The bells

I haven't quite gotten round to going to bed yet tonight (last night...),  My head is beginning to feel it right about now, so off soon for a few hours.

I just heard the bells of a local church tolling, though, and it reminded me of some years back, when I was up around this time.  I'd stayed up to finish reading 'Chocolat', and heard those same bells.  The whole thing resulted in the poem below.

Peau D'Orange

-------------oOo----------------

Somehow sad and bittersweet

Like memories of holidays spent with relatives long since vacated

A crystallite-nostalgia, fey-like in the heat

Fragile and frayed memory of childhood days

Clear as the haze on holiday-packed tarmac

Ice-cream hands and sugar-sweet stains

Traipsing it all back home again

To the sound of crying in the rain

-----------------oOo----------------

Irrational fear of what just may be

Constant craving for what never was

Elaborate fantasy replayed to perfection

Touched and tempered by cruel intentions

Streaked through with crying in the night

All that has not yet passed is yet to come

And hardly ever a thought of what is

In haste overlooked and unreflected

In favour of memories soon to be made

Enmeshed in the clamour of times half –forgotten

Anticipation of the to come enlivens

Fatal attraction to the irrepressible evoked

Mingle and dwindle to four seasons in one day

-------------------oOo--------------------------

Scuppered by cunning, ticking streams

Moments elude and slip by without apology

The snapshots blur and outlines smudge

And now is imagined, a study in quicksilver

Sitting back to observe and absorb in the name of love

A vague lesson in suspended animation

Subdued in the reverberation of the chimes crying freedom

                                                Monday 19/8/02; 4am-5am