normally such self-important loudmouths are the first to complain whenever they feel the government of the day has overstepped the mark, which – of course – must make everyone wonder just how deep does this bath-time conspiracy go?

When it is Not Enough

Sometimes, it is not enough. Whatever it is, whatever you do, it is not enough. There were times when it seemed the things that filled my life were enough. If my life wasn’t quite how I’d imagined it, it was good enough. It got me by.

I found it easy enough to get out of bed in the morning without being overtaken by some existential dread of the horrors the new day would bring with it. Neither did I, though, jump out of bed as though I was an actor in a breakfast cereal commercial, full of life and eager for the joyous new day to begin.

Usually, the alarm went off and I hit snooze… and, well, I didn’t… snooze that is. I’d lie there waiting, trying to remember my name, who I was, where I lived and why I was getting up. I have very vivid dreams and it takes a while for me to find my way out of them and back to the real world.

Or… it used to….

Then I found myself turning away from the world out there and back to the dream world. The dreams would linger, follow me to the bathroom, tugging, pulling on my arm, beckoning me back to bed.

Then, one morning, I looked up into the bathroom mirror and she was there, standing behind me. I looked into the reflection of her eyes, her faced framed by the long black straight hair, her dark olive skin shining with life, energy and strength.

‘Come back,’ she whispered.

I turned.

There was no-one there, but I remembered her from my dream. I remembered the things we did there, back in her dream world… and I wanted to go back there, back to her, more than anything.

I decided there and then, standing naked in the bathroom, that if she ever called me back to her world again… then I would go.

Condiments and Conflict

Obviously there are some in this world who – for reasons of their own, no matter how deluded – put their mustard on a lower shelf than those of us who are more enlightened about these matters would normally wish. Notwithstanding the fact that we would all – well, most… some of us, just me and you it seems – would like to live in a free world here such matters of conscience are left to the individual, there is something galling about the way some people have the temerity to store their condiments.

Of course, putting recent political scandals to one side for a moment, we would all regard the fact that when the now-former MP for Little Puddle by the Wayside was caught engaged in some rather unsavoury activities involving both freshly-ground black pepper and certain choirboys from a nearby cathedral, it seems that more people were aghast at the fact that he stored his pepper in a jar on the kitchen window-ledge rather than what he was up to under those cassocks.

Still that is the world we live in – or so it would seem from the media, who seem to occupy a world very dissimilar to the one we spend our time in. But anyway, all I can say is: mind how you go and be careful where you put your mayonnaise.

Looking for Shelter

It was slow; hesitant. We crept through the bushes, keeping low; watching and listening as we crept closer.

There was no movement. The house looked deserted, empty. Although, we had been fooled like that once before, back in the beginning. Nowadays, we were much more cautious. We had all watched Steve die and none of us wanted to see any of the rest of us die like that, or be the one to die… especially not like that.

We glanced at each other as we crept closer and I could see the memory of Steve and how he died, slow and screaming, in their eyes, and – I presumed – they could see the same fear in mine.

This time, though, we were armed. Although, I wasn’t sure Cathy knew as much as she claimed about shotguns, so I tried to keep my distance from her until she proved her competence… one way or another.

I’d had training though, and I knew the safe combination and where the Desk Sergeant kept the keys to the outer door at the station. So… after Steve, and after we’d buried him, and sobered up after drinking to forget the way he died, I’d gone back to the station. There, I'd picked up the guns and ammunition, stepping over the remains of the people I’d once regarded as colleagues, work-mates, on my way to what passed for the armoury in our small local village station.

Now, though, we needed food and shelter. This isolated farm looked as though it could answer our needs, one way or another, providing no other survivors had got here first.

Monday Poem: A Reflex for Survival

A Reflex for Survival

Holding on will happen slowly
as the fingers learn how to clutch
and never let go, like something
recalled from lost instinct.

A reflex for survival, a need
to go on living, despite the desire
to lose the self in falling down
to some deep, darker unknown

to lose the self in the mystery
of not having a name, or expectations
heaping upon the shoulders.

No rules and regulations
of what it is to live and how.
Right and wrong etched deep
into the very core of the soul,

so that each step taken
becomes the right step
and each step is the only step,

while always dreaming
of just letting go and falling,
falling down forever, never touching
this too familiar ground again.

A Pale Shadow

Each of those times acquired weight, acquired significance. It is strange how some memories can grow stronger, become – sometimes – more real than the here and now, while others fade and are lost.

I suppose those particular memories; such as the one of her sitting on the riverbank just watching the river flow, became precious to me. I would take them out of my box of memories as I lay alone on what used to be our bed, examine it, noticing more detail each time, polish it and slip it back into the box of my memories, wrapped in the soft folds of the time we spent together.

Now, though, she is gone and reality seems to be a pale shadow of what it used to be when she was here to light up the days and to bring her own particular warmth to the cold of the nights.

Now, the days seem endless, empty and pointless, while my nights are haunted by the ghosts of the past as they try to steal my precious memories and turn them into the dust of mere dreams.

Sometimes, I wish I could forget, step out into a new day that exists for itself, not merely as a backdrop, a stage set, where those memories play out in front of me, almost close enough to touch and almost real enough to step inside and go back to when time had weight and significance.

Passing Through

It was not a day for taking time, or a day for looking around at the scenery we passed through. There wasn’t that much to see, not according to those I travelled with, anyway. They regarded the world as something they had to pass through.

They were only interested in how hard that passage would be: how well the road kept in poor weather, were there bandits, would there be a tax to pay for passing through someone’s territory, and so on. They also worried about how the goods would cope with the passing days: would things spoil, rot or fall apart before the travellers could sell them and such similar concerns. The travel itself, as well, was no simple business: draught animals, carts, carriages and even the backs of the trudging people, all of those were out on the roads as we passed along.

Everyone was suspicious of everyone else they met on the road, always fearful and wondering if the people coming the other way, or going the same way, up in the distance, could be trusted: whether they were bandits, soldiers looking for taxes, tolls or bribes or some other way people had found of taking the goods from people. Although, empty roads were just as dangerous, each traveller never sure if someone was hiding at the road edge, an ambush waiting to be sprung.

They were nervous, edgy, journeys and several times already I’d seen blood spilled, more out of nervousness than out of antagonism, danger or threat, so I was not looking forward to the rest of my journey at all, especially as each day that passed seemed to bring me no nearer the far city where I needed to be.