FLYING WHALES
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if whales lived in the clouds, if when on cloudy days we could simply look upwards to watch then surfing and leaping around above our heads. We wouldn’t need to go whale watching on rough tossed seas but stay at home in our armchair and watch their amazing forms cavorting through the heavens, offering us delight, where now we only have birds. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could book local owls to come and hunt your own patch when an infestation of voles and mice are eating your winter crops too and you simply want some left for you. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if nature bowed to our whim and fancy, did as we asked, making us the gods of our own domains. Could we ask wisely? could we be trusted to see the bigger picture, to enjoy and accept things as they are. That whales need to live peacefully, freely and unmolested in our oceans, voles need to eat our peas and survive too, and we need to learn to live alongside all nature without desire to kill or control. We are after all merely another species.
COME JUMP WITH ME MOON
Hello moon, yes it really is me again, your regular insomniac worshipper. I’m standing here with my mug of tea tilted towards you, so you could jump into it if you so choose. But you won’t. Why so distant always though? I wake and greet you almost every night. I am loyal in my adoration, even though you so often hide from me, dancing with seven veils, conceal your voluptuous form. Flaunting your presence, never entertaining a personal touch. Why so far away? Go on I dare you, jump down now into my mug. Its content is warm, smooth, will give you a soft landing, a gentle plash, warming your cold skin, moulding your contours. We will be together, wandering through moments until dawn, when you disappear into your larger body of water, the ocean, where I watch you most nights slowly slip into. Why is the ocean so much more hospitable than my mug? Come jump with me beloved moon, come visit your friend, I am just here.
ENOUGH
What is enough? So there is no room for more, a surfeit, a bounty hoarded, a bulwark against subsistence or death. Love perhaps, too little? Can we have too much? Replaced so often by addictions, isolation, food. To know love one must understand what love is not. To have enough one must know enough in one’s heart To know enough one must understand not enough, for others and self. Compassion means reaching out to support those others who have yet to understand enough. The tragic billionaires, the sad hoarders of more than enough still locked into lack ‘I must have more or I will not be me, I will be nothing’. Perhaps no one told you, you were enough the moment you were born, took breath, made your first infant sounds, when your needs were so simple. Then you were enough, but love, connection, perhaps that was never enough an omission, concealed by wealth your mental illness for life, there is never enough for you. But I had that too, never enough. except it was I who was not enough not good enough, not wanted, and yet ‘enough’ found me. Healed me, held me in its arms allowed me to know I am enough and I have enough.
Sylvia Clare is a memoirist and poet whose themes are based on the natural world, mindfulness and human relationships and emotions. She lives with her husband in a small village on a small island and writes as a passion, almost as much of a passion as her gardening and beekeeping. She also spends time swimming on the local beaches all year round and is determined not to lose her marbles as she gets older. The idea of not being active and creative is her only real fear in life. Life is her inspiration, her own and those of other people. Nowadays she has chosen to mostly self-publish so she can present her writing on her own terms. Poetry reading is my favourite activity first thing in the morning, shared with her husband and over that first wonderful mug of tea. She is always on the look-out for new poets.
Flight of the dragonfly 