The singing of a blackbird stops me dead in my tracks. Enraptured by his music I stand wallowing in beauty.
The cloak of evening softly creeps over the land. His music continues and still I stand.
“Are you OK?” a voice, as from another world asks.
“Yes” I reply.
The magic broken I go on my way.
He, later to family perhaps,
“I saw a strange man today. He stood, head cocked, listening to I know not what”.
I see you, bare feet leaving traces in the damp sand.
Lost in beauty, you watch the gulls as they wheel and cry.
The salt sea caresses your sun kissed skin.
The birds continue to scream overhead.
The sceen overpowers, your tears mingle and are lost in the great atlantic.
In my dreams I glimpse you, a girl walking along the beach.
I have updated my About page to include links to my recent guest post Managing online distractions on Butterfly on a Broomstick, my author interview on Author Interviews, and my two poems Vampire and Dalliance on Calamities Press.
Visit my About page here: http://newauthoronline.com/about/
The wind gusting, mocking order, laughing at our pretentions. Our sterile lives shaken, purified by your mighty breath.
Like sand you slip through our fingers, beyond control. Certainties shaken. Life giver and destroyer. Bringer of freedom, turning the world upside down.
I am pleased to announce that Calamities Press have published my flash fiction piece, Vampire which can be found here (https://calamitiespress.com/2014/10/19/vampire-slippy-realism-by-kevin-morris/).
The vision of heaven related by the brain surgeon in the above article reminds me of Hardy’s poem, “The Oxen”. In it the poet hints that he is sceptical about the existence of god however, where he to be asked to visit the barn, on a christmas eve to see the oxen kneel he would go, “hoping it might be so”.
“Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.”
I posted on 17 September regarding my idea to raise money for the Guide Dogs For The Blind Association (GDBA) by producing an anthology of stories and poems, (http://newauthoronline.com/2014/09/17/possible-anthology-to-raise-money-for-guide-dogs/). Many thanks to everyone who reblogged and agreed to provide material. I have now received the first story from Sally Cronin, (http://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/), – Many thanks Sally! A big thank you also goes to Dave Higgins for his kindness in agreeing to edit the anthology free of charge.
The anthology is still in need of contributors. If you haven’t already agreed to contribute and would like to do so please contact me at newauthoronline (@) gmail . com (the address is rendered thus to try and defeat spammers).
Many thanks,
Kevin
I am extremely pleased that one of my poems, Dalliance has been accepted for publication by Calamities Press. Dalliance first appeared on Newauthoronline in August 2014. It can be found on Calamities Press, in slightly amended form by following this link, http://calamitiespress.com/2014/09/21/dalliance-poetry-by-kevin-morris/.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Oppressive heat. Barely a breath of wind. Smoke, something noxious, burning. A plane breaks the stillness. There is no restbite, the stifling heat continues.
K Morris - Poet 