Overheard in on Sled Lane in Winter

Treading cautiously downhill,
on snow, sludge 
and ice, 
slipping slightly, 

I saw two worn men,
their heads bent toward each other,
strict Covid-metres apart: 
creased brows confiding feelings, 
bald heads, carelessly exposed.

They saw me. 
Nodded, smiled and said hello
in that old-fashioned, courteous way. 
I returned their greetings, passed by, 
heard drifting skeleton-words, 
she was so good to me, when Margaret went. 

Was Margaret his wife?

Was she a friend, lover, neighbour, daughter, 
sister, doctor, carer? Supermarket cashier?

Sparse clues cued my thoughts 
to loss and comfort,
pain and kindness: 

life.

In that country lane, 
three pairs of eyes brimmed,
red-rimmed by cold winds and warm thoughts:
connections, like mycelium, running underground.

Ode to My Pencil Oh, leaded pencil, with your scarlet rubber tip held securely in the grasp of your patterned metal shaft. I found you on a woodland floor…

Spring?

This morning, green and blue,
you here, me there,
where wind blows the winter grasses.

This sun, pale gold,
cold as nights in winter,
splinters and breaks,

though the thrushes sing,
winged spring coming,
drumming with hare’s feet

beat of change.

So Far

Once you’re fully inside the Constant Symbol and everywhere you look the synchronicities are increasing and accelerating you think oh no this must be death but maybe not so until you discover the source but now mathematics and physics look like the mere work of a factotum who can’t see anything. Well, you had no choice but to come along this way and look at several methods for thinking yourself out of it like the subjectivity of a purely personal multiverse— like social media from Erebus— and then you ask Chief where’s the internet and he surprises you and says North or South Carolina or something which is just a metaphor for something much deeper and scarier and immaterial which involves Truth and Logic Deconstructed and so you say One Thing and you think your childhood church is going to put a hit on you— maybe one day…

Please join me in congratulating crime fiction novelist, Val Penny, on the launch of First Cut published by Spell Bound Books. Without further ado, it’s over to Val to tell you all about it.

My Writing and The First Cut

Val Penny

Thank you so much for inviting me onto your blog today.

I have been writing and telling stories all my life. When I was a child, I used to make up stories for my little sister after our Mum put the light out and told us to go to sleep. Later, I wrote documents, contracts, and courses as part of my job, but my time was well accounted for and so I did not create any fiction.

However, I took early retirement when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and there were times when I suffered severe side effects from my treatment. I could not go out…

art by Edvard Munch

Silence

We walked into your apartment today
and found you lying in a bed of snow
We touched you with the care of a mother
We washed away the stains of youth
 
You have that smile
oh, that contented smile
that is bursting with love
and lonely nights
 
Your hair is long and softly golden
your curls swirl around the broken mirror
that tried to cut your wrists
and that careless lock of hair
 
We watch you silently
your static face
fanned by the swirling light
and a breeze that chills the room


Nightmare We fell about each other laughing as our bodies rolled and touched and smelt of familiar perfume of simple pleasure and life jugs full of wine and cigarettes burning in ashtrays and on Persian carpets jugs of foaming beer and joy of Africa and circus tents elephants dancing for coins in our…