Poems are like portals. Someone draws a circle in the air. The circumference fizzes like a sparkler and we cannot look away. Portals draw us in. What lies beyond is in the eyes of the reader, the hearer.

Writing is like waiting for a portal to open up, large enough and long enough to gaze through, step in and encounter what awaits.

In November 2024 a tiny portal opened up for me thanks to a wonderful session run by poet and comedian Kate Fox https://katefoxwriter.wordpress.com/

Unfortuntately since then I have been MIA (Missing In Action), or more accurately, MIW (Missing In Work) and thus curtailed and contained that tiny portal to journal scribbles.

Today another portal has opened up, so with time to peek in, here’s what I found…

on the prompt ‘dormouse’

I take these blades of grass which you believe to have died
withered and be of no further use 
or beauty 

I gather each one, intertwine them, one over 
the other, over
another, until they become a new thing, 
a sphere of safety, 
home 

Eagles nest

Of all the places 
in all the world 
you could choose 

The lush green trees
with bountiful branches 
canopy of leaves

Available to you are 
caves of safety or
shores of plenty

Yet you have chosen empty 
empty skies
searing rock 

Expanse of barren 
you set upon this spot 
to view your horizon 

Scan for every danger 
upon this ledge 
you built your own manger 

To hold your young
feed them tongue to tongue 
layers lie beneath 

Of time upon time 
bedrock of stability 
nestle with edges of fragility 

A monumental trust of 
this monument of stone
which will not fail, you built home.

dear normal

you bore me 
and 
you draw me in 

I despise you 
and 
I am beguiled by you 

you control me 
and 
I long to break free 

you take liberties 
and 
give only emptiness back

you fill every space and crevice between us, take all the room, iron out individuality 

you flatten our peaks 
and 
fill our caverns 

you are the great plain on which we roam 
toward the horizon beyond 

inner animal

her inner animal is prowling and longing to be free, 
looking and searching for an opening
too long in her lair, the bedding is sodden - needs changing 
she needs changing, needs air 

her inner animal wants to step out, see and be seen, 
to feel the wind in her fur and taste the mountain dew 
to roam, to rest, to find other places to lie, gloriously 
exhausted from the chase, curl up to gaze upon the night sky

to awake 
to watch the sun rise and set upon 
something which is not her life