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Coot’s Chapel

Here’s a terrific little vignette I wrote with a raggedy-looking and vacant-eyed crow (drawn below, by yours truly) in mind. Enjoy.

A gravestone, overgrown and time-worried, that read ‘Reginald Scrubb, 1840-1881: A Loved and Living Father, Until He Wasn’t’ stood dustily in a forgotten plot, worn down by both the moss and the years that had creeped up on it since its making.

The chapel graveyard it stood in, somewhere out in the semi-desert sunshine of Cholla Springs, was of that rustic, desolate type bordered by rusting wrought-iron fencing and dotted with the crumbling graves of fellers already fading deeply into obscurity—the only sounds in the place the odd rustle of a stray tumbleweed or the strangled burble of the nearby desert creek. In the sun, it was comfortably warm; in the shade, it was chilly enough to make you want to pull your coat a little tighter. In the ground, you were often too dead to be much concerned about either.

Indeed, the ground of Mr. Scrubb’s grave—rich, corpse-fertilized soil, only slightly sun-cracked and finally being taken over by sparse bits of grass—was now home to naught but an otherwise friendless earthworm wriggling through the loam. There were worse—but certainly not lonelier—places to be laid to rest. A cricket somewhere chirped. A hawk above keened. A gust of wind softly blew.

Flap. Flap. Flap.

A weird sound interrupted the desert ambience, piercing the tranquil quiet of the afternoon with what sounded like the fast-approaching—

Flap-flap. Flap-flap. Flap-flap.

Ever-louder—

Flap-flap-flap-flap. Flap-flap-flap-flap.

And increasingly-frantic beating of ineffectual—

FLAP-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP. FLAP-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP—

Wings? The worm looked up, disturbed.

There was a loud caw, a thwump, and a puff of black, tattered feathers as a dark, misshapen mass plummeted out of the sky above and crashed ungracefully onto the heretofore-undisturbed earth of Mr. Scrubb’s grave. The crow—the only permanent (living) resident of the place—skidded forwards in the dirt and came to a stop with a quiet clink as its beak hit the hard, weathered headstone. The bird let out a pained caw, blinked, and spat out the mouthful of dirt it had swallowed in its failed landing. Mere inches in front of the crow’s face lay the prize it had been after, now trying idly to burrow back into the dirt. The crow ungracefully leapt up into its feet and glared at the headstone with an ungrateful eye before it, with a jerk of its neck, threw the worm up into the air and sent the thing ricocheting down its gullet with a clack of its beak.

It gulped, satisfied, and fluttered awkwardly up to the top of Mr. Scrubb’s headstone. Taking a moment to ineptly preen itself, the crow then sat, feathers still in disarray, digesting its meal. Feeling the gaze of the sun burrowing into the back of its head, it beat its wings a little to keep cool. It didn’t work. The crow thought for a moment, then hopped just a little way over to the left into the shade of the chapel. Better. From its perch, it surveyed the sky. Quiet. It looked back down and tilted its head—or, tried to, in the way it’d seen birds with better posture do—and trained a too-crooked eye on all its usual meal spots as it scanned the graveyard for more potential snacks. Nothing. It blinked. Not a bug. It blinked, again. There was that faint sort of rumbling sound, somewhere, but it was probably just thunder. The crow ruffled itself, suddenly grumpy—it hated storms. It thought, again. It didn’t sound like one.

It relaxed and, not bothering to fly, hopped off the headstone and scrabbled up to the top of the neglected chapel’s roof. A loose shingle gave way under the crow’s foot and slid off the side, shattering on the dry ground below. The crow shook itself, ignoring it, and looked out over the lonely plain. Among the patches of desert sage and cacti in the distance, the crow thought, there might have been a cloud of dust, but nothing too weird. It turned its head and swapped eyes, trying to get a better look. It was getting closer. The crow cawed, intrigued.

A bzzt noise from the crow’s right made it snap its head around. It looked across, then up, to where the noise had come from. Halfway up the steeple, on an aged viga post, a grasshopper was perched. Forgetting the dust and the louder-and-louder rumbling, the crow clacked its beak and, quietly, eagerly, began to stalk closer across the rooftop. The grasshopper bzzted again as a breeze of wind blew it off the post and up onto the steeple’s juddering weathervane; the crow too was buffeted by the gust, but blinked the dust out of its eyes and flapped easily up to just below the flittering insect. The insect, now bothered, looked down. Ignoring the now-thunderous sound below as it focused on its prey, the crow craned its neck, opened its beak, and—

With a sudden ka-THWUMP-BOOM, the steeple lurched sickeningly to one side as the walls of the vestry underneath it exploded outwards in a mortar-y blast of brick, tiles, and rubble. The weathervane snapped violently around from the motion, flinging the grasshopper off and clocking the startled crow square in the face; the bird went sailing through the air in an uncharacteristically graceful arc before landing on the ground below with an indelicate thud. A rickety-looking wagon, one wheel now as off-kilter as the steeple and with chunks of tile and brick wedged in its sides, bulleted out of the chapel and through the graveyard; the two bruised oxen leading it swerved, panting, to avoid every aged gravestone in their way, only knocking off a chunk from old Mr. Scrubb’s headstone as they thundered out of the graveyard and through a gap in the fence.

The crow, lying on its back and still dazed from the explosion, looked up from its impromptu nest of rubble to hear a ‘Yee-haw!’ and a crack of a whip as the wagon and its driver tore off into the distance. It gave a weary caw, still prostrate on the ground and half-buried in dust, and laid down to die.

Bzzt, went a brick beside it. The crow turned its head and opened an eye to see the grasshopper, unharmed, having landed on a brick nearby. It rubbed its legs at the crow—bzzt—and jumped mechanically away.

Ceurgh, wheezed the crow. It cleared its throat, annoyed. Caw.

The poor crow extracted itself from the rubble, coughing, and reached around to pick the biggest chunks of debris from its feathers. Crumbs of mortar and bits of brick removed, the crow then plucked out a choice few of its too-dented feathers and gave itself a rousing shake. Hopping over to the patch of ruined fence where the wagon had escaped, the crow jumped up onto Reginald Scrubb’s battered headstone and looked out at the arid landscape. A wildly veering set of wheel tracks and a disappearing trail of dust marked the strange wagon’s path; the crow, curious, moved to fly after it. It paused broodingly and looked back at the chapel. Where the vestry had been—not that the crow knew what that was—there was now a roughly-wagon-sized hole. The steeple, now at a peculiar tilt, creaked. A brick fell. A beam splintered.

The crow squawked.

The steeple gave a rumble, a judder, and a final ailing groan before collapsing heavily into the roof of the chapel, a thick cloud of dust billowing up from its ruined remains. The crow flinched, a fleck of brick catching it in the eye, and wiped its face on the still-smooth surface of Mr. Scrubb’s headstone. It cawed, grateful, and looked back out of the graveyard to where the wagon had gone.

With a cough, a rustle, and a final, imperious shake of its tail feathers, the crow leapt up into the air and flapped on after it.

Plain Ol’ Nerves

In a lonely valley somewhere in a forgotten pocket of Otherwyrld, there moved a something.

Forests of ever-bushy deciduous trees filled vast tracts of the dell; white-purple peaks loomed lazily upwards on its edges; and, somewhere not too far off in the distance, a waterfall gushed shimmeringly from a plateau above. In the centre of the valley, amongst the finely-layered grass of the plain that stretched across it, a patch of grass snorted.

A tail emerged from the patch, flicking irritatedly at a passing flitterer or two; then, from the grass, a lone snuffelope raised its head—supported a little unsteadily by a scrawny-scruffy neck—and stared blankly out over the plain. Its trunk twitched, and it snorted again, nervously. It’d heard something, and not just the usual !oh-no-what-is-it-is-it-going-to-eat-us?! paranoia that so many of its kind of prey animal were susceptible to. No, this was—it flicked its tail, again—this was…something.

It snorted, again. The snuffelope’s eyes—facing a different direction apiece—darted around their surroundings; the beast’s head, weighed down as it was by a pair of too-heavy spiralled horns, stayed stock-still while it listened. !aha! There it was again.

If it’d known the word for what it heard—and, indeed, had the higher brain function required to recognise it as such—the snuffelope might have eventually arrived at the word song. While it listened, a flitterer attempted, nervously, to settle upon the beast’s trunk. If the snuffelope could’ve frowned, it would have; there was only so much skittishness among animals to go around here. As it was, it snorted the insectoid away. It sniffed, loudly. A tree creaked ominously over yonder, and the beast froze. Its skittishness turned out to be in practised hands (well, hooves); it quickly ducked its head below the long grass.

!knew-it! !what-is-it! !what-is-it-am-I-going-to-get-eaten-what-is-it! The snuffelope looked wide-eyed over at where the sound had come from, unmoving, half-daring it to do more.

Do more the sound did, unabashedly and in quick succession: a branch snapped, followed by a surprised AAAAGH, a succession of rustling impacts, and, finally, a muffled thud.

The snuffelope, terrified, bewildered, and instincts vindicated, fled.

The tree where the sound had come from rustled, then was still. Then, slowly, surely, a song—burbled and off-key but no less so a tune—stumbled its way through the trees. Accompanying it was its singer: a raggedly-cheerful looking old’un who looked, impossibly, like he’d been there since Otherwyrld began. The feller looked cursorily over the beautiful, untouched-by-man, and—he saw the patch of disturbed grass—until-recently-occupied-by-prey valley, then went back to rubbing his now-bruised left arm.

Bugger climbin’ up those trees ‘gain, he thought. Anyway, looking out over the plain, he reckoned he had all the—what was it the ‘sciencists’ called it?—vantage he needed right here. Yep. This had to be it.

He prodded his elbow gingerly. Gods, it hurt. The old’un looked back up and, sighting a creek, began trudginly to make his way o’er there so as to wash his wounded limb.

Suddenly, the old’un shivered.

Swatting away with his unhurt hand at a passing flitterer or two, the old’un turned his head, supported a little shakily by a too-skinny neck, and stared blankly out over the plain. His moustache twitched, and he snorted, only a little nervously.

He heard somethin’.

#mine #writing #writeblr #writersontumblr #writer #Otherwyrld #snuffelope #prey #old #worldbuilding #fantasy #story #world

Early Un-Retirement

It was a bright, dazzling sort of day, and the prairie echoed with the quaintly industrious sound of a hammer against old wood and clay. If they hadn’t been putting up with it for days now, viridescent prairie birds would have been startled into the crisp desert air by the irritatingly consistent thunk thunk thunk of a lone rancher’s carpentry.

Said rancher, Lewus—recently retired Far-‘n’-Wider ranger and now amateur carpenter extraordinaire—was the sole, and rather short-statured, settler of the imperiously quiet Plateau de’Adobe.

The place was a little lonely, he thought, but that suited him down to the bone. When the time had come to hand in his Far-‘n’-Wider pin, Lewus had practically flown—no, hold on, literally, he always got the two muddled—off and up to the eyrie where he reckoned he’d do his damnedest to spend his golden years.

If today was any indication, he thought, it was going brilliantly. Lewus, dressed to stay in, had earlier seen the ranch’s entrance-lantern looking just a little askew, and was now busy hammering a nail into the wooden structure that held the lantern onto the top of the cracking adobe-coated pillar.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

He stood back to admire his handiwork, stroking his curly red goatee—that was only slightly tinged with grey, thank ye very much—as he did so. He nodded, and, as he began once more to drive a nail into one of the lantern’s wooden supports, wondered briefly where Prodfut had gotten to.

Usually, he couldn’t get the idiotic beast to leave him alone for more than a few milliseconds at a time. Over his four decades of markhawr riding, he’d learnt (if nothing else) that the parrot-goat hybrids were bloody needy creatures. He supposed, in between a thunk of his hammer, that it must’ve been a product of their overwhelming instinct to both herd and flock.

Lewus shrugged and, a cheerful whistle beginning to snake its way through his teeth, readied another nail to hammer into the wood. Not a millisecond later, a loud chirrup behind him jolted him near out of his britches and he swore—“BASTARD”—as he missed the nail and hit his thumb with the hammer.

With an expectant and faux-reluctant eye-roll, Lewus turned around—sucking his thumb gingerly.

“Oh, wha’ is it, beast? By the probable-godly-beings, is a man not entoitled ter a moment’s pea—”

O-oh, he thought, as his eyes settled upon his beast of oh-so-many burdens. His curly eyebrows furrowed as he looked at the paper in her mouth. Oh, bugger.

With some not-inconsiderable reluctance, Lewus delicately took the Officiards’ letter—for what else could it be, with that ever-so-distinctly, er, bur-eau-cratic seal?—from Prodfut’s feathery snout.

Prodfut cooed for attention, and Lewus paused in opening the letter to give the aging markhawr a behind-the-horn scratch for mutual reassurance. He’d learnt the word ‘bureaucratic’ some time ago, and hadn’t trusted it since.

Lewus let his eyes, suddenly rheumy with a sort of tired anticipation, drag themselves, screaming, through the letter’s officiously-worded contents. Even then, he skimmed.

“Missing persons…all local leaders…’sposed to show up fer annual meeting…” Raising his eyes from the document, Lewus sighed. Oh, damn.

He looked out towards the far-off horizon, thinking. He looked down at Prodfut.

Prodfut bleated.

Lewus held up the letter again, hoping the words might reshuffle themselves into something involving less effort. They didn’t. Again, he looked down at Prodfut.

Prodfut bleated.

“Bah! Alroight, beast, you win!” said Lewus. “You win, damn ye.” He scrunched up the letter in his hand. So much, he thought, for his having done with policing and, indeed, outright saving Otherwyrld’s needy little lands.

Lewus sighed once more, defeated. Fine, he huffed (mostly to himself).

The tired ex-Far-‘n’-Wider pulled up his britches and stomped back into his dust-baked house as heavily as his morning-slippers would allow, the day’s carpenterial task forgotten.*

#mine #exerpt #story #vignette #writer #writersontumblr #writing #shortstory #Otherwyrld

27°

It’s that marker, the threshold, the checkpoint, once passed,

That signifies summer, that cold doesn’t last.

It’s broiling, insidious, it’s humid and hot;

It ruins the day, it’s that bastard ‘sweet’ spot.

The damp patches arrive, unwelcome, unfettered;

At uni, the heat scorches the brows of the lettered.

The sun starts to cook you, your skin starts to burn;

For colder climes you near-constantly yearn.

It’s that dangerous temperature, an omen, a sign

You should scarper, find aircon, and then you’ll be fine;

But still, you can sense it, awaiting outside;

You dare not go out, or else you’ll be fried.

#poetry #writing #writeblr #poetryblr #mine #brisbane #warm

Der Urvogel

Once light as a feather, now heavy as stone;

Once vividly plumaged, now firmly interred;

He’s petrified, fossilised, preserved alone;

‘Ancient wing’ – Archaeopteryx, the (sort of) first bird.

Unearthed as unusual, remarkable find

Reptiles and birds now inarguably linked.

His earthen grave whispers to those with a mind

For palaeontology, or creatures extinct.

Head back in death pose, a cadaverous sculpture;

Dreaming forever of days way back when.

Immortalized now in popular culture,

Der Urvogel might just yet fly once again.

#poetry #mine #writing #poetryblr #writeblr #urvogel #dinosaur #poem #archaeopteryx #fossil

God Said So

"How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy, or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. You always insist that the order sustaining society is an objective reality created by the great gods or by the laws of nature. People are unequal, not because Hammurabi said so, but because Enlil and Marduk decreed it. People are equal, not because Thomas Jefferson said so, but because God created them that way. Free markets are the best economic system, not because Adam Smith said so, but because these are the immutable laws of nature."

-Yuval Noah Harari, 'The Prison Walls', Sapiens.

How do you believe in

an imagined order

such as

Christianity?

The order

is imagined.

You insist

that the order

is an objective reality

created by God.

People are unequal

because

‘God said so.’

#poetry #poem #erasure #erasurepoetry #mine #writing #writeblr #poetryblr

Iambic, Uninspired

Unsure what sort of poem I can write,

I'll bash away at my poor keyboard now.

There's nothing here that will give any delight,

I'm sure, but we'll get to the end somehow.

Walking crookedly with feet of iamb;

Oh, god, I'll have to find a rhyme for that!

Quick, quick! Oh, bugger, what a fool…I am.

(You've made this harder for yourself, you twat!)

But -- oh, we're on the third quatrain already.

I guess I may as well just fill in time.

Keep calm, we're very nearly there - hold steady!

Just two - well, rather, after this, one – rhyme

-to go, and ho! We're at the end, it's nigh!

Sorry for putting you through this. Goodbye!

#iambic #iambic pentameter #poem #funny #uninspired #writeblr #writersontumblr #writing #poetry

Brewed Thoughts

It had been somewhere around the fourth failed attempt at not forgetting about his freshly-made tea that Lewus—distractible, disagreeable, and now decidedly ink-stained from as many half-hearted attempts at writing his monthly report as he was—had decided that today just wasn’t a goer.

The ranger had looked up from the still-largely-empty pages on his desk, weighed down by a huge, granite lump of writer’s block as they were, and suddenly remembered the tea that he’d once again thought to make himself about an hour ago. The beverage sat there on the corner of his desk with a sort of smug ancestral pride; it was no less than the fourth in a succession of long-forgotten and ill-prepared drinks, and, impressively, it looked the worst yet. It had grown a thick film of something rotten-looking on the liquid’s surface and the metal insides of the mug had acquired a cold and greasy sheen.

Lewus sighed. Putting his quill aside, he cracked his knuckles and—with the nervous air of an environmental hazard worker who’d left his hazmat suit at home—moved delicately to pick up the toxic item. He recoiled. The neglected drinks he’d inflicted upon it had apparently given it new life; where the ancient old mug had been rusty, scratched, and weather-worn before, it now had that shiny, silver gleam particular to rusty metals or old animal bones that’ve been soaked in an acid bath. He mused for a second, toying with the idea of selling this stuff to the local taxidermist.

Nah, he thought. It’d just kill the things again.

There was nothing for it. He trudged outside, walked with the drink out to the edge of the plateau the house stood on, and poured the nauseating stuff—still emitting the sort of sweet and pungent smell that carnivorous plants often employed in luring prey to their demise—over the plateau’s precipitous drop. There was a terrible pause; then, up from the valley came first the distant yet unmistakable sound of sizzling flesh and then the shrill, piercing keen of whatever poor creature the liquid had landed upon going through sudden death throes.

Lewus, looking down, wrinkled his nose. Eugh.

He turned and started back towards his house. Feeling a burning sensation in his hand, he remembered the still-dripping mug. Right. It’d have to go. With one deft motion, Lewus threw it back over his shoulder, where it sailed through the air and over the edge of the plateau. There was a pause. Then, incredibly, a faint metallic bonk. The dying wails below stopped.

That’s that, then. Dusting off his hands, Lewus went inside and sat back down at his desk.

There was a pause. He looked down at the still-empty pages. He looked at the still-leaky quill. He felt the still-heavy writer’s block weighing down the lot of it. The ranger thought for a moment.

Then, getting up, he walked over to the counter, filled the kettle up, and set it to boil.

#mine #writing #writeblr #writer #story #tea #brewing #vignette #furiousfiction

Storm and a Teacup

Someday, Dyanwethen thought, she’d leave this place.

Most likely in a hearse, of course, but one could hope. The prairie, the house, even the too-decoratively-tiled kitchen she stood in: this place wasn’t the sort of place dreams—about anything other than leaving, that is—were made. Rather, it was where dreams like hers settled down ‘temporarily’, grew older than they’d like, and expired, only to be found—mostly forgotten, gathering dust, and starting to rot—by the miles-off neighbour after a few lonely weeks.

Yikes, she thought. Bit too deep into her thoughts there. The clink, though, of nickel-plated cutlery against glazed ceramic shook her out of her reverie and, looking down, she stopped stirring her tea. The whirlpool her spoon had created began to slow and settle as she watched, and she did the same.

Throwing the spoon into the sink, Dyan took the mug in one hand and walked with it out of the kitchen towards the living room, where the bay window was. Like the stuff in her mug, the window was one of those little spaces in the house that quieted her. Laying the tea down on the nearby nightstand, she sat down and looked outside. Dark, bloated cumulonimbus clouds seethed on the horizons, their vaporous jowls occasionally lit by a faint spittle of lightning. A nasty sort of whistle and a panicked sort of susurration in the air told her the wind had already picked up. The rusty old windmill outside was already starting to groan, and cicadas began a nervous, buzzing chorus.

Unease, thought Dyan. That’s the word for this.

It was ‘malaise’, in fact, but Dyan never thought straight in this house. She’d taken the tea in both hands and had a sip, but, cool as the weather was, all the steaming drink did was make the air feel even heavier and more laden with humidity and ill-will than it already was.

Wasn’t just that, though, thought Dyan. It was the landscape’s sheer topographical monotony, as well; the flatness pervaded everywhere. Especially her mood. No amount of high-fabled, double-storey house could do away with the hidden, languid vastness of the prairie.

Despite the isolation, though, despite the empty horizon, Deyan thought she could hear the faint, humming sound of lazy traffic in the distance. She listened, even as the first patterings of the storm’s heavy rain began to drown it out, and couldn’t help wondering where all those people were headed.

She stood there, lukewarming tea in hand, wondering. She’d heard about hitchhiking and couldn’t help imagining what it’d be like to just flag a car down, go where they go, and see where she ended up. Somewhere, hopefully, she could have adventure. Make a difference. Lose some weight. Somewhere where both her and her dreams could actually live. As the rain began its assault proper on the roof of the ever-creaking house, the lonely woman sipped her tea.

About time for bed, she thought, and turned to go upstairs.

Someday.

#mine #writing #writeblr #writersontumblr #vignette #story #furiousfiction #storm #lonely #house

Uninspired

Zeno looked up from his so-far empty page and out of his window. The sunset occurring outside was achieving some very satisfying but also a-little-dull colours of the sort one might find in a slightly imperfect, still-gritty pearl; he’d only thought to look outside after the sun had already sunk below Mt Coot-tha in the distance.

It was dusk, and the time after dusk when you know you’ve only got a little window of melancholy enjoyance before night-time. Zeno usually found himself at his most creative around this time of day; he looked back to his page, pencil almost forgotten in hand, and willed himself to dig out some inspiration from…somewhere. He concentrated, screwing up his face in effort. After a minute, he opened his eyes, and…nothing. Still at his desk he sat, producing nothing but a carbon footprint as his—he kicked the desk in frustration—mundane little existence continued. Zeno glanced outside again, watching the train a little over in the distance screech amblingly along the tracks. An ugly sound, he thought, but almost…pretty?

A loud squonk interrupted this newest thought, and Zeno’s gaze shifted from the distant train to, rather closer, the roof across from his window. An ibis, looking how Zeno felt, glared at him; Zeno almost smirked. An ugly sound it made, sure, but he reckoned they both knew the ‘pretty’ part was out of the question. Most of the bird life in his neighbourhood consisted of colourful, sleek, photogenic birds soaring across the fading blue-pink sky—the rest of them, the rejects, seemed to live almost exclusively on the guano-streaked roof of the apartment building next to his. The ibis that had so grumpy squonked at Zeno stalked out of view, replaced by another still-more-diseased looking mate that croaked angrily at a passing and too-bold pigeon. The pigeon followed, cooing at the larger bird.

Zeno dropped his pencil, watching. The pigeon was, one could only assume, on a daring quest to secure the first ever inter-avian-species relationship. It cooed with what it probably thought was charm and seductive tones at the cranky, much-bigger ibis; Zeno watched as the harangued ibis took a casual swipe at its suitor-to-be with its too-long beak and knocked the unfortunate pigeon off the roof. There was a panicked flutter of incompetent wings, of scattered feathers, and then a quiet thwump as both the pigeon’s brains and the ambitious dreams of freakish pigeon-ibis offspring held within dashed themselves upon the concrete.

Zeno sighed. It was that sort of day. He looked back up at the sky, swore, then sighed again. Night-time had struck. It was a little cooler and a little darker—the type of dark you noticed halfway through dusk, ignored while you did other things, then looked outside again and realised it was suddenly all that dark. Small, far-off lights were beginning to appear in distant houses. Mt Coot-tha and the rest of the neighbourhood had begun to transform into silhouettes; bats had nudged most of the birds out of the airspace.

Right, thought Zeno. That’s that, then. He sat still, feeling the last of his creative juices beginning to slow production, stop flowing, and coagulate. He could almost hear the rusty, creaking sounds of the taps being shut off within.

Well, he thought, might’ve been the ibises.

#mine #writing #writeblr #writersontumblr #ibises #brisbane #writer #vignette #story #uninspired

On Brisbane (Haikus)

Brisbane’s false season

Still far too hot, too humid

Freezing Iceland dreams.

*

False, lying season

Undeserving of the name

Sun out, threatening.

*

Heat lurks in the air

Days still hot, humid, steamy

Toowoomba nestles, cold.

*

Sun shines brightly in.

Warm leaves’ susurrus outside.

This isn’t winter.

*

#poetry #haikus #writing #writeblr #poetryblr #mine #brisbane #warm #winter #poet

Autumnal Thoughts

It’s halfway through April here in Brisbane--halfway through autumn, that lovely month of falling leaves and cool breezes and hot drinks and the coming of winter--which naturally means, here, that only now are the temperatures deeming to go below 25°C and summer beginning to finally sod off.

It’s been nice--rainy, chilly enough for me to begin putting on a layer comfortably--and it’s put me into a thoughtful, yet still depressed, mood. Where can I live that is around this temperature by default? New Zealand’s nice, but weirdly a little downtrodden/decrepit, and probably still too (coldly) tropical for me. The UK, but that’s so far away. Scandinavia, but that’s even further. I’d go to the USA if it weren’t so monumentally rooted, but it of course is, so that’s out of the question. I have no idea, I think my point is, where or what I will be next year, and this makes me feel very weird. I’d move back to Toowoomba, my mountainous regional hometown, but it’d be a bit of a dead-end.

Localised temporal existential dread sucks.

#thoughts #anxieties #writeblr #blog #blogging #writers on tumblr #autumn #autumnal #fall