From the Sky

(Zuihitsu)

From the sky is rising delirious music – light and sound together, singing and dancing. I look to the clouds; they swirl and disperse and re-integrate. They move constantly, but gentle and slow.

Unless storm comes, then they agitate and deepen, they seem to scowl.

But the sky does not scowl at me, I won’t believe it. From the sky has always come my help, my source of wisdom. Those eyes in the sky that see me clear and watch over me. Those voices that make new sentences in my soul, which I then hear as wisdom, as protective advice. 

Obey the voice of the sky! Then watch the clouds, and move like they. Don’t cower; they’re only going dancing.

I make of my dreams a cloud. I make of my cloud a veil. I drop it over me. It hides me. It conceals me from the world. It keeps me safe. Inside that veil I can soar, I can sing.

I walk out into the world. I am wrapped, invisibly to other people but not to me, in a cloak like fine-spun silk, a cloak of sky.

People don’t see this, but trees do … and birds, and dogs and cats … 

Some young children see it too, I know as our eyes briefly meet.

Written for dVerse Meeting the Bar: Zuihitsu. (Does this meet the form? I'm not sure. It's my first attempt. 'Follow the brush,' we are told. So I followed my random thoughts.  Is zuihitsu the same as stream of consciousness? I'm not a fan of  James Joyce, nor even Jack Kerouac ... but I do love Kimiko Hahn, who has done much to introduce zuihitsu to the Western world.)

Looking Back

 

I see me small, on a vast lawn – a smooth green lawn surrounded by bushes, some of them berry bushes, others flowers. There are two huge weeping willows further down the yard, one on either side of the vegetable garden past the end of the lawn, beyond the wooden trellis summer-house.

I am all alone. The two-storey back of the house looms large and flat. My mother, upstairs, sometimes looks out the distant kitchen window to check on me. Her face is tiny, far away and pale, ghost-like.

Yet I don’t feel lonely. All around me the garden throbs with life. Insects are drawn to the flowers, small birds to the berries. The willow leaves, on their long dangling fronds that sweep the ground, rustle and toss, lightly and gently, in intermittent breeze.

I talk in my mind to clouds, to birds, to insects, to berries … to the rising trunks and curtaining fronds of both the soft green willows. I talk to the listeners under the ground and the watchers behind the sky.

When they reply, it is not as if to a small child. They answer all my questions, calmly. I feel rather than hear their answers. I feel, too, their assurance of my understanding.

My young mother, enclosed in the house, does, I think (I think in hindsight) feel fearfully alone … lonely …

Written for Poets and Storytellers United, Friday Writings #219.

Extremes

 

Oppressive winter sinks my spirit in a pit of apathy – a stilled, frozen depth of indifference; I just want to hibernate. In spring, however, my flesh sings alive, I waken to renewed love of this world our home; I open to delight.

For Friday Writings #213 at Poets and Storytellers United, we are invited to  include any or all of these sets of words: 1. flesh/spirit, 2. spring/winter, 5. love/indifference.

My Ink

The first, I chose decades ago: a tiny pink rose, low on my right shoulder-blade. Secret, to be seen only by a lover.

The next I took from the Wiccan Rede: ‘When misfortune is enow’  (a very old word for enough)  ‘wear the blue star on thy brow.’ Therefore not permanent, not indelible – drawn rarely, only when badly needed; removed again whenever it no longer applies.

Recently, I decided on some animal totems: my left-hand guardian, the owl; my right-hand guardian, the serpent. One of each, on the correct forearm, in fine outline. A reward to myself for getting through all that hospitalisation and surgery, a little over a year ago.

Today I looked at my wrinkly 86-year-old arms, picturing how that surface would spoil the artwork, and thought, ‘No. Too late.’

The pink rose never happened either. (Tattoo parlours got such a bad name for such a long while.) I have no lover now, and no plans to find one.

The blue star happens occasionally, yes – by visualisation and intention, not with actual ink. Not even a blue biro. On my forehead, unable to be fully hidden by my hair, that would be too visible, too weird.

*********

I only need look inside my mind and memory to see my tattoos. I dwell on them. They are beautiful. I love them.

Sharing, 26 June 2026, with Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #233: “set another goal … dream a new dream”. Not written for the prompt, but related to it, even though this  dream was finally discarded.

Between

In this liminal space we call old age, simultaneously becoming and un-becoming, growing more and more into my self and out of my life, I go over and over the joys and sorrows that add up to this fine experience of living: at once uniquely personal and utterly universal.

In this limited space where I live and die at once – reminding myself we are all doing that, every moment since our birth, though we only become aware of it later (if we do become aware) – between these parentheses, I begin to awaken. Even as the ‘long sleep’ looms.

Who is the weaver? On whose loom stretches my life? 

Someone in a Netflix movie sings, chirpily, ‘What a difference a day makes…’ and I am taken right back to being seventeen, slow dancing with the lights turned low, among other couples at the end of a student party, while on the record player some singer with a sleepy voice, some singer who sounded like Nat King Cole, crooned the words, the soft, electrifying words, as we stood and swayed on the spot together in the crowded room, each entwined pair alone in a circle of two. 

A small, inconsequential memory. Nothing of any great importance in my life happened to me that evening. No coupling up with any of the dancing strangers. It was just a place and time where I happened to be, briefly. Not my scene. Yet a flash of music, so momentary, so differently sung, revives it from some old corner of memory, with all the sexual longing which the room was full of that night as the other young bodies around me danced slower and slower, closer and closer, into full embrace, and the music sighed and stopped.

The many tiny moments of my life return to me so, at random, in between the goings-about of my here-and-now. Even the most insignificant now feel precious. This is a thing that happened. This is a thing I witnessed. This is a thing I did. They matter to me, my small and personal days, my unimportant nights. I lived them. They happened to me, each one unique, and will not happen again. 

Always / never … now / never again.

Note:  After Google insists Nat King Cole never sang it, and I hunt through YouTube for all the male singers who did, it has to have been Frank Sinatra – that exact inflection and tempo – though I  remember it as being sung much softer. Perhaps the record player too was turned down low.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United's Friday Writings #207: In Between.

My Cat, Poppi

 

This little one, neatly made, quick to jump to a high place, either for resting or vantage, or with tiny paws flip a blanket over her own curved, snuggling back: agile, heat-seeking, comfort-loving, curious, adept … changeable moment to moment, yet she is definite, predictable: creating her life with both whim and established habit.

A fine intelligence shines from her eyes. She is knowing, sums me up every moment. She is wise, accepting my limitations: I’m only human. She is demanding, knowing her due; miaowing bugle-call loud when she needs: food / a clean litter tray / scritches and cuddles (reasonable demands, I say).

Tit for tat. When I stroke or hug her, she purrs deep, nestles in. I kiss the top of her dainty, wee head. One afternoon, lying down for a nap, I rouse to find her licking my hair just where it edges my forehead – grooming me, like one of her kittens. 

The smallest cat I ever had, and the sweetest-natured, she is nevertheless queen of her domain. I only live here. 

We both know my function: to care. We both know hers: to be, thereby to delight.

~ Small cat in high place, with blanket and view ~

Written for FridayWritings #191: Small but Beautiful, at Poets and Storytellers United. I've also attempted to write this as a flash poem: a form of prose poetry characterised by brevity and intensity. (My first attempt. Not sure I've pulled it off.)

St James Infirmary

 

I don’t recall music at Bill’s funeral. Maybe the boys didn’t think of that. They – only mid-twenties – arranged it all.

I was one year married to Andrew by then, and we’d recently moved interstate. Not only that: in the middle of moving house. (The first was just temporary to get us here.)

 

They delayed the funeral for me. ‘You have to be here.’  

I supposed it would be odd if Andrew came too, and difficult for him. Anyway, someone had to finish our move.

The funeral felt strange. Some people didn’t know we’d ever parted. Others, because they did, didn’t know what to say. Two who never liked me stopped trying to hide it.

I couldn’t exactly play hostess. Not the grieving wife. (Did all my grieving over the divorce. Everyone thought that was my idea. No.)

A huddle of young Vietnamese women looked me over, whispering. Identifying me, I imagined.

I couldn’t guess which was the one he’d tried to brag about. (That didn't work. Someone already told me, and by then I didn’t care.)

Jim Cathcart (best mate) made the speech. Foster-son Robert, a parent himself then, sat beside me and sobbed. My arm stayed around his shoulders for the whole service. 

My youngest, who’d driven me there, latched on to an ex-girlfriend come to pay her respects, and disappeared smartly, taking her to the wake instead.

I stood on my own in the car park as everyone drove away. Hailed an old friend just in time. ‘Room for me?’

Ah yes, there WAS music. 

Much later. Unplanned. 

Dutch was there with his guitar. As he’d always been, throughout my life with Bill. Playing for free at our parties – children’s and grown-ups’. 

Some friends brought their kids this night. Late, when the youngsters were tired and fractious, he sang directly to them. ‘The fox went out on a chilly night …’ They listened with thumbs in their mouths, wide-eyed. 

At parties, whenever Dutch called for requests, Bill would beg, ‘Play St James Infirmary’. Of course I asked, that final night. And he did.

Now Dutch is gone, and Andrew’s gone. Jim Cathcart’s gone. All the children are grown. 

The music lingers on.

Form: prose poem

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Twenty-Eight.

Prompt: to write about music at an event.

Linking to Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #176: Slice of Life.  This little slice of death, written in April, is the nearest I can get to (my understanding of ) that literary style – which can also apply to fiction, but this is autobiographical.

Looking Into the Lens

 

‘Do you think I look like a clown?’ I mean to ask my chiropractor today. Because she's a sweetie and she tells truths. 

I am an old lady still wearing make-up, because that is what I’ve always done. But I see the other painted old ladies and notice the incongruity between their cosmetics and their wrinkles. Would I be better to leave the colours off? Leave the bare face to exist quietly, fading into the background? It’s not that the make-up makes us look young. 

To make something up is to tell a lie, isn’t it? When I was very young, I told truths and was disbelieved. There were things I saw which others didn't. Fairies at the bottom of my garden ... They thought I made it up. 

No-one thinks my make-up on my face is telling the truth; I’m sure they never did. And yet we speak of ‘bare-faced lies’! 

I meant to ask my chiropractor, but I forgot. We had other things to discuss. Her mother here for a visit, how to ride a boogie board at 80, the exact location of my pain ... that her mother’s mother lived to 102.

Afterwards I take a couple of selfies instead. But it won’t be a true test. I know that the made-up face looks better in photos than my elderly skin. Also I pose the image for best effect. (I know, you see, that I’m really un-beautiful. The girl within me knows how deeply this matters.)

‘Hello, lovely,’ she greeted me. I thought, of course, she referred to the fact that she likes me. We have a rapport. Now I allow myself to wonder. Did she mean she likes the way I look? Does she see what I cannot see?

Lightning flashes outside. The warning app on my phone crackles. I’m glad I don’t have to walk around out there now. I’m glad to be safely back home with my old face, painted or not. And with a cessation of pain.

The wallpaper on my screen is a bare, dead tree I used to love. I passed it every time I drove to town. It had, I thought, a stark beauty. I’m glad I preserved it. I photographed it only a couple of days before it was felled to the ground by a lightning strike. 

NaPoWriMo Day Twenty-One

This wandered away from the prompt – except for being a prose poem, which was the bit that wasn't specifically requested anyway. 

(With great restraint I resisted editing the selfies.)

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #175: StormyWeather. Although not written for that prompt, it does  contain mention of stormy weather.