After a pause due to computer woes, I return to the airwaves with this offering. Its predominant theme appears to be the fear of change which, for me at least, is pervasive.

 

On The Border

The sky's dissolved in enveloping greys,

close as blankets, cold like hotel sheets;

looking over your shoulder as dawn raises day -

you test the gloaming's disdain for lamp-lit streets.

 

The mists of summer mornings, strange ...

for the time of year … or the borderland;

the Sun, that thief of peace, dares succour a footling change -

from fey imagination to those who say “I understand”.

 

Run then, run like the Devil before a smouldering Cross,

so that no-one and nothing can steal your silence -

this passport to foreign climes beyond the fosse.

Leaping waters like a vaulting deer, bereft of guidance,

 

you make landfall in the brilliant light of freedom; no cloud

to darken the way, threaten billowed storms.

Look yonder, a house sits pretty as the swift sings proud

upon its tiles. The old world grows cold, as the new one warms.

 

Chris Hubbard

Perth

2018