Droughts (dry sources)
The dry watercourse. A stream bed that led to a dry source, the way lit by glow-worms. Something about water on the skin. Allodynia. Like Velcro on eczema. Desultory & dull / as if the sun, having baked the earth, has done its job & is stood down. The heat remaining, in parched fields, brittle leaves, & bouts of irritation. (Low yields). Gaps. & end up on a drip. Dehydrated. & yet – fleeting the breeze sings sweet. Fleeting the breeze / irretrievable. Wrote; I am never there when it happens / never see it …as, cracks in the earth / attested, returning from the Alps … From the blues (evocative); dry long so. No rain that summer (42 years ago). & now – fire on the flats / that improbable artery blocked. Gaps. Drought now & then.
Global (Mourning)
On the wrong side of the light / 10 years without the rains. The plague of mice – they did not listen / believe until later – each leg of the bed in a bowl of water. Forewarned. The dry ravines. Precipitation on what continent? The canoe, paddle & all, stolen. No contingency plans. The intricate system of weir(s) & dam(s), that had worked for years, failed. The old wisdoms lost.
Stephen C. Middleton is a writer working in London, England. He has had five books published, including A Brave Light (Stride) and Worlds of Pain / Shades of Grace (Poetry Salzburg). He has been in several anthologies, including Paging Doctor Jazz (Shoestring), From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010), & Yesterday’s Music Today (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2015). For several years he was editor of Ostinato, a magazine of jazz and jazz related poetry, and The Tenormen Press. He has been in many magazines worldwide. He is currently working on projects (prose and poetry) relating to jazz, blues, politics, outsider (folk) art, mountain environments, and long-term illness.
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