Advertise on podcast: Tales from the edge of the morning sky

February Afternoon The sun sets long shadows, cast the distance  upon the broken  garden wall But amongst  the cracks, the silence, beneath  the settling dusk  of late afternoon  A blackbird sings, his voice catching  my tears  one by one as softly,  gently  the rain begins to fall. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

S(he) He was awakening. The stiffness of sleep held him tight within its arms. The winter stars were wrapped in sheathes of time about his legs and lower body. From somewhere outside of himself he could feel a growing sense of urgency. A warmth. A remembering. He needed to remember. Wanted to remember. But a great fog of darkness still held him. Whispered to him. Wanted him to remain within it. Somewhere. Somewhere. ‘Here.Here.’ He could sense his own voice outside of himself. A movement beyond his own vision. A feeling. No more.  Shapes formed around him. He felt a tightening within him. A gnarled, knotted network of strength that rooted him down began to pull up from deep beneath him. Answering a deeper call from the pressing darkness around him. There it was again. And again. A pulse. A throb. A release of heat into what he could feel awakening above him. ‘I must move,’ the thought, if that was what it was, an impulse, a command, came into his consciousness. He felt the pull upwards. Strong. Ancient. Remembering.  He knew he lay between roots, trunk, branch, leaves to be and the great emptiness of sky. Something was tracing upon his still bound hands. Patterns. Repeated. And again. ‘Runes,’ the shapes, became sounds. The sounds, familiar, became repeated, and grew into words. The darkness around him began to thin. Began to dissipate. Light, for that was what he remembered, slipped between the stars and spread in warmth around him. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

She (1) She was not sure when it started. A cold day perhaps. Long shadows. Early evening. She could feel in her memories the wind blow cool from the mountains around the valley. A shiver of possibilities across the lengthening dusk. Maybe it was then. When the first stars blinked across the skies, the first street lights flickered and then failed. ‘Yes. Perhaps it was then,’ she thought to herself. She closed her eyes. Lay still and quiet. Felt once again, the first time it touched her. Fingertips across her face. A breath through her untangled, uncombed hair. Two hands like ripples along each side of her spine. She felt naked. Known. Not wanted.  Needed.  Essential to something outside of herself. It was not a violation. More a justification of her being there at that moment and now. A now that seemed to stretch from then until the now. The here where she lay under the freshly mown grass,the open blue sky and the rim of trees that nodded and whispered in the late spring breeze. ‘Yes,’ she admitted quietly to herself once again, ‘this, what is now was born from then.’ She reached out with her hand and blindly sought his own. She felt through each new blade of grass, felt the soil crumble, warm and fecund through her fingers, smelled him close to her, his breathing, his mustiness and then found his. She caressed the palm of his hand. Followed the lines and marks, the calloused knots and branches of experiences that were written in his outstretched fingers. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

A Sleepy Summer Afternoon It’s a lazy,  sleepy afternoon,  the villages  are empty,  flowers, in colours  of summer,  curtsy and nod  in the baking sunlight, radiating off walls  and shimmering rooftops, and, as if uplifted,  a single buzzard flies  and swoops overhead.  It’s so warm,  the distance  is translated,  from far and away,  to the here  and now:  a band of  light above  the winding road,  the asphalt, soft,  under the lens  of light,  a magnifying glass  to places and oases  beyond the peel  of church bells,  that mark,  in a sudden silence,  the slipping  of hours.  And it is here  that I stop,  and step off the path,  lean over the fence,  across the summer gardens,  the flowerbeds,  the well kept lawns,  abandoned lawnmowers,  the hiss  of water sprinklers,  the hurried slam  of descending sun blinds,  and here it is  that I stop,  and look at the world  from the side. And beyond  the crumbling brick wall,  the crooked apple tree,  bending like time,  over the broken gap,  the open doorway,  where butterflies  dance and tarry,  I see further than myself,  the slow patterns  of the wind  and seasons,  the trembling shadow hands  of leaves,  and deeper,  further into the folds  and valleys  of the distances  that await me. But of course, I am blind.  I can see  no further  than the fingers  of my left hand,  the hand that feels  the breeze  flow thorough  and across it.  The memories  and whispers  of former times  gather and press  around me,  shaping, waiting,  listening  to my breathing,  hearing the dance  of my heart  as I slowly feel myself slipping,  stretching  and falling  through. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

She could see their forms shiver and shimmy. She stepped closer. Her self belief was not unsurprised by what she was seeing: two people bound together by time, place-and not a little love. The wind whispered again, hushing her doubts aside  as she stepped closer towards them. She could see through their opaqueness: the edge of the lagoon, and the grey-blue waters still and quiet under a fresh western sky. Beyond, and stretching behind them, was the beach itself, like a great arm separating sky and sea, past and present, now and then. They turned as if they could see her, he beckoned her towards them both. His eyes full with belonging, his hand waving, almost urgently. She walked again, closer, and yet closer, leaving Cassie whimpering further and further behind. She walked past them, they flickered and faded as she went by, and as she looked at the gravestone, standing and yet tilted, deep in long grass and covered with tears of moss, lichen and split into a mosaic of cracks and fissures. She reached out and touched the cold, wet, damp stone and rubbed the green fur of centuries, away from the inscriptions and read: ‘Mohune, Emily, b. 1746 d. 1796. Mohune, John, b. Unknown,d.1796.’ She read further, and in doing so, dared not to look at the two figures standing behind her, but feeling them step closer, she read on: ‘Life giveth and taketh, returning all who live to the beckoning sea, waste not your days, and heed the wind, for your chime of hours, is what is left to be.’ She felt a mere whisper, a breath of wind behind her back. She turned slowly fearing what she might not be able to see. John and Emily stepped back from the gravestone. They had walked from the wreck, left the wounded and broken, the bloated dead that lay strewn across the beach, their bones shattered, their organs pummelled, their bodies abandoned beneath the unforgiving skies, across the  breached and storm -battered berm. It was too much, knowing they had each other, but others had lost their own  lives, slipping through the storm that had separated what was alive to that which never would be. One to the past, the other to a future neither would remember. They walked up the beach, to the edge of the marram grass, across their spiky crests, to the dunes that rippled and fell until they came into the lee of the wind, and the pathway that led them through the silver birches and bristles of Scot’s pine, through sheltered oases of silence  towards the nestling church. ‘I’d not remembered this,’ she said,’Our names must be here, unless this is finally the now where we both belong.’ He held her tightly, he couldn’t let her go again. He pointed at the figure still peering at the gravestone. Fading now, she was a mere grey smudge upon the stone, a shadow or pall that seemed to collapse into the gathering darkness. ‘She might,’ he nodded as if only talking to himself, ‘I mean she might remember us before she too turns upon this way again.’ Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

She turned and walked back from the beach. Everyone had long since gone. The storm had passed, the skies were  clear once again, and the wind had settled into restful sighs across the silver birches. The trees were still and yet crooked, bent and twisted with their boughs and branches in repose after surviving another bout with the seasonal storms that raced up this battered coast. The path was small, she had not taken the tourist one, the direct route, instead  she followed the sunken one, the one that meandered through the wheat fields, along the high hedges that edged the rippling folds and furrows of fields, copse and sky. Cassie ran ahead, turning, pausing, sniffing, following an invisible pattern of smells and traces that bound her instincts to territories of the hidden world around her. She could just see the church, the original one, the one that had been flooded, wrecked and mauled by the storm of 1776. Only the nave remained, now a chapel surrounded by tilted and ancient gravestones that stood like sentinels against all that time could offer. Belief in life beyond the tide. She followed the sandy path, the rabbit clipped grass either side, the droppings marking the places where they danced in the late evening sun. She passed the silver birches, their leaves shimmering in myriads of silver shadows upon the old red bricked wall. It leaned to one side, roots and subsidence having dislodged bricks that had galled into the sandy loam. The gate to the back of the churchyard was ajar. Broken and battered, it swung lightly upon ancient hinges, with soft sigh and whispers of the empty wind. They were standing together over the double grave stone. He was leaning his head on her shoulder, she had her arm around his waist. He was  bent and traced his hands over the letters hidden behind centuries of weathering, moss and incalculable seasons of cycles of summer and winter. Cassie whimpered and lay down not wanting to go closer. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

He paused, scratched his head with his pen, as if to recall something he had forgotten  ‘…and,’ he stuttered,‘something has turned up at the church, over the last few months, we’ve had reports of moving lights at night. Youths probably, come down from the caravan park, drinking, playing ghosts, larking around.’ She turned fully and looked him directly in the face.  ‘He is young, almost too young to keep the law, never mind enforce it,’ she thought to herself ‘Is there a connection? Between that and…,’  She paused, hesitated, sighing at the release of the stress over the past hours- not least from the interviews and cameras that had poked her privacy, as well as asking her the same questions about what she had discovered until there were no more answers any different than the one she repeatedly gave. ‘You know the smuggling history along this coastline, the shipwrecks, the beach and the flooded church…’ Her voice trailed off. The mystery of it all sounded too real, too familiar somehow, almost like a predictable television after nine show. ‘ I don’t know. But we do have a missing person, an abandoned car, and a wreck of bones dragged from who knows where,’ he paused himself, then added,‘and when.’ Behind them, the waves had lessened in their intensity, the roar and rage of the shingle had shifted to a hiss and rattle. The crowd of people had thinned. The tideline was mostly of broken wood, seaweed and fragments of casings, caskets and long thin bends of binding metal.Twisted and rusted they pointed, wildly, madly, at shattered bottles, brown glass and thin arms of a myriad of twigs and branches that had piled in heaps from the retreating tide. ‘How do you trace a missing person who you know has abandoned his life, his time, and probably drowned in the sea?’ He asked. ‘Time will tell,’ she mumbled almost to herself. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

Kent The cherry blossom  fell, along  the garden paths,  and  upon others,  that lay,  still, quiet  and hidden,  among the thickening shadows,  beneath  the stretching hands  of trees.  For he walked,  slowly now,  remembering footsteps  of those  who walked  with him,  upon evenings, like this one,  warmth in the heart  of sunlight,  his treasure  of life  this time, and memories Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

A fist of leaves For is not time dawn itself? Having shaken the stars from a now empty sky, she now races to catch the night before the call of day, dancing, skipping, gathering the shadows fleeing before her catch, her catch gathered in a bag, in fists of leaves and abandoned trees, the rooftops reflect and mirror the first touch of sunlight, the slow rise of breakfast fires, the first call and echo of the last of black and birds, singing loud and brightly, the night reclining to a lulling sleep,  Dawn dances to the last, a flood of gold, red and passing, a mourning empty of cloud, clutching her bag of stars and shadows, she lifts the lid of morning, and slides beneath the rising light of day, to other side of dreams, life and the twilight hush of dark before a smiling, familiar moon. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

The helicopter flew low, hovering above the breaking tide. The ship was a bleached skeleton of former seaworthiness. Fragments of sail and broken masts, collapsed and shattered, lay at broken angles and forgotten shapes, upon the seaweed and barnacle encrusted former deck. The press had long since left. Leaving a sense of puzzlement and cheapness amongst the temporary beach combers. They grouped and haggled along the retreating tide, looking for meaning and hidden discoveries in the centuries old flotsam and jetsam that bobbed and begged with the incoming waves.  The ship was not large, but looked more so as it lay like a collapsed and  broken dragon across the raised pebble beach. Cassie and her owner stood over the abandoned clothes, heads down pawing and shuffling sand, still wondering at what had happened, she spoke again to the bewildered officer, himself looking as if he alone had survived the storm. ‘Is that it? They take their pictures, broadcast their videos and leave us here, abandoned? What about the missing man? His car?’ She shook her head, as if shaking it for answers thinking alone couldn’t find. ‘No ma’am, it’ll be an ongoing investigation now: missing person or suspected suicide. We just don’t know.’ He paused and looked at Cassie digging and sniffing around and under the clothes, growling in low murmurs of canine dissatisfaction. ‘We can’t trace the car to an owner apart from it was hired from AVIS and never returned. The key belongs to the church, although the warden has what he thought was the only one- the original from 1772. The village family emblem, shaped like a ‘Y’ and the date are inscribed on each side.The key left in the car is the same key, but without the rust and dents of age.  Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

The Wasp It’s colder now, wings heavy, skies too grey for warmth life, and blossom, and still the wasp moves, struggling in spluttering steps across the broken stones. The fruits have fallen, time and leaf lie together, upon the frozen, naked ground. And though summer has passed away, and the dark is growing, through the clouded broken glass, I can still see the garden, the empty hands of abandoned trees, the colours of spring, piled amongst rope, recognition and roots.  The broken fence has slipped further, underneath the fading stubs of bricks, the shattered  remains of a summer house from yesteryear, overgrown now, with bramble, brier and blackberry bushes. And still the wasp crawls closer.  Can it see me, my face peering, beyond my reflection, deeper into the fall and beyond to the frosted moon and glass? Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]

War is  and coming, a thunder-scratch across humanity’s  eye Evil rises,  the black hooded horror  of blindness  an endless serpent  swallowing,  screaming  death no more Ravens circle,  life. ravenously  Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! [email protected]