Grey clouds, blue sky.

Grey clouds slide out of view.

Patches of blue, 

Glimpses of light, 

Grey clouds slide out of view.

Body wracked. 

Mind wrecked.

Words appear unwarranted.

Blue sky...

Seize the upper ground.

Footnotes.

A lost moment was saved.

I kept it here for future reference.

Whither must I wander? 

And it was that word "whither" which led to...

 Robert Louis Stephenson.

HOME no more home to me, whither must I wander?

Hunger my driver, I go where I must.

Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;

Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.

Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.

The true word of welcome was spoken in the door -

Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,

Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,

Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.

Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;

Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.

Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,

Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.

Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,

The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,

Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers;

Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,

Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours;

Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood -

Fair shine the day on the house with open door;

Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney -

But I go for ever and come again no more.

Post Script

“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.” 

― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

No time lost?

I bend over to blow out the candles.

The horizon once appeared so hazy as to seem irrelevant. 

A whole dream life beckoned...

Not a moment to spare.  

No time to lose...

Rip open the present.

I breathe life into inanimate toys.

No time lost.

I studied my image in the mirror.  

I detected a glint of youth unchanged.

They were my father's eyes pearing out from mine,

A subtle surprise to be thus metamorphosed.

There I had been.

There he appeared.

No time lost.

I spoke with my sister upon my birthday.

They had erased the theatre set of our childhood.

It was nowhere to be seen.

She was sad.

I laughed as provocation to the paultry property developers.

Fuck them all!

"The bastards can do nothing to destroy our play." 

"It was never concrete."

I thought.

No doubt they saw potential for a quick return.

There was no time to lose...

Let them accumulate.

Time is ticking.

No time lost.

Their reality counted for naught.

Our reality lives on despite our loss.  

This dreamt reality is ever present.

While we breathe...

No time lost.

I know I should be doing something "productive".

I was never so disciplined as to give up to should.

Should is no escape.

No time lost.

I breathe in the time's passing.

I feel the tiredness.

I feel the blood throbbing instants in my fingers...rested on the keys.

I hear the clac, clac, and the dog that sighs.

No time lost.

I fell upon an interview posted by Torn Halves.

It featured an author, Darian Leader, of a book entitled: "What is madness?"

Indeed, what is madness?

I should be "productive".

I know that.

It's engraved in my body, this, their madness.

We shall be productive.

We shall tally our time on that blasted spreadsheet...

Were this a blasted heath?

Years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds...tick, tick, tick, tick, tally.

I count up the candles.

No time lost.

I take a long intake of breath, I blow them out.

There it is I am accumulating.

We live to accumulate.

These will be our monuments.

We build for loss.

Were this cumulus?

No time lost.

One last breath, our ashes to the wind.

No time lost.

What I write reeks of cinders.

This is mourning meaning.

There is a joy in abandon yet...

No time lost.

I write, I pause...

I am gone.

This is loss.

There is a clock ticking.

The chest lifts folds in my sweater no more.

The dog is hidden under the sofa.

The cat is wrapped in on itself.

It sleeps.

A clock ticks.

My daughter arrives, her cheek frozen against mine in embrace.

No time lost.

No time lost.

No time lost.