Sleepy eyed, I turned towards the window that looked to the rising sun and found myself in pinks and reds and golden stretches of cloud. It did the heavy lifting in an instant. Funny how mornings before, the November darkness brought by the rain managed a groan on my part – as I made a mug of tea – not drawn by the low hung sky at my window and opted to scramble back to bed out of reach of the unsightly damp day.
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© 2023 Rick Frame
The sun is shining this morning. Light has pushed the dullness out of the winter blues. Rooms become dark like foggy places so quickly when gloom is lifeless in the sky. In the distance over there on the green expanse that borders our view, I can just see a beanie face running in the cold. There is something present here: I love the fact that today the shadows have returned, reminding us of light in the world where we can navigate hopefulness. My nervous system requires a shift away from news – just for a moment – and I can return to history podcasts where our ancestors faced analogue questions about being human. They didn’t have the answers either. And that’s okay.
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© 2023 Rick Frame
I find myself in a dry patch. Nothing inspires me to write. It is such a fragile pursuit really and no amount of persuading myself that there is something there lurking below – untapped, undrawn – makes a difference. Instead I go to past moments for therapy, recaptured in words to remind myself of another time. I am grateful that I do not have to do this for a living. Later I return to the browns everywhere and the gun grey clouds and the fact that it has finally stopped raining in the hope that I can squeeze some light out of nothing. Yet it comes to me: I have arrived at this place of meh – like a scarecrow for writers.
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© 2023 Rick Frame
Poetry is the place where there is a chance to make some sort of sense of things. I am struck how a poet is thinking what I am thinking or tugs at a mood that allows a breaking open. It offers a being present and a widening lens of the human experience. I can be in a valley at the same moment experiencing the summit of an invitation for other conclusions. It ‘forces us to be alert to the possibility of the moment, to experience and capture it fully’.[1] And, if it doesn’t, it starts the journey for us, deepens the path, deepens the wind as we walk along the shoreline of hope and brings an awareness of what we are/ have been going through. I love how it offers the angle of light, alternatives, second chances – and is not afraid to call out our delusions. It works at our feelings of smallness without acting big. It doesn’t see me as a project to save me or fix me. It touches those parts of me that I can’t reach. It helps to free me and understands what obstructs the mind. It just is.
[1] Anthony Joseph
From Out with lanterns (extract – chapter 3) click here
Morning shadows stretch. Wood pigeons peck, sun skies a truer blue. The startle of wing flap, leaving a feathered loner amongst the leaves that in the wind lift like helicopters. The tree that greets me every morning speaks of Autumn and dreams of April blossom. A slight breeze of shadow paints movement on walls against a background of terrible noise and suffering on an altogether different scale of complexity. As I contemplate a boiled egg and toast with marmalade, I dream of other flowerings, of quietening hope.
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© 2023 Rick Frame
Red browns against sky blue light, dripping olive oil sunshine on a bed of leaves, dropped for golden Autumn. Trees stare back, listening to human voices in praise of an early November trundling catch up. Squelch paths Holly leafed canopy, splashing dogs on lakeside mudbanks seizing the day.
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© 2023 Rick Frame
I wrote this nearly a decade ago … and I remember so many of the experiences that I included …
The song the words made on the page: frogs are jumping; fish are leaping and the summer is teasing. The morning star jumps out of the blue. Light cartwheels in delight. Mozart plays on the radio. Blissed out, I lean on the lighter mornings. Onto the beach and sea-polished stones get picked up by kids to make a face in the sand. There is a galaxy of memories. The sky is washed with them. They come from everywhere on a chance conversation: night falls and the sky becomes a riot of trillions of stars. We crane our heads, hypnotised. The valley below breathes quietly. The sun is drenched in the colours of a song that the words made.
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© 2014 Rick Frame
School Of Blue 
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