I reach for my slippers

 ... and a squall came. Lancing rain like splayed fiber-optic bundles dance to the moan of the wind and the trees seem to wrap themselves with their boughs. Shrubs self flagellate and show their secret under-leaves while dripping window panes instead run in carunculated sheets. Gutter rivulettes swell and the private noises of the house are played in a noisy percussion of splashing and rattling.

Went to see the sea

Went to see the sea.
Watched the orange sun sink till it was paint on floating shards;
the moon rise over the island, till I was cold.
Saw the fireflies lit on silhouetted shores.
Waited until the arc of sky above was drained of all its blue;
the candyfloss clouds dimmed past dusty cotton wool.
Came home.

olfactory codepoint

After thirty years in a cupboard, Angostura Bitters smells exactly the way the Soda Syphon Cola refill smelled forty five years ago.

Chaos indicators

 The wind shooshes, with an occasional moan; recruits rain to tippy-tap the panes. I stand and watch leaves circulate the garden. Above these dripping canopies, village jackdaws tumble, fight to smooth the chaos with their wings, reflect the dances of the leaves. Focussing between, fine drops swirl and dance like wind-tunnel smoke, like extinguished fireflies in rapture.

The old ways

 On impulse, an unfamiliar word takes me from lap-top to office to consult the Collin's. It's an old usage, not one I trust to the Internet where spellings get casually Americanised. The much thumbed volume buzzes as I pick a point to crack it; I strike five pages past my word. A familiar book, a friend in my hands; present from a near forgotten aunt who had an eye, one anniversary, for what I needed, rather than what I wanted. I take the opportunity of the break to freshen tea, watching down the garden, smelling her carpet, warmed by a sun fifty years younger.

Up my nose

My evening of food and online gambling promotions was interrupted last night by an advert for scent; bloody Christmas is coming. First though we have to climb over the festering corpse of "present or pathogen" evening.

Third season blues, and whites, and reds, yellows, orange...

 I force myself still.

Spin slowly, watching clouds form,

To the trill of birds.

Faux pas

Fresh, across the heath; the sun slanting down, or, more commonly, lighting the long mackerel cloud ribbons from behind, like the chest X-rays of uncoiled pythons.

Only out to loosen cobwebs, I cut corners, making a diagonal to the path’s triangle. Here, wartime cultivation has left a landscape of narrow ridge and furrow; spongy underfoot, now the hot, dry weather has moved on, tending to puddle in the dips.

I took to leaping these linear lakes across my way and, as they grew wider, I picked up speed into a loping run, carrying me from crest to crest. I was just considering the interesting juxtaposition of the ridged ground and the lenticular sky, when I found myself half propped on an elbow, gazing upwards, feeling water gently seeping into my trousers. I soon got up.

I skulked and dripped home, squeezing muddy streams from my cuffs, feeling more water drip from my back down my legs. The clouds were losing their keen edged definition, morphing from bones to the end of the cheddar, after the grater has passed.

I took my jumper into the shower, still smiling at my foolishness.

Inundation

The puddles never really go away. All through the desiccating summer’s sun, they wait patiently for a sea-change, for the slow turn of the season, or a fortuitous sudden torrent, to brim them, even briefly. Their stock in trade is patience and versatility; in drought they make collections: dusty dirt, cigarette ends, sweet wrappers, the disarticulated bird bones of roadkill, ironic plastic drink containers. Stoically, they persist, always there.

I walked out yesterday, finding a lull in the rain, which lasted until I reached the shops. Puddles full; puddles shore to shore with battling concentric rings from fellow drops, late to the scene. Roadside puddles edging towards their kin, striving against the press of passing tyres to link rivulets across the central lines. Lawn puddles, forming mini lakes, grass stems pushing round their rims like mangrove in miniature.

Across the green they link their limbs; become seeps that beget trickles, trickles forming streams, overflowing the beck. Water plays its own game outside the puddles; tumbling down to seas where sun and wind begin their play anew.

Water reveals all the old puddles, like friends forgotten in fair weather. A monstrous on-road, off-road carbon oxidiser visits the long puddle by a local hotel and its waves wash my feet. “Muppet” I cry to his oblivious, receding tailgate. I look down to watch the waters refold, reflow back into their temporary sanctuary, wet fingers grasping into cracked pavement, washing back to await the next car, or the tide.