It's Still Life

To Avignon: The Last Clear Map

28 September (waiting in ferry queue at Newhaven)
I.
maps dream in the glovebox
the sunrise is our compass
our clocks are made of salt

II.
the sea pulls at us
away from white cliffs writing
love letters in chalk

29 September
I.
journey’s labyrinth —
coins, a prayer, the bells ring,
my soul leaves, fed by light.

30 September
I.
black soil, tiller-deep —
shutters drawn against the heat —
sleep reseeds the dream.

II.
gothic black —
centuries have polished the floor,
faith rises like slow smoke.

III.
Les Monts d’Ardèche—
the wind pulls me by the hair,
the sun smells of hay.

1 October
I.
the harvest moon swells
breakfast eggs in chaotic orbit
feed each other light.

II.
palais des papes breathes —
a heartbeat pulled between faith and power,
a schism of stone,
a moon-pull,
a silenced hiss.

III.
god woke the ghost
inside the ordinary,
gave it chaos
a name
a pulse
a table and an appetite.

IV.
the palace of popes
is not just stone
it is petrified conflict.
cold papal stone
a faith fled into the rock, trampled by its own.

2 October
I.
let the pain of falling
be a cloud —
a passing,
a heavy thing.
be the sky beneath it,
vast and still and whole.

II.
French eyes look down
my bones forget their language,
a hand for an ache

3 October
I.
facing the sun, vineyards—
a wind wiser than my pain.
heat, a black splinter.

II.
slender fingers pull—
untying knots of memory,
nights warm with rain.

4 October
I.
Rome’s bloody mark—
I eat my sandwich and drink tea
where the beasts once roared.

II.
Nîmes
time snags here.
it roots in the dust of the Colosseum,
in the blood-memory of beasts
and the metal-sweat of men.

III.
Rome left its calling card —
a stone scar
for the next invaders to ponder.

IV.
and here I am,
sat in the same sun
that baked the sand for slaughter,
eating a ham and butter sandwich,
sipping black tea from a thermos lid.

V.
a sparrow took my crust.
two thousand years ago,
it might have taken a gladiator’s last crumb.

the past doesn’t vanish.
it just waits for a quiet moment
to sit down beside you
and share a meal.

5 October
I.
I shall remember
the wind in the trees singing
as sailing the sea.

fall’s fruity colours
cherry, lemon and orange
limbs bared to winter

6 October
I.
cows. sheep. autumn leaves.
winter hay in volcanic rolls —
the hills remember fire.

II.
Cows seek low stone walls,
where the wind fills empty moments —
we breathe between raindrops.

7 October
I.
this black bruise
is not a shadow —
it is the soil of healing,

the dark from which
the light of recovery
slowly breaks.

II.
Rest will come,
deep as this bruise,
and it will do its work …