Author: Martin Shone

Life is but a breath on whispering winds of time, but what a breath… Breathe…

Rainwater

March 30, 2020

With each step
we write our lives
with quills dipped in rainwater
for as soon as it is written
it fades under the glare of happiness
or is washed away by storms of solitude

The mere act of dipping
is enough to send ripples along to the roots of Gaia’s smile
where she drinks in the questions of us mortal masterpieces
for as soon as it is written
our souls, our spirits, our hearts and our minds become
lost in the frustrations of being unable to comprehend
the reasons why we are given such beauty
only for it to be washed away

The act of being kind to the rains as they fall
brings its own rewards
for when we write our lives
with quills of love
we shall be given
in return
the truth of how to live in the now moments
of how to flow over storm-crusted stepping stones of haste
and of how to write with rainwater
and know there are no answers except for those we create

When we write with rainwater
the sun shines
and the storms rage
as we breathe
know and feel
the beauty of existence

~

Another poem from before that seems to resonate with the way things are going nowadays.

From 2017 published in After the Rain.

a fragment of spring

March 26, 2020

… he sits feeling the warmth of the spring breeze. A chaos of midgies hover near the edge; some are caught in a cobweb as mallards float along, birds hidden in the trees make themselves known and little buds begin their openings.

All these goings on are disturbed by the noise of a chugging barge churning the silt. A magpie swoops to the other bank to peck at something in the grass and there a moorhen comes out from the dark overhang. The magpie does a little dance and is gone as a another barge comes along in the wake of those returning mallards.

It’s quiet now but for nature’s song. The magpie returns with its mate pecking and tugging with hungry abandon, and there they’re off to the trees.

He sits trying with all his will to feel to engage with all this beauty but of course he fails. He’s not a part of this, he’s merely an observer and this saddens him …

~

Let the good break free

March 18, 2020

break free

 

I’m back to work on Monday after a month off recovering from a small procedure in hospital where I had a stent fitted.

With my time off I’ve not done much writing but have read more and relaxed. With this time I’ve seen the good and the bad of humans during this crisis.

Some of the good I’ve seen is people helping by keeping in touch even if it’s just a simple text and shops with the cashiers being on the front line seeing many hundreds if not thousands each day but still soldiering on.

The bad is the scouring of the shelves and people buying to sell at ridiculously high prices but one which affected me the most was a message on Twitter saying (in a conversation about death rates between young and old) …Old people are old. They’re supposed to die when they get ill… I was shocked and upset by this but I’ve let it pass now.

I try to dwell on the good and not the negatives.