Maps
My map of the Downs, I carry in my rucksack everywhere I go. It's not a record of a landscape but a drawing of my soul. My time is marked by chalk hills, by long aching pulls across sheep-filled fields and barren scrub, beautiful, dead hamlets and smoky pubs. I carry that map not to find my way, nor in case I get lost. I carry it because it is a picture that reminds me of who I am: a man out of my own land, still dreaming of bogs and gorse, of icy cold reservoirs, and black rock striking the sea like a lance. The rolling downland is a record of my soul's use, and has soothed like a lullaby these last few years. It is the portrait I have been painting each day. I've been covering over a harder scene: purples, navies, conifer greens. And just below, the jutted out remnant of grey steel and blood red. When I stand on Itford Hill or Blackcap and close my eyes I see another world underneath. The slow foam rubber beauty of chalk hides an ancient, ominous granite shelf. Blinking, Newhaven becomes Newcastle, then Kilkeel, then back to rolling green. Industry to ice cream parlours, forest parks to cranes. The ferries flicker into fishing boats and back again. At my core is ancient granite but now I wear a chalky coat and wander through a softer greener life. My portrait hides in the map I carry. There's a routemap of the Ulster Way at the bottom of an old chest I carried over the sea once. I do not recognise the man in it. Solstice Awaking to ice on the window, a cold wind caressing your feet and the single arm reaching out - whip it back in to avoid frostbite, encourage love bites instead. The clocks have gone back and the dark is closer now, full like a mountaineer's pack. And heavy like a bag of spuds, like the box of memories in the attic, like a Norway Spruce being hauled across a filling station forecourt. Cold is quiet, so your fingers and your toes will scream in the void left by it. Ignore them, they will hush soon. You peer through the front door in hope - hope that today you will not have to be present, and the office phone, the clickety clack of keys will live a while without your dedication. Today is a day for settling into coffin-like months, and clutching the idea of spring close to you like a child's discarded blanket. Today is hope and fear; let yourself freeze solid, until it becomes a rest. Your knees will crack . and the skin burn and bubble pinks, reds, roses, white. Blinding, bright and pure. Burn silently. You are the fuel that will get you through. Until you rise like Christ from the long-coffin-time and stretch out a fist into the padded sky and howl for freedom and for new life. Slough off your desiccated shell and stretch your red raw fingers as if firing guns at the world – each digit a barrel. The sun is coming The sun is coming Quick like a bullet from a well-oiled gun, here she comes, the guardian Sun. Here to bathe us in the dragon's breath and melt our sorrow and bless this earth. Milky Tea On a milky tea Sunday, thin and pale no matter the length of time the bag has been left in, we hold hands and pretend to be the same as if the repeated strokes of history are different to those of the cane. Teachers beat us to learn and be free, the past beats us that we remain - imprisoned like the polar bears on Cave Hill: proud and majestic once, now no longer milkily translucent, now just greys, cowering in the constant battering from Ulster skies. Wee men in caps sing in rows in the damp halls their fathers sang in. While out in the blood soaked peat a future harvest is being consumed by locusts with the faces of men and women - today, on a milky tea Sunday, this is happening.
Flight of the dragonfly 