Power is out
Cell phone/ mobile will die soon!
So glad we have 3 stoves and plenty of firewood!
No pump though, so it’s only warm next to the fire! We have a solid fuel kitchen stove too, so we can cook on that – and a gas bottle and 2 rings as well. Luckier than most.
Stay safe and warm 🍀❄️
These photos popped up in my Facebook ‘memories’ from my trip with daughter, Hannah to Kathmandu in 2013
They seem to be wiggling their way into my consciousness
Maybe they might seed them idea for new writing, or a painting maybe
I’m on the train from Belfast to Derry, after a few weeks over in Wales visiting family. Back in the studio tomorrow I hope
This is a a new (first draft) poem:
‘Perpendicular ‘
For forty years the sea defences have protected
the front. At Borth and Ynyslas.
The old familiar way was shoring up
with strong timber upright breastworks
and jutting joists and great beamed groynes.
Bleached now by summer’s gold.
Old oak silvered and smoothed to salty sinews
Gravel and grit erosion pebble dashing
the frontages. Wrack draped and clasped
in rust. Scarred and scarified
by four decades force. Bearing up
against lifelong accretion. Pileup
of crashing drift and tide.
Perpendicular props. Familial forces
trying vainly to combine their strength
against dying under life’s attack.
Cold stone proposed along this ancient front
now sinking against an unquiet sea.
Forces of opposition with steely knives
and cranes and engineering.
Of a concrete will. Defying the tide like Canute.
Tempting Fate. Or perhaps too late
We didn’t walk for long, it was hailing and so windy we could hardly stand
Holly the collie doesn’t mind as long as she has a stick
donegallizdoyle 