‘Clouds’: Sunday Thinking

down angle photography of red clouds and blue sky — Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

I believe you were calling me,
that young boy lying on his parents’ bed,
dreaming on clouds and patches of sky,

reading parables while others were out riding,
fishing or up to some other mischief.
I was alone, a misfit, a seeming solitaire

who was later gifted a wife and a son,
my greatest treasures. I hope that they,
through my eccentric faith

which has wandered far, will be
blessed too on that awesome day when
different clouds will descend from heaven’s blue.

Copyright Francis Barker 2020

Haiku: The Waiting Game

beach-bright-clouds-301599 — Photo by Pixabay, http://www.pexels.com

Sitting on our hands
Waiting for the clouds to clear
How long must we wait?

copyright Francis Barker 2019

Poem ‘Flux’

The window is
ajar,

just enough to
let in some air, to

tantalise the cat
hooked by

night’s soft invitation.
Something outside

is burning, hangs
in the yielding light, though

I’ve never
seen those crimson clouds

phase
to dusky pink

and then to grey.
It’s a flux which

eludes me
every time.

Magic, you might say,
like being in space,

and now

Poem: ‘August in Yesteryear’

Summer was once ices poles and living
on bikes; we were free like swifts
screaming circles in the air. Greens
were for football and teams twenty a side,
roads for playing cricket, where cars
were stalling aberrations. We lay
on lawns watching clouds, minds unfettered
in those zenith blues; guilt
and care belonged to
some other world and school
might well have been
beyond the moon.

Only later came guitars with boys’ awakenings;
serenading neighbours
sunbathing in the yard, or the shock
of full moons rising late in the day. We really
thought we had credence, like southern
Skynyrd boys, singing in that
sultry heat with school coming at us
like banks of cloud, the football season
begun and cricket nearing its end,
watching shadows gathering
where the sun once shone

Poem ‘Subliminal’

Subliminal

They put it up on billboards.
It made the headlines,
the tickers scrolling in Times Square
and TV screens back home.

It was like hearsay going viral,
became banal talking points
in satellite drivel,
a tsunami of information
which hid the pearl of truth.

This notion that everyone
who has ever lived
could be alive again today,
our eight billions souls
matching totals for the past;
all of us primed, exposed
for some terrible judgement.

How many saw the subliminal flash,
I’m not sure;
reputedly like an ad,
the split second image of cola
that wets your thirst,
though not on screens – in the sky.
A judgement? No ceremony, no glitz,
no alarming lord riding the clouds.

But word quickly got around,
between lines of copy,
in the things not said.
Tickers in Times Square
stuttered, then stopped;
people draining away
like water down plug holes.
Wi-fi was gone,
it’s just something else
we can’t grasp in the air.
The only tickers now
are the clocks, our watches,
while we keep one eye
on the sky

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Sitting on our hands Waiting for the clouds to clear How long must we wait?

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Sitting on our hands
Waiting for the clouds to clear
How long must we wait?