Pulling Splinters

The past is an abandoned quarry, granite memory painted in stone, smattered with gorse and tidying tits twittering around a rust-crusted lorry.

Their talk is all elemental, of wind and the availability of worms, the baking heather in summer's clay earth womb, the sky.

The whistling shiver raising land bourn air, blue and white sifting through feathers and the tinny tang of gorse-fed bugs.

The past is an abandoned quarry. Molasses molehills speckle the crest, as the west wind sweeps up dust into spires, that whip through

this graveyard of rotting tyres. Silent reminders litter the basin. A one-wheeled BMX lies half buried in perpetual motion.

Piles of wood lie scattered; cigarette butts in a railway station, wasting away with rain’s slow decay in pools of tar-stained tears.

My past is an abandoned quarry, not slow and maudlin but a playground! Sunny days when we would crash down the hill on mountain bikes.

Descend on the lorry with hammer and pliers, to pull splinters - lead nails from unwilling wood. Before bagging our treasure and scaling the cliff face.

Languish in sun and wind and wonder at the swallows baiting the clouds.

The scrap yard owner gave us 5 pounds for carrion metal, foraged from past into present.

All images are either cc license or my own designs.

If you have enjoyed this poem, you can check out my homepage @raj808 for similar content. Thanks for reading 🌿

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