At the turning of the year

At the slow turning of the year 

the artifice, the ersatz tear. 

Our futures are unknown, unclear 

imbued with our unfounded fear. 

Yet as I hesitate a while, 

I catch your enigmatic smile 

that says to me, we travel not alone. 

Fear is for one moment then it’s gone. 

Steve Wheeler © 31 December, 2020

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White Noise

Photo by Steve Wheeler

I was up at five again today to see the summer light stream \ through the curtain / but it wasn't this that brushed my torrid dreams \ aside it was more likely the turbulence of life in fact I'm certain /

that since the crisis hit us like a slow burning conflagration \ my brain has been exercised by thoughts of creeping doom / and it doesn't take too much imagination \ for my tired suggestible mind to irrationally assume /

that everyone I hold most dear must surely succumb \ and I will be the bearer of a lethal infection / But this although a remote possibility is pretty dumb \ to dwell upon when it robs me of my sleep and is only a vivid confection /

of a strained imagination. My dreaming offers little respite contorted as it is in strange \ contrived and convoluted tropes / and it makes me feel as though each night my rest is disturbed and rearranged \ as I am led away in ropes /

of anxiety down dark highways of doubt and fear to places surreal \ and disturbing / to a rational mind and every night the visions rear in mists of imaginings that are at once palpably unreal \ yet if I allow them to be so perturbing /

I was up at five again today to watch the dawn break silently beyond my window pane / and I am so very tired of all the white noise in my life and how it tries to shake my soul but in the final analysis another day of this has started and I am simply weary once again /

Steve Wheeler © 2 July, 2020