A SHADOW FELL

‘Stalker’ . . . Photo: WHB – 2020

A shadow fell across my track
As I walked ‘neath the evening sky;
I became concerned,
My stomach churned,
As the stranger hurried by.

Just a shudder felt
In my worried step
As I caught just a glimpse of his frame
And I knew at once
What it was he wants
As he held out his hand to me.

“Think you may have dropped
Your walking stick”,
He politely said to me.
He passed it on
Then he was gone
And I felt sad to be me.

Omen Of Doubt

ON OMEN OF DOUBT

He caught my eye in the heat of afternoon
Transfixed my gaze for seconds
A cardboard cutout of a man
Alone and palely loitering

Transfixed
Imprinted in  that fleeting glance
The bespoke figure etched in my vision’s glass
Brought a faltering wisdom

Leaning on my sense of time
Disturbing my sense of normality
Suggesting some bizarre fantasy
Relating to Old Father Time
A reminder of both past and present
Yet warning of what is to come
A comment on my state of mind
And on my own unstable sanity
A pronouncement best left to fade
To curdle in the whey
Of a newly felt despondency.

The sense that age had brought me no peace
Only an uncertainty
That caused me to doubt
Not only my present vision
But my once accepted faith
in a sure future
Hitherto grounded in certainty
But now clouded in the unknown
And coloured in the shadows of doubt

Photo: WHB – Surrey, England – 2020

Lost In Dreamland

Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Pexels.com

Often in my dreams I’m lost
Searching for a far-off home.
No great tension, but unease,
As through those endless streets I roam.

Not knowing where, on earth or heaven,
This aimless wandering is taking me,
I trip and stumble, vaguely sensing
There’s somewhere else I’d rather be.

Pressure builds as worry mounts;
Unrest and trepidation rise.
Strain and traction build with tension,
As with my terrors I fantasise.

I always wake both tense and sweating,
No resolution ever reached,
Leaving me, instead of rested,
Stressed, still tired, my fears increased.

 

The Kite

Photo: WHB: N.Yorkshire – 2020   ©

As I watch
I marvel
In the silence
At the steady
Rise and fall
The relentlessness
Of that
Sinister hover
That searchlight gaze
The taughtness
Swoop-ready
Slight rise here
There a minimal
feathered fall
And always
The graceful motion
Governed by the gentle breeze
And those deadly eyes
Ever searching
For quarry

Oh the stillness
The forbidding silence
Alive with threat
Fine-tuned tension
So aware
Watchful
For that significant stir
in the grass below
That silent murmur
Minimal movement

No more than
a tension in the air
A breathing of the grass beneath
To excite his gaze
And trigger
His thunderbolt descent

 

Photo: WHB: N.Yorkshire – 2020   ©

A Critical Dither

Photo by vjapratama on Pexels.com

A Critical Dither

 

Here am I standing
Awaiting a YES
Are you still not sure?
I can’t bear the stress.

Love me or leave me
Make up your mind
My heart it is racing
It’s knotting my mind

This hoping and waiting
Is making me ill
You leave me here chewing
On life’s bitter pill

The tension is high
I’m poised for that word
Don’t keep me waiting
Please don’t be absurd

You should know by now
What the answer’s to be
When I first popped the question
You said you’d agree

It’ll just take a moment
A snippet of time
To join us together
In a union sublime

Please make up your mind
Or forever they’ll say
He was left at the altar
On his wedding day.

Night Fears

Photo by Tookapic on Pexels.com

 

The night has its fears,
It is fraught with mistrust;
I lie in a mist,
My mind swathed in dust.

When sleep will not come,
When rest is denied,
My mind is a playground,
Sense cast aside.

Struggling with thoughts,
Unbidden, intense;
A barrage of cares
That hardly make sense.

Then fears invade, 
Not something I sought.
What happened to reason,
To logical thought?

So I wait for the morning,
The return of the light,
To banish the tension 
And put fears to flight.