Commonplace Book

Alain Gaymard                                                                                 moon map 2                  by the sea of tranquility i sat        & wept for the pull of the tides & the gravity of earth by the sea of tranquility i sat        bereft no sound         but the breath travelling from the mouthpiece to the tank on my back by the sea of tranquility i sit        and reflect on kaleidoscope colours so far off       so far back neb                 Quoting my past self - does that count? I've got something on my mind, something needling - no, spreading through me like dark mercury, heavy and poisonous and strangely compelling. It's come after months of lockdown and confusion - who? what? where? why? - not to mention when ? Will this ever be over? Thousands of businesses are closing. Many of us are or will have lost our living and our way of life. How many mothers and fathers wait

Antonín Hudeček "Some sheep were raising a cloud of crop dust in the sun. A hedgehog rustled among the leaves of an apple tree. A ferry barge was moving away from the shore; on it was a man who held his horses by the bridle, steadying them as they inhaled through snorting nostrils. From high above the forest's moss-like expanses came the call of cranes in passage: kruuu - kruuu. ...If only a moment of everything's happening could be arrested, fixed, examined in a glass jar; if only it could be peeled away from the moment before and the moment after, and the tissue of time stretched into an ocean of space! But no." Czeslaw Milosz, "The Issa Valley" It happens, usually in summer, about halfway through. A moment I want to stay and live in, examine from all angles and experience to the full. Is it just me or does it seem that we only skim the surface of a moment, and that there are depths we never reach?