and thoughts come like rain

stay with me

andthoughtscomelikerain — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:56:26 +0000

something like a dove in the skies
alight my shoulder my heart my life
something like the light of all lights
breathe on me may i win this fight
with the night

stay with me my love

something like a wild abandon
i will leave my senses i will fly with wings
something like the heart of a giant
my heart in the palm
i will weather this storm

stay with me my love

something like a willful trust
in things other than stuff and dust
something like a raging river
oh i will live here
i will live here

stay with me my love

and that moment

andthoughtscomelikerain — Mon, 16 May 2011 22:39:01 +0000

when everybody else crawls weary into their beds
but you creep down the stairs and everything sounds different
the front door is louder in the dark than in the day
and you let yourself out into the night
and you take a walk in the nightfall
to the sea
and you feel the sad roll in and you cant stop it
and you take a deep breath
you feel the rain on your skin
or you notice the sky
you lift your head a little
you hold your breath and you feel fragile
like the wings of the palest moth
but you dont stop

and you choose to be brave

and so i have been mostly miserable…

andthoughtscomelikerain — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:42:21 +0000

i dont know. you wake up. and for some reason. you are inexplicably lost in a haze of all-the-things-you-fear-the-most. before you’ve had even half a chance to actually choose grumpiness, you are already amidst its vast and treacherous waters. and you dont have time for coffee before you leave for work and you constantly feel the day owes you a little something that its evidently not even slightly concerned about giving you and so you try and steal it…you buy a magazine you cant afford and drink take away coffee you cant afford, eat all the things that you know will make your teeth drop out one by one, you run late all day in some kind of protest against time its-very-self. and all this in the name of some kind of justice. but you dont enjoy it. not a bit. and you stomp about wearing a frown craving your favourite woolly jumper and all the films you have ever seen that have made you cry.

and so you see, i have been mostly miserable.

i never really write on here any more…

andthoughtscomelikerain — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:50:22 +0000

i wonder if this is because i haven’t as much to say in these days, or if my thoughts are scattered farther and wider and i have become too weary to retrieve them. they seem, anyhow, to slip through my fingers, turn to dust, become shadow or light, sinking into the ground or caught in the breeze, every which way they seem to escape me.

i have started walking on the beach again in the morning time before coffee and breakfast, before the day starts, before everything crowds in and sweeps you into its midst…its nice. the air is always colder than other moments of a day but its the kind of cold that brings you back. i paddled one day last week until my feet hurt but i saw the day in with a zeal for living that i dont have if i roll out of bed into the car and off to work. another day i picked up tiny starfish all the way along the seas edge and threw them back in so they didnt miss the tide and this morning i walked fast and furiously not so much looking down but up, all the way, watching for the sun.

i think it helps. i think i am realising that thoughts are to be held in careful hands, they are always moving, growing, shifting and you have to hold them in a way that they are free to be whatever they are becoming in order to truly see them.

and so maybe. between me and the sea and the sand, the barefoot and the gentle whisper of a god who loves me i might catch more than a glimpse, a glimmer, the edge, the walking away of….

i am asking today

andthoughtscomelikerain — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:47:10 +0000

for some kind of help. for a bending down from the higher places with an unfolding hand, an open palm, fresh bread. today. i am not faithful but he is. this truth i will lean my head upon, a shoulder of understanding. this is the ground beneath me, a place to put my fickle feet. a steady rhythm to listen for in amongst all the tossing and turning, the wrestling, the fighting and the losing that goes on and on in my own heart day after day. take a deep breath and

press my ear to the ground.

i need you

andthoughtscomelikerain — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:19:24 +0000

like a gentle breeze
or the morning sun.

sometimes

andthoughtscomelikerain — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:22:30 +0000

when i am fed up with my face. i wear a hat. almost everything feels immediately a little bit better.

i am convinced.

andthoughtscomelikerain — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:31:13 +0000

*unspoken

andthoughtscomelikerain — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:21:21 +0000

a furious stampede of buffalo out of no where, uninvited, shattering the calm still, a rift between one person and another, the silence and yet, the thunderous sound of hooves pummeling the ground, deafening. dust clouds exploding underfoot, punching the air. choking, blinding. everything is chaos and calamity, a twinge of fear threaded with a single, delicate strand of anticipation. the obstinacy of buffalo stop for nothing, for no one. and as the last clatter by, distance pulls the violent noise into something dull and lifeless, all that’s left is the swirling dust, the remembering and once again the fragile still.

dearest mrs m,

andthoughtscomelikerain — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:32:33 +0000

you were one of the first people i visited. when everything was new and nerve wracking. and i stood at the entrance to your building, your home, and waited for you to buzz me in. your reputation went before you. words like ‘dragon’ ‘difficult’ ‘infuriating’ ‘miserable’ your name would always be followed by a roll of the eyes and a groan of sheer exasperation.

i keyed in your apartment number and waited. hugging my clipboard tight to my chest. it was probably raining. it always seemed to rain when i visited you.

pushing in through the glass double doors. the thick heat of your place, difficult at first to breathe. and the smell. the strangeness of this shared living space, the anticipation of ‘the very end of things’ lingering in the stuffy corridors….and i was scurrying in, half running, as i was, and still am, perpetually late. you really didnt like it when we were late. or early.

that first look you gave me as i bustled in, wet from the rain, my unruly hair, nerves pulling my voice into a thin and difficult ‘hello! lovely to meet you! my name’s…’ and your brisk reply as you turn and pick up your cup of tea with a sigh and a weary entirely unimpressed ‘good morning.’ a pause and then. ‘you’re late.’

i liked you. probably from that very moment.

you were one of the first of the large army of naked old people i have bathed, dried, creamed and dressed day after day. at first it was always so shocking and awkward, trying so desperately to stifle my horror at mother natures cruel blow to the human body, for that is how i first perceived it, the cruelty of old age. now i think there is a strange and wonderful beauty in the sunken, shriveled, elderly appearance. we wear our bodies whether we like it or not, a loud and telling tale. a book about our life.

i dont know why you liked me. whether it was because i wasnt fazed by your abrupt manner and the way nothing was ever right. maybe because i would sit and listen to you speak of your pains, loss, grief and ill health. i wouldnt say anything, not until you had finished and then i would look you in the eyes and tell you i was sorry. and i really meant it. i was sorry for your suffering. it broke my heart listening to yours.

i remember how you were so particular about the way your tea was made. the length of time the tea bag touched the water and what went in the cup first. the way the towels were folded. the way the bed was made and the way the blinds were drawn in the spare room you never once went in. always so bloody particular as if it made a difference.

you were so very grumpy about everything. sometimes i would have to find an excuse to leave the room just to roll my eyes and pull a face. but i liked you. really rather a lot.

and day by day something softened in your eyes and face and you would smile at me and shake your head at the holes in my shoes and the fact i never wore a coat even in the most horrid rain. you would smile at the way i always used to sing in the kitchen as i made your breakfast, ‘whats that your singing?’ you would say. ‘nothing really’ i would reply. ‘well sing up i’m rather enjoying it.’ would be your curt reply. you would eventually smile at the way i would forget things and at the ways in which we were wholey and entirely different, and sometimes, on those most difficult of days you would let me pray for you, you would squeeze my hand so very tight and when i finished there would be tears in your eyes.

i will always wonder what it meant to you. what hidden place in your heart the tears were born and how you felt as they overwhelmed your eyes and rolled down your cheeks.

sometimes you would scold me for forgetting, or for hurrying you, or for being late and yet when it came time to leave you would hold onto my hand as if you couldnt bear it. as if the soft click of the door closing behind me was frightful and terrifying, that the sound of your empty apartment was too loud, too cruel. your day slowly freezing as just outside your walls it would burst into life.

i think about you most days at some moment or other. and when i drive past your building i always look and wonder if you are still alive. i would so very much like to see you again and yet a kind of fear grips me, i imagine myself ringing your bell and waiting and hoping and waiting and hoping….and i lose my nerve and i keep driving even though my heart is pulling me backwards, is parking my car and i’m jumping out and i’m brushing passed the flowers all the way up to your door…

the last time i saw you i took you a flower. the most beautiful one i could find, in the purest white. it was my prayer for you. it had been nearly a year when i visited. you already had guests and so i busied myself in your kitchen finding a vase, humming quietly. i didnt stay. but i put the flower right in front of you so you couldnt forget it, so that later when everybody had long gone and night was drawing in, you knew that i had been. you squeezed my hand and i could feel the imprint of arthritis in your fingers, the bones, the fragility beneath your gruff facade. we said our goodbyes and i stepped away but your grip on my hand never faltered until i had to ease my hand from yours until only our fingertips touched, aged and youthful, a twinge of shame for my youth and a desperate and wild desire for you to return to yours. to see you get up from your chair without wincing in pain, to laugh without the sadness that always shrouded your eyes with everything you had lost.

i hope you are well mrs m, wherever you might be, i hope your bones are not aching and crippled, that the weight of things no longer burdens your shoulders, that you are smiling and dancing and filled with an extraordinary light.

i will remember you. always.

c
x