DORMICE IN WONDERLAND

7am drive. Workers at the industrial estate begin to emerge from the rabbit hole of a Night Shift. They huddle around a bus stop at the edge of town. The edge of new light. The edge of a nascent morning. Dormice. Dreaming of wonderland, edging closer to the rabbit hole of sleep.

TEABAGS AND THE POST-APOCALYPSE

7am drive. I seem to be the only person alive at this time on a Sunday. Traffic lights bend to my will before I even stop. Roundabouts are clear. The world seems empty. Devoid of humanity. 

I decide I could survive this post-apocalyptic world - if only I wasn't out of teabags.

ALL LUMIERE AND UNRULY HAIR

7am drive. The sky's winter bruise slowly heals. Faint contusions of yellowy-blue appear on its puffy face. Trees retain the mystery of silhouettes, almost daring us to find colour at this time. Dawn joggers flit by like the earliest motion pictures. All Lumiere and unruly hair.

REMNANTS

The gentle whirr of the bedroom fan pulsates like a heartbeat in the dark. A single red dot from the TV in standby is a distant collapsed sun. There are no corners or edges in my own personal universe in my own waking world. Just shapeless imagination and the remnants of dreams.

UNIVERSAL FOG

Fog has descended overnight and  conspired to leave secrets in its wake. Lampposts wear smudged halos of light and look to all the world like disgraced saints. Garden walls fade to grey. We both star and are bit players of this universal fog. It plays hide and seek with memory.

LICHEN

Frozen lichen forms intricate white doilies on a path. A path in permanent shadow. A path which holds as petulantly onto frost as a spoiled child holds onto their ball. Only later when the weak winter sun wipes all other frozen art from view will this path turn into a gallery.

TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

1 hour before dawn. Saturday's squeezed every drop of darkness from the fruit of the night. Cup in hand I open my back door. Cold doesn't wait for an invite. Pushing past, making the steam from my brew exotically dance. Tales From The Unexpected. If you're old enough to remember.

BLACK DIAMONDS

A miniature steam-train of people at a bus stop puff warm air into an uncompromising sky. Black diamonds sparkle in the tarmac. The spidery handwriting of frost is scrawled across car windscreens. A bus then sighs to itself to a stop, its doors hissing open in serpentine folds.

EARLY DRIVE - 7AM

Early Drive. 7am. A bruised sky. Clouds marked by the dawn/sunrise fight over light. My headlights catch a group of men walking to a warehouse in hi-vis jackets & trousers. Briefly they appear only as illuminated, animated shapes; a host of bright rectangles dancing in the dark.

A PREGNANT MOON

My phone says the moon is in a gibbous phase. I looked up 'gibbous' - "The illuminated part is greater than a semicircle, less than a circle. Can refer to a pregnant belly." 

I suppose 2023 is still in its gibbous phase. However, I'm really not sure who made the moon pregnant!

CLOSER

Look closer,

then closer,

then look closer, still,

and you'll find the world

unfolding,

gently,

at will.

MORE OF THE SAME

My street seems to have taken a vow of silence. Last night's epic revelry has finally been put to bed, presumably with a glass of water and several paracetamol. My dog still snores by my side, as he did at the end of 2022. Sometimes our resolutions are simply more of the same.