It's Still Life

12 April: The rain stopped about mid-morning. We jumped in the car for a drive. On a country road. On the South Downs near Beachy Head. Past the Jack and Jill windmills. Views straight toward France. The wind off the sea here strips the chalk hills bare, bald as a golf ball, except for weedy bentgrass that the spring lambs and sheep eat. And we drive like the wind, he shifts down, shifts up, the road curves and snakes, slopes and drops. I’m a comfortable passenger. He’s a good driver, and loves driving these country roads. I might buy him racing gloves. As a surprise. Produce them as if on a whim the next time we drive from Brighton to Eastbourne. I always smile when I think of Eastbourne. My youngest son, when he was around 8-years ago, said he hated Eastbourne because it’s full of old people. Eight-year olds can be so extreme; love this; hate that; everyone is old unless they're 8. He tolerated Eastbourne because it has the best fish and chips on the Sussex south coast, and he’d tolerate a barn-load of old people for a portion of chips. And I glance over at the man I married four decades ago. Smile. Take in the softly moulded hills of Sussex, and watch lambs jumping against the constant push of wind off the Atlantic, and I think .. this is how I always wanted it to be. He takes a sharp right turn, and we head down toward the seaside. Toward fish and chips. And old people. I love Eastbourne.

These roads are a throat
Words lost somewhere in the fog
Windows on the wind

It’s National Poetry Writing Month, which explains the surge in activity. I’m following three different sites generating daily prompts. Writers’ Digest Poetic Asides, the National Poetry Writing Month website (NaPoWriMo) and my old friend, Walt, over at Gnomes. All of these pieces are drafts.