The scent of moss and rain

The sound of the waterfall follows me to the edge of the woods. A sudden clatter and whirring of wings stops me short. Then that familiar rattling, clicking call of a Jay, the bright flash of blue as it passes, matching the colour of this morning sky. 

in the woods
the scent 
of moss and rain

The trail is dotted with puddles shimmering in the sunlight and everything sparkles, startling with splashes of brilliance and beauty. The wind across these hills is cold and the trees are bare, but I can still feel the hum of spring deep in my blood, in the outbreak of birdsong all around me.

tiny wren…
a sunlit river flowing 
through its song

When I emerge again, something glitters from the sleepy town far below me. The distant hills are covered in heather and haze. I feel light splashed, renewed, washed clean. 

snowdrop carpet
along the woodland floor…
February wind

My photos – Snowdrop Valley, Wheddon Cross

Year of the Wood Dragon

My photo – Taunton, Somerset

Nobody saw the signs
although they heard the music 
as they crowded under neon lights. 

No-one knew what to make 
of such an eerie song
and they didn't see the figure
dance among them 
quietly like smoke, a ghost
emerging from its bark -

pure air and water,
wood and fire,

and the daybreak 
a yawning child
offering something akin to hope.

Poem’s Kiss

Photo by Ali Hassan on Pexels.com

A word from a dream
and then a poem
composed in the shower's music,
shaped the same way
a lover's mouth may shape
the lips it touches,

and the water 
      a tumbling
           cleansing
                warmth,
                   tasting 

as sweet as a lover's kiss,
sweeter than the rain.

Through the window
the light curves around curtains 
open like a wing,
and in the ink drying
later on the page
a new love insists
on its release into the day
like a new-born thing.

Imbolc

Photo by Helena Jankoviu010dovu00e1 Kovu00e1u010dovu00e1 on Pexels.com

How to explain
this quality of light?
Even the geese speak of it
as they sound across the lake;
even the waterfall
as it thrums at the river’s mouth;
even the snowdrops as they burst
from darkness like tiny bells – so hard
to turn this music into words,
this joining of earth and sky,
this I with Thou.

Echoes

Photo by DSD on Pexels.com

What of this resonance,
this echo rippling
the morning air
like wild geese calling
I am, I am!
above the skyline,
or quiet deer
who step from sunlit woods,
alert, agile,
gone in a sudden bound
and you
left in a blink of stillness,
in the presence
of a breeze
that lifts your hair
so gently
that something in you
softens, opens
and comes to rest
in light, trees, song.

What Could Be

Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com

There is something about this time of year that just encourages reflection, our human rhythms following the same byways of nature with the days drawing in and the trees changing colour and shedding their leaves. I always feel called to down tools for a while to spend some quiet time with myself – renewing ideas, recharging my energy for what might lie ahead, considering the ‘what could be’ and how far away it still seems from the ‘what is.’

It always feels uncomfortable doing this, because it’s not something society encourages as a rule. It wants us continually nose-to-the-grindstone, doing and producing and consuming. Which tends to give the whole process an element of risk and leaves one with a vague feeling of guilt. But when I look back on my life I recognise that I’ve done this before – only then it was through times of illness, off sick with a bad cold or the flu usually. I’d need time in bed to recover, which would turn out to be just what I needed, giving me a chance to rebalance and recharge, an opportunity to step outside of the every day for a while. I was able to gain some distance and see things from another perspective; reflecting on a world that rarely seemed to have my best interests at heart. It was a quiet time that allowed me to consider other options and question the current thing I was doing, questioning whether it was right for me.

Looking back now, I can clearly see that it wasn’t. Otherwise, why would I have been ill? But all things have their purpose. And these days when I feel the call to stop for a while, I listen and surrender to the impulse. I still can’t claim to understand – my perspective is still limited within this great expanse of nature and the cosmos. But the difference between then and now is that I no longer need to be sick to justify it. And the contemplation feels different, as though I’m making a definite choice by not lying to myself, acting in my own best interests without the need to fit into any other agenda.

Life goes on all around me, but for the moment, I’ve stopped. This worries me far less than it used to, and even as my mind throws up the usual images of doubt and fear, I find I can ignore them. I know now that there is a reason for this stillness, which given enough time, will reveal itself. It always does.

The dancer
who moves the cosmos
moving me

Hill Climb

(My photo – Cothelstone Hill)

In the wooded area on the path leading up to the hill, there are echoes of chainsaws and people’s voices. It grates as I pass them, my irritation showing in my quickening steps. The rational part of me knows that what they’re doing is important, but it doesn’t matter. I came for a quiet walk and now it’s been ruined. But as I move further away and higher up on the hill, everything lifts. How could it not with this view? The beauty of it, the vastness and space. I pass the small herd of Exmoor ponies clustered under the trees, shaking the flies off their heads and swishing their tails. They gaze at me with curiosity and I can only love them just as I love this place. It seems to burst out of me and any rancour I may have had at the noise is long gone. When I go back down the hill and encounter it again, I smile. It no longer matters.

The infinite sky
in each of us
a silent breath

The Ventriloquist

Photo by Shivam Maurya on Pexels.com

I practise for hours, ventriloquizing my voice to the dummy in my hand, going over and over the ‘d’ and ‘b’ sounds, the ‘v’ and ‘p’ consonants that are so hard to pronounce without pressing the lips together. Instead, they sound like ‘th’ and ‘ph’ but no matter. I will get this right, I’m determined. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. I have until nine before the show begins. I throw my voice again and it sounds perfect (or so I imagine). I place the dummy in its case and go to change. Outside it starts to rain.

Across the street from my room, I see a man in a suit. He carries a briefcase as well as an umbrella. His stride is long and purposeful. In the opposite direction walks a woman. I imagine them stopping as they reach each other, and dancing together in the rain, like in some Fred Astaire film. But of course, they don’t. Instead, they walk past in mute silence.

A crow complains from the roof. Its voice is loud and demanding. Then more appear. At least three. Isn’t that a murder of crows? One of them is an albino, materialising in a sudden flurry of white on black, black on white. I find a forgotten five-pound note in my jacket pocket and bless them three times for my luck. When I next check my watch, I see that it’s time to leave. I walk to the case and look in. The dummy stares back at me and never says a word.

Shadow puppets…
three crows scold me
from a slate-grey sky

This is a piece I'd written about eight or nine years ago. I don't think I knew what to make of it at the time, but on revisiting some of my past work, I feel it deserves a space on my site. It's a bit weird and I was going to leave it for halloween. But on reflection I decided that things seem scary enough at the moment, so now is as good a time as any. 

At the Library

Enveloped in this library, I feel a silent benediction, this quiet womb space that seems to bend and curve and wrap itself around me. I turn a page, stare briefly out at a dark sky, the staggered light of autumn pulling at the edges of myself and gravity. Loud voices interrupt – children home from school, their hopes and fears and dreams mingling with the air where word and synapse intersect; this book opened at just the right place, on the page I missed before, this living being of material fold and neuron, whole galaxies with their yellow moons. So much not yet understood. I read on, the words I can glowing in my head.

above
the streetlights
soft scatter of stars

October

Photo by Marta Wave on Pexels.com

The ache of October is as palpable as it ever was. But this year feels even more so, with change rolling through the early morning mist, a presence in the rustling scarlet and yellow leaves. I peer into the shadows as though I'm gazing into time, a river curving and bending backwards on itself, the past, present, future converging into one single spinning moment - but how can that be? I feel the blood pulsing in my veins; hear the jagged sound of my breathing. The wind stirs and lifts the mist and something in my chest rises too. I turn and head for home.


The quiet hum
of the earth slowly turning...
a skylark's song

In the rustle of the morning stars…

Photo by Miriam Espacio on Pexels.com

I hear you whisper,
call me back to the quiet spaces
between the dream-flute's mesmerising song
as the dawn shifts into a deepening
blue, a time-lapse of growing sunlight
rippling through dark waters,
echoing through stone -

  there is no other voice
  but song, a feather on the air, 
  a heartstring on a wing, 
  a drummer and a dancer 
  and a ringing bell -

"Just follow the river and see where it might lead."

I must keep writing,
stay on this path that has no map,
no direction, just a glimpse
of steps forever winding upwards 
towards a different kind of life.

Outside, the world beckons
with a wink, a smile, a kiss.

Night Writing

Photo by ArtHouse Studio on Pexels.com

Some poems seem birthed
in storms and darkness, from
tears and pain. Yet others
from the dance between
the sunset and the slowly rising
moon. Do we dare risk the night
like the caterpillar that trusts
to fate and nature, its dark 
cocoon? Some mornings
the mist still lingers
and I wonder if you're still there
in your spinning transformation,
a distant silhouette
framed against a sultry summer
sky. I prefer the spring
to summer, its voice breathing
poems into my heart,
born like birds
high above the forest.

Spaces

Subscribe to continue reading

Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.

Already a subscriber?

Lifelines

Photo by Elena Brkv on Pexels.com

In the country
held softly by your hands,
this hill is your hip,
this sun, your eye. Three deer
leap across your torso,
a lion stalks along your arm.
I kiss the corner of your mouth
to hear the murmurs
emanating from the clouds,
the fluting waters of a river
streaming over mossy rocks.
The sky is awash with colour –
blues, greens and purple,
a double rainbow
merging into a single dance
like our lifelines
pressed close together.
This country is wild.
This country is home.

This Day

On a deserted beach my feet 
touch stone and volcanic rock. 
The air swirls and a feather 
floating past, catches in my hair 
while sunlight plays 
on the surface of the water. 
I make a sand angel and stay 
as she's reclaimed by waves 
that billow and foam 
before receding. The angel 
rises again in a throb of music, 
as though emanating 
from some distant glittering star. 
This day is old. This day is golden.

From Blue into Green

Photo by Luciann Photography on Pexels.com

When I rise from bed
the sea is light
like turquoise, like the colour
of silk, the colour of time.

An egret on the shore
patient, still, rises white
above the tides as slow
as our outline on this bridge,
as slow as a pearl. 

How then to explain 
its quiet slide beneath the water, 
how it dreams itself a body 
from the rippling waves,
turns it into blood 
and bone, sun and rain. 

I taste the salty air
and look across to notice 
how in your eyes a thousand 
stars begin to softly burn.

Tomorrow

Photo by Mariya on Pexels.com

Softly, you said
amid all the noise and drama,
the clever play on words - 

     your whisper
            sotto voce

to the dance of river stones,
the language of gentle rain.

Two doves 
echo from the tree tops
like an answer, like your name 
written in the birdsong,
in water or in wing.

Each time I hear you
I see tomorrow in your gaze.

March Haiku

Like something holy
a thousand suns
in the lotus blooms

     For the one
     who knows me for who I am
     sugar moon

Metanoia...
across the lake
flittering swallows
                                  
      Waterfall...
      the silver-light
      of echoing stone

Over the river
in the rain
kingfisher's fire

        In the pre-dawn light
        the lambent glow
        of a fading star

Faint music
in the twilight shadows
lenten moon

         The golden hour
         on a gentle slope
         daffodil trumpets

Two lovers
outlined in silhouette
peach blush sky

          Expanding
          in the swirl of snow
          a growing quiet

In your eyes
the whole world dances...
Northern lights

          Small paws
          on the window ledge...
          cat's silent meow

Small butterflies
above the celandine...
Spring's warm breath

        Opening her eyes
        to the thrum of green... 
        Gaia awakens
                
Letting go
of everything that hurts...
wide open sky

           Mist clearing
           across the valley...
           a veil lifting                                                

This love
growing stronger, goldfinch 
in the silver birch

         The pull
         of something wilder...
         dancing breeze

The give and take
of negotiation...
young deer in the woods

         Hares
         in the flower meadow...
         full pink moon
                                                             

For now I’ve decided to come away from Twitter and return to the tranquility of my own blog for a bit. Also other areas of my life are demanding my attention. For all my friends from there, thank you for your friendship and for all the creative inspiration! Best wishes and see you soon x

To Make Poems

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

To make poems
out of sunsets or rainbows,
the wings of dragonflies
or a river’s song
is to embrace the unity
of all things,
is to make a person whole.

To make poems
is to listen to the whispers
of the changing seasons,
to the birdsong at dawn.
The dreamers will tell
the forest’s story, the light
springing from the soul.

To make poems
means to include everyone
as yourself, to ride the waves of experience
through the vicissitudes of aching,
pulsing life. To make poems
means always to be falling
endlessly and helplessly in love.

Blue Sky

Photo by melchor gama on Pexels.com

A monochrome day, a trapdoor,
a cell window
framing a bare, pale light,
the sun off the pavement
much like a compass

pointing the wrong way
and needing to give yourself over
to love and forgetting,
the yin and the yang
of the second door
painted in green –

and it has come to this,
to tasting your name
in the aroma of wine,
in fresh bread from the oven
and to loving you now
as I loved you then,

written through him
in cool, clean air
across the intimate distance,
reflected in mahogany eyes,
in the brush of wings
as a bird takes flight –

all this we have and more
deep in our solitude
and the door melts away
leaving a heart beating
between strangers
and light, a river, blue sky.

Changes

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Something stalks this track at night. Its eyes are green. In another part of the world a war is raging. Sometimes I wake in a sudden sweat. The air is still, the night quiet. I slip out of bed towards the window to take a gulp of air. The house creaks as I inhale – the sky is clear. One night the stars looked in such a tangle, like our fairy lights did at Christmas. Now it’s March and the weather’s changed, warm and full of birdsong. On my walk a butterfly lands on the path just ahead. The circles on its wings look just like eyes. It flutters up as I approach in an arc of vivid colour. This is an angel in disguise, I say but no-one else is here.

Love Speaks

Love speaks in tongues
with a voice low-pitched
like soft music left on repeat,
like the colour of cinnamon,
vanilla or nutmeg,
or the throb of a sunrise,
the air a vibration of wings
drenched in a flower’s kiss –
is bliss
and the tenderness
of gently falling snow,
twelve stars circling winter
and spring drawing nearer
like a flame.

Sorry, I don’t often get gooey like this, but… happy Valentine’s Day! 🙂

Stories

There are stories told these days
that often seem fantastic, shifting
like the shapes of clouds
or the flight path of birds. When I close my eyes
at night, the story continues in its own black
sense, as though estranged from all truth
and reality. “It’s for the common good,”
they say, “the threat just keeps on growing.”
Meanwhile my dream room spins
around me like an injection
dissolving in my veins, the lights
blink in and out. And here there is no map,
the tables turn, the world speaks
as though in tongues. I wake
to hear the sound of a siren,
a barking dog, and birdsong, a trill
so clear and high
it makes me smile despite the tears.
I get up and draw a line across a sheet of paper,
watch as a low sun wraps everything in gold.

Autumn’s Kiss

• 

  Photo by Valiphotos on Pexels.com

Put your ear to the lean-to trees
folding one supine branch into another,
where every day the sun glances through,
lowering as the seasons change
from glass-sharp light into lengthening shadows
flung across the fields –

can you hear the sound,
the low pulse in the dusk
as you walk towards the twilight
and leave woods so deep
they feel like home?

Oaks whose arms reach so wide
they cover half the sky,
beech trees and birch and aspen

and God, I wish you could see
how the light changes from spring
into autumn, feel the crunch underfoot
and the wet backs of fallen leaves,
gold and copper tinted –

the startling colour
of jays on a cheek-cold morning –

blue, blue, blue –

I don’t want to stop, just keep walking
on this trail listening to the jabber –
magpies, crows, the broil
and surge of a swollen river,
cows to the far-side, roe deer bursting
from the trees. I love this place,
the smell of sheep and soil, deep wooded
silence, birdsong –

even tonight while the weather’s strange –

strange colour of sky –

no sense of isolation, no loneliness,
just
one full kiss
and the whole of it
is mine.

From the Land of Dreaming

Photo by Ben Mack on Pexels.com

You can dream all night upon this ocean

where a feather floats in spirals

as the water spills and heaves

in circling eddies, waves of wind and salt

breaking through your sleep

like the gulls and terns

flaring from the surface throwing out

a different kind of light. I have always heard

the ocean’s voice in the cries of children

and adolescent longings, in the what ifs,

maybes, buts, in all the myths and toils

of forgotten ages. Somewhere a butterfly

flaps its wings while a mounting squall

of water breaks overhead like a falling bridge,

crashing to the beach in a spew of foam

and plastic waste. The tide rolls back

leaving something rippling, glinting dark

and silver along the shoreline,

spreading in tributaries across the flats.

I still my breath listening to the pounding sea

thrumming like a heartbeat, wondering

on a future time when all our better angels come.

Circulating Light

Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.com

Under a patch of sunlight
glancing through the kitchen window,

shawled by the dangling leaves
of a house plant twining along

the edge, the glint of sky outside
and a freshening breeze bringing relief

from the fierce August heat. Each summer
is the same yet different, the years

passing in an eyeblink and suddenly
announcing that you’ve aged,

the threads of blue veining along your hands,
the lines growing around your eyes.

And you wonder how to tell it, the tale
so impossible to say, as though life were folding

in on itself and becoming something like air
or water, something like electricity or flame.

In the silence, the light dapples softly
on the walls like stars twinking in and out

and you turn away to go into the house
feeling younger, hopeful, safe.

Collision

Photo by Vijay Bhaskar on Pexels.com

Heading home,

two crows tumble

across the fields

tethered to gravity and dusk –

dogs bark

and on the news,

another war, another atrocity –

nothing changes,

events turning like the page

of a well-read book,

as though the centuries

were colliding,

falling

and spinning into night.

I keep the memories close

of your warmth,

the inflection of your voice

the day you spoke of love.

Midnight

Photo by Tanguy Le Runigo on Pexels.com

Tonight, you feel like fire, hot

and burning with stars.

It’s midnight out in the garden

and I tell you I feel drunk,

kindling with stars,

straining my head back to take them all in,

the whole panoply arranged across the meadow

like a TV or movie show. Look,

there’s Venus and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn,

a full Aquarius moon. They say our bodies

are composed of dead meteors,

a thousand atoms from space. You remind me of dust,

a stream beneath my skin of celestial ash

circling about me, living and breathing

and threatening to spill over,

soaking the darkness that pools at my feet.

I can’t keep you in. You’re a storm

waiting to break free.

The Swallow

The swallow,

that crimson-throated shimmering herald,

sheen of the skies

and lover of the summer,

wind-rider, sky-diver,

cartwheeling aerial acrobat,

strong-winged swing devil,

twitter-flitter, fluttering thing,

master of the aether,

that screaming swift and inkonjane –

wheeling, dancing, forking

far-flung thrum of thrilling electric blue.

A Poem

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A poem is a way of seeing

wet cherry trees in the rain,

a dragonfly on the wing

flitting from reed to reed,

or a swallow dancing

through an open sky, or a red kite

hunting low to the ground

like an arrow. A poem

is the strange flicker in a human being

seeking somewhere else to talk,

speaking words to build a grail

to the imagination, a home

for when the night falls

in a deluge of shadow.

The poem is a lamp, a world.

Lightning

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Lightning strike,

the build of cloud on the horizon,

rain, thunder, the disconcerting flash –

like a sky inside you

thrumming, opening up

with thoughts

of touch, your lips, a dream,

a forest creature out at night

and lingering there, tasting waters

at the river’s edge. Something leaps,

a bird, a spark, some small hope

bursting through the endless,

boundless dark.

Some Things

Photo by Oliver Sju00f6stru00f6m on Pexels.com

Some things 

are hard to say –

your throat choked 

with grief and ash,

wanting to be like water 

pouring freely 

from an open wound –

in the heartbreak song 

of a nightingale, 

or a tale of a fierce wind, 

a stag, a silver

crisscrossed spider’s web,

horse, bird, feather, wing

all daring you to come alive 

and be like flame.

Longing

Photo by Aenic Visuals on Pexels.com

I think too much on death

wondering if when we die we wake instead.

But the gods seem angered –

it’s written in the stars, they say.

Yet morning arrives all mist and silence,

just the early thrush, a fox’s cough,

the slow rise of sunlight – glitter on dark water.

Amid the reeds, still and motionless

a heron, hook-necked, moon-feathered.

I watch, hold my breath, but the heron startles,

lifts off in a clatter, wings opening

into the weave of its becoming. I wander home

longing for the night, your nearness, your touch.

The Gift

Photo by Mo on Pexels.com

The moment of waking, his soft breathing,

the garden, frost on leaf, is darkness,

is a question arising unannounced,

yourself at the very point of turning back,

the path running off to night – is stars revealed,

trapped crystals in an hour-glass, time circling

around Saturn’s rings, and I, standing in the midst

of stillness, of a gift I cannot name,

return to his voice, to the window’s orange glow.

Song

Photo by Louise

Looking at this world from my garden

I see how glorious life can be

on this day of endless sky and sunshine,

a tiny bird landing on the fence

to pronounce its song without shame

or embarrassment about its voice –

its song trills, loud and unapologetic,

as if to say ‘sing your own song

and do not be afraid,

live how you were meant to

despite the madness in this world.’

Maybe I’m tired of always lying

and pretending this is how it’s meant to be.

Life could be made of song

if only we could see,

if only we had the strength to choose it.

Spilling Over

Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

Some days spill over

like water from a glass

compelling you to write them down

as though you were composing music

or a song, as though you were clinging

onto life by your fingernails

at the edge of a sudden fall, each letter

of the alphabet a fortress

against the ruin, a new space

to inhabit within this lilting sound,

and even as my hand stops on the page,

the tune still plays,

the lamplight flickering in and out

as darkness sinks silently into dawn.

Nocturnal

Photo by samer daboul on Pexels.com

Some nights I lie awake in the dark

chewing over my mistakes, my wakefulness

a phase pulling me out of time

and on a journey

through the phases of the moon,

tonight, a yellow disk

in a sky full of stars

and in the corner of my eye – did something flash?

I thought I saw it, an angel twinking

into existence and alighting softly

by my side. I’m sure I felt the brush of air

as it landed and folded up its wings –

is this the end? Is this my final reckoning? –

my head bangs and I’m feeling suddenly seasick,

the woods outside my window

creaking and groaning in the wind

like a mad witches colloquy

gathered from the netherworld, sent to exile

and curse my own. I’m rent by pain

and mind games, dizzy within my brains cage,

my ribs cracked and aching

as though I’ve been beaten to the ground. Breathless

I witness the morning glow

cresting over the canopy, the night a ghost,

a premonition, a dark bird in a tree.

The Turning

 

Photo by Joonas ku00e4u00e4riu00e4inen on Pexels.com

Hurrying home in this darkness, in this rain,
there is a sound that’s easily missed, a still point
before a turning where the tug of the moon
holds the world in place, the house on this street
just like any other, dim under an urban twilight,
grey in the orange glow, and I’m walking blind

amid the shadowed shapes; the child’s broken toy,
the debris littered along the underpass, the emptiness
of the night. Just ahead the sharp cry of a cat
in some alleyway, piercing skin and bone,
the dark washing inside out, a figure etched
onto the wall pointing towards the blackness of a void…

“It’s all in your mind,” whispers a voice I cannot place,
as if I didn’t know, as if I wouldn’t escape this bind,
this gun at my head if I could, those yesterday’s,
and all those days before hanging around my neck
like tokens of betrayal left soaked and sodden
in the unmanned outpost of this heavy half-light.

Meanwhile, the shadow leads me further on, zig-zags
along the ground, running on ahead like a hound
that won’t stray from its scent, disappearing
into the murk. This is it then; the long haul, the be all
and end all of it, not knowing in which direction
to begin, to have some hope of distance covered,

some moments of release, the rising wind at my back,
the keys in my hand, my foot at the door. In my veins
lies the lure of another country whose sky resembles
a smudge of indigo shimmering in the distant heat,
where the guru holds satsang by the ancient temples
for the workers of the sweatshops and factories.

What is life for you, a heaven or a hell?
Both turn on the same wheel, he says – an awakened sage
who talks with a candour searing to the deeper parts –
only you get to decide which it is. And there my thoughts fall
to the patterns of starlight and shadow, murmurs
in the slipstream, the hush in the dark which brings me back

as the night deepens and the moon hangs low and full,
in this world within a world, this dream within a dream
that has no end, its walls paper thin, where I might
stand or fall or begin again. In this I’ve chosen, no going
back, just the blood-rush, the unspoken wish as I hesitate
by the splash of rainbow pooling on this sliding slick of road.

 

 

A poem from a good few years ago now, but one that came back to me recently. All things seem to go around in cycles, but bringing ever greater insight and knowledge each time. I like to think there’d be an end at some point or perhaps a different story, but I guess the moral is to slow down a bit and enjoy the journey, putting things to rights if possible and learning as much as we can. That’s my take anyway. One day I’ll get this life thing right. 🙂