Time

Tags

age, creative, Innocence, loss, Love, Memory, poems, poetry, time, verse, Wisdom, writing

Time turns the page,

Its benign eyes watch

As hands stretch out,

Offering the wisdom of experience

In exchange for the innocence of youth,

And we grasp at it

As if it were the only way,

As if it somehow offered up

An answer to our lives,

And how so easily we part

With all that we once knew,

And concepts such as hope and faith

Now gather dust on shelves,

That lie beyond our sight

And so far from our reach.

Change

Tags

Acceptance, age, Awareness, Change, creative, faith, Prose, Self, Truth, Understanding, writing

Nothing really changes. The hair may dull, the step become slower; the skin grow thinner and the eyes fade – but nothing really changes. We can give credence to the lie that we are growing wiser, becoming more astute, becoming who we were always meant to be by twisting and bending the truth; by being selective in what we choose to hear – but nothing really changes. We cloak age with words like ‘maturity’ and ‘sophistication’, explain away the lines as ‘experience’ and ‘wisdom’ – but nothing really changes. We are who we were born to be – the child, the youth, the adult, packaged and wrapped like the gift that we were meant to be, each layer removed, revealing more of what we always were; what we will always be. Nothing really changes. We can stare into the mirror, hopeful of seeing a different reflection, an image of an idol, but we are our own gods – the truth lies only within our  own eyes. The only ‘change’ that we ever need is the acceptance of who we truly are.

Another Window

Tags

age, Another Window, creative, death, loss, Love, Memories, nostalgia, Observations, poems, poetry, verse, Wish, writing

The floorboards creaked beneath his feet

As he moved slowly

Creeping almost like a cat

One foot before the other

In metronomic time 

To a beat that sounded somewhere

In the past

In a town a million years

From where he was

A home too far ago to live

In any other memory 

He walked

From room to room to

Dusty room

Gathering the waif-like days

Like breaths between the stones

To scatter free on the passing breeze

That reminded him of

Someone else

A fragrant fragment of another life

Another prayer

Another window

He looks out over the rooves and chimneys

That pepper the town with breaths

And fill the air with silence

That floats above the houses

Like a shroud

Like a pocket watch counting

Numbering each moment

As it drifts away towards the hills

Towards the sea

Towards the beat that still

Sounds somewhere

In the past

As he watches and wants

As the floorboards creak.

Trapped

Tags

age, Alzheimers, creative, death, dementia, loss, Love, nostalgia, poems, poetry, Trapped, verse, writing

Did you miss me

When my smile died

And my mouth would not move?

When the light that burned for you

Flickered low and, starved of fuel,

Fell silent still behind

Dead eyes?

Did you miss me

When you held my hand

And felt the skin replaced by ice?

When you looked beyond the veil

To gather moments to bring me back

To capture all that you

Had lost?

Did you miss me

As trapped behind the glass

My cries fell like snowflakes?

Did you miss me then

As much as I missed

Myself?

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2021

As It Ever Was

Tags

age, As it ever was, creative, Depression, hope, loss, nostalgia, poems, poetry, time, verse, writing

And when at last the dust

That had crept into our eyes and

Scratched its frozen images

Deep within our hearts and minds

Began to fall

Did we find that we had found

All that we were looking for

The prizes and rewards that we

Had promised ourselves

So many lifetimes before?

Or did our vista still contain the

Dreams that we had always known

Were nothing more than that

No more than the pictures that we

Had painted with the hands

Of children fleeing from the night?

And all the promises that we had cast

Like yarrow stalks, now pebbles on the beach

Had given up their secrets to the sea

And washed themselves with the briny tears

That we had shed so freely

Thinking that they would be gone

Spent like the pennies we cherished in

The youth we dreamed away so soon

Before we learned to mourn its death

And let the black sank deep within

A storm that never passed

The ghost of all the days we thought

Would one day come to life

And take our hands

And lead us to all that grew on trees so near

So far from reach

But now through thinly veiled eyes

The scratches fall away

And through the sinking mists we see

All as it ever was.

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2021

Lay Down

Tags

age, Communication, creative, isolation, Lay Down, Philosophy, poems, poetry, verse, writing

I lay down my armour
My shield and sword
When at last I saw
What the fighting was for,
I cast off beliefs
That I’d nurtured for years
The roots of frustration
The love and the fear,
I saw with new eyes
What I’d held to be true
That nothing will change
Not the old or the new,
So I harboured at last
My pen and my words
Now certain and sure
My voice hadn’t been heard.

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2020

Blank Eyes

Tags

age, Communication, creative, death, dream, free-form, isolation, loss, nostalgia, poems, poetry, verse, writing

He stares at me with the resignation of a man
Who knows what is to be,
Blank eyes
Cold-grey like a quarry
Dis-used,
Abandoned,
Reflecting the past like faded notes
On a calendar,
On a piano,
Its tune familiar like a face
I once knew
Appearing through the mist
Like a bird
Lost on its journey to find the warmth
Of a new day rising
In the East,
In the South,
He stares at me like a shadow
As if all he sees is beyond me,
Through me,
Pasts and futures bound with weeds
Wrapped in the inevitable,
And for a moment
A second at least,
I recognise those empty eyes,
The greying, decaying stubble
That sprouts on his face
Hides in the cuts of time,
And withers like forgotten fruit;
He stares at me as if he wants
To watch me pluck each orb,
Replace it with my own
And see me as I am;
He stares as if, at any moment
I will know him
Then watch him walk away,
He stares.

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2020

Turned Away

Tags

age, creative, dreams, faith, Life, loss, Love, nostalgia, poems, poetry, Relationships, thoughts, Truth, Turned away, verse, writing

She sits and waits the tv glows

Stares pictures on the wall,

She wonders if they’ll ever know

The days she turned away.

He watches faces on the screen

As nameless they pass by,

He sees her still in youthful dream

But would not change a thing.

She dreams of ships with billowed sail

Her foot upon their bow,

And moons that wax and moons that pail

Horizons silent now.

He thinks of doors that always closed

And wished them all away,

Each detail drawn each gateway posed

He’d climb them all again.

She pictures faces that she knew

And counts them over stiles,

How many seen how known so few

She wonders how they fell.

He holds himself within his shell

The bottle comes again,

The stories that he’ll never tell

Die slowly deep inside.

She sits and waits the tv glows

Stares pictures on the wall,

She wonders if they’ll ever know

The days she turned away.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2019

 

Watching Suns

Tags

age, creative, faith, Life, loss, poems, poetry, Remembrance, Strangers, Sun, time, verse, writing

She sat and watched the suns

Come and go as if they were

Strangers passing on the bitter streets:

A nod, a glance, perhaps a smile.

They rose in the levelled east,

Fought their way to the highs of their days,

Then struggled to climb each obstacle,

The mountains of the west.

She watched from the window

The porch and the gate

As the clock stole the hours,

Spirited them away,

And filed them under ‘lost’.

Emerald vines grew like memories

Creeping slowly over the garden fence,

Tendril-fingers seeping into the grain

Tenderly choking the life unlived.

She watched the marks of the years

Engrave themselves into her hands,

Pathways followed and gone,

And so many dreamed,

Her face the scorched and dried

Map of ages,

Marked, but abandoned before the mark of treasure

Had burned itself into her.

And the suns still came

And the suns still died,

And someone else took her chair.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

Ice-Ribbons

Tags

age, Change, creative, dreams, faith, Life, Planes, poems, poetry, verse, writing

I watched the planes trace ice-ribbons

Across the sky before

They were lost to the

Cirrus wisped blueness

And their tails faded

Like promises written in

Tide-threatened sands,

And hopes took restless souls

To the promise of utopian shores

Not realising that they

Like all that came before

Wore the mask that hid

The fault-line masquerade

That spread like disease below,

I watched them come and go and

Taxi slowly on the grey

As if discarding the seeds of doubt

That grew beneath their wheels

Like ancient gods burying

Defeated foes unaware that

They would rise again,

And as the stuttered raging roar

Splintered hearts like candy then

Tore holes into the sky

Which like starving angels

Swallowed fleeting flailing dreams

Cocooned within a safety shell

They never saw,

As standing rooted in my

Futures past and present

I watched the planes

Trace

Ice-ribbons.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018