Time to drink?
Drink from a bowl? No,
Drink from a cup? No
Drink from a dish? No
The bath, it has to be the bath.
She sits and waits,
For me to put the plug in
Fill the bath slightly,
So she can drink…
Tag: Water
Geese in progress
The mural is about half finished. There is a lot to do still, more details on the geese. Splashing water, not added yet, I’ve been trying to get the background done first. Then outlining the patches of water. The little goslings need a stronger yellow. Then the reeds and leaves need finishing. I’m getting tired.
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At Etruria today
Grey day on the canal,
Leaves float,
Cygnets shelter from the rain.
Boats huddle near the bridge,
Wrapped in old tarpaulins.
Smoke drifts up from stoves
that sit below the water levels.
Tea kettles boil and whistle,
Stained hands make a brew,
wiping off excess oil on grubby teacloths.
Leaves create mosaics of moist greens and browns.
Trees splinter into the sky,
Bursting like fireworks
But wet black,
No sparkle
Just grey, wet, dank…
And beautiful.
Sunset over the mere
The clouds lifted over the mere as the sun set. For about five minutes it stopped raining and the drumming on the roof eased. The mere was almost invisible in the darkening evening. The only indication of it were reflections of house lights on the waters surface.
One strange ripple broke the surface. The wake of something moved across the glassy water of the mere.
A duck was heading for its nest for the night. Snap! It was gone.
A few feathers were all that were left.
The ripples stopped as the predator sank deeper. Patrolling now up and down the bank, a snap here, a snuck there, finding food…. The Pike picked its prey carefully.
Beer
What people used to drink in the past,
Beer was brewed to be drunk every day. Beer was made weak so that people, including children, could quench their thirst. Water was not clean and filtered like it is today in some countries. People extracted water from rivers, ponds and wells. But they had no knowledge of bacteria or viruses. In some countries in Asia people brewed things like rice wine instead. Over the centuries East and West have followed their own brewing traditions. This affects whether people can tolerate the different types of alcohol.
Nowadays some beer is far stronger. This can have a detrimental effect on people’s health as alcohol is a poison and in strong concentration or large amounts can kill.
Drinking beer and alcohol are a personal choices. There can be other reasons not to drink, including religious and health ones. Life is interesting. Moderation is the key.
White sails
White sail, sailing, over the water.
Barely a breath to help you move.
White canvas, taut and stiff
Or billowing softly in the breeze.
Hot sun and morning mist,
A twinkle of ripples follow your wake.
Sails, tall and fair.
Sails standing out across the lake,
Bright against the wooded hill.
Your beacon shines to me.
Trees
The trees spread across the world, as man finally withered and died. Killed off in a last great mass extinction caused by humankind’s continuous destruction of the animal population and most of the plant world. Pestilence, fire, flooding and starvation had done their jobs.
All that was left were trees, rivers, marshes, seas and oceans.
The trees kept pumping out oxygen, the world was now habitable for any incomers, but there were none. Aliens may have admired our world, but they exist in civilisations too far away. None of them had things like warp drive. A nice idea, but not really feasible.
Nothing grew, except a soup of bacteria. One day that might evolve into the next great family of animals, insects, worms, critters. If man returned millions of years later he would not recognise the planet or its contents. Maybe the trees would remember….
Rising tide…
The sea is rising
The rain comes in mountains now.
Falling so fast its like a bomb.
Wet feet
Now wet knees,
Up to my thighs…
We walked once from Robin Hoods Bay
To Boggle Hole.
On the North East Coast
Of Yorkshire.
The sea came in
Along the rocks.
It was faster than us.
He was up to his chest,
I was up to my neck
When we waded out
Of the North Sea.
That was twenty years ago.
Now you only have to look at a cloud
And you are covered, soaked, flooded.
Where will it end?
Up a creek without a paddle?
Breadmaking
When my hubby makes bread,
It’s like an alien invasion.
It’s like the film ‘the blob’
Expanding
Contracting,
Overflowing.
The flour is everywhere,
Brown and white
Two packets of yeast,
Half on the floor.
The biggest pan,
The hottest oven.
Rising up to the ceiling,
Growing like a balloon.
Cooked
Nice with marmalade.
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I don’t remember…
I don’t remember it happening. It must have been long ago, before the sky fell, before the Mirohs arrived. When I was young?
The world had been burning, literally, fires everywhere. Ice melting. One day it was cold, the next boiling hot.
I don’t remember the day we reached 3..
Three degrees of global heating. They had said two was bad, but we got it even hotter. The seas won’t rise. My Mom told me that, it will never happen said Dad.
It’s all a blur. Running from the sea, trying to find homes in the hills. Millions crushed in the cities that were not on rivers…
They could have called it the great flood, but the papers said the sky was falling. What it meant was the rains and storms, so heavy they flattened towns in seconds, crops died. We started growing rice in paddy fields, it was the only way to get some sustenance in all the wet, dank weather.
Two years of hell passed. I was growing up and worked in the fields. All of the children worked. No schools, just back breaking work, bending and shoveling.
We hated it, but we were not polluting anymore. Life seemed to pause and take a breath…
Then the Mirohs came, an alien race. We saw their ship, huge, like a great storm cloud. They looked down at us. Like bugs we were to them. Then the killing started. The message, you didn’t care for your precious planet. So we will take it. Humanity is a pestilence. They put something in the water. Now no one can have children. In a hundred years or so…. We will be gone.
Will anyone remember us?
Mallaband-Brown 