runningin3time

The topic for my next writing group get-together is ‘water’.  Easy, you’d think: but in a way there’s too much choice.  How do you pin down a fluid and mutable subject like that?

I don’t consider myself a poet but from the first ‘water’ felt as if it needed that form as a response.  The New Year in Cumbria began with rain (water) but then became beautiful yesterday afternoon with one of those winter afternoons filled with sunshine which make the world turn golden.

Finally, in the early hours of this morning (well, probably 6.30 a.m….), while the rest of the house slept, the words of my poem came into my head.  It’s not very good but sums up relatively briefly how I have felt the past few days.  As I probably won’t get to my next writing group meeting as I’ll have the children, I thought I’d share it here.  I’m afraid I don’t know how to get rid of the extra line spacing…

Water

After the party, the new year started with rain:

and a row with my ex.

Water poured down the window panes:

and too readily down my cheeks.

But on the third afternoon the sun burst gloriously forth

and up on the Ridge the trees in the wood and the grass glowed golden

as I ran forward in the late afternoon sun.

Shadows lengthening across the hillside, gazing contemplatively

across to the waters of the Solway Firth and to the hazy hills of heaven beyond,

my heart lifted into the sky and its wounds washed by water gently healed.

As the river ever-changing, so is life:

Move forward.