Commonword Blogs

Quiet night
pierced by the keening of a plane
cutting into my sleep-deadened ears
with an insistence that shocks me
into wakefulness.

My eyelids flutter,
my dream interrupted in full pelt
but still I hold onto the remnants –
hoping to capture the scene
before it melts away.

In my mind
the fantasy begins to build again…
a figure…a room…but as I drift down
words come and take their place,
insistent and intriguing.

Shaking off sleep,
I reach for the pad…the pen… always to hand
lest thoughts take flight like butterflies,
and are lost in the never never land

Like lots of women, I have a secret lover whom for many years I kept tucked away where no-one could discover him; particularly when my grandchildren came to visit, because if left alone they sometimes decided to look in my bedroom for a stash of sweets or chocolate. In fact, I once caught the cheekiest in action.
‘What do you think you are doing?’
‘Just looking for a pen.’
‘Well, there’re plenty on my desk in the lounge.’

Did you ever
wonder where they come from,
those words that float from somewhere…
somehow…sometimes…to the front of your mind
like seeds wafting along on the breeze?

Have you ever
thought they can’t be yours,
because they are much too imaginative,
too clever, too colourful, too creative
to have begun in your barren brain?

Will you ever
accept without question
the phrases, sentences and words
you plucked out of the air like a magician
producing rabbits or flowers from a hat?

Can you ever
go to sleep at night
without wondering whether your muse

Once upon a time there was a little boy, named David, who refused to get dressed in the morning. He would run round the house in his pyjamas ..

Play in the sandpit... Chase the dogs on the lawn...

And every time his mother said "David, please come and get dressed!" he would hide…

Or kick and scream so much that it was really too much bother to dress him at all.

He would make his mother cross... His father shake his head in despair.