There is

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

The thoughts are drops which form and roll,

Are watched a while like birds or breath,

Like everything that they are not.

Within themselves there is no “like”.

 

To journey and become again.

To be a thought amongst the thoughts.

To pass beyond all hope and loss.

To be the emptiness of thought.

 

When nothing is the world, there is

In golden light, in umber night,

In waveforms scattered out: there is

No space but space, no time but time.

 

There is a thought which rolls and forms:

A single drop of all there is.

 

Journal Entry – 23/11/1998

I am remembering a moment.

Time is ours and space was ours and neither belong or were. We had just been to the bank to pay in a cheque. The weather was dull and we decided to have lunch at one of our usual cafes. It was a typical lunch break. After the usual coffee and cake we stopped off at the gallery on The Mound. In there we saw the paintings: a Grünewald and a Cranach. The Cranach was his version of Melancholia. I never saw you in the same light again. The beauty of your rapture was something I remember now, on a train going in the wrong direction on a dull November. You never did take me with you, and the memory is still not enough.

 

Photography by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poetry by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

commuter

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll see her standing in the rain.
The place, the time: they never change.
She hugs her bag in front of her,
Her toes are on the yellow line.

It’s rare to see her raise her head.
On days like this her hair is wet
And darker than its usual brown.
She stares on to the tracks, unmoved.

For years we’ve shared the same routine:
She stands, I wait – anticipate
Her being there, existing there -
A confirmation of our lives,

And how our lives are drifting by.
Her toes are on the yellow line.

 

Journal Entry – 17/11/1998

Where does this fear come from… the fear of travel? Every day a journey, there and back. A movement through space, there and back. But can’t escape myself and neither can anyone else.

 

Photograph by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

Broken

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

He broke his journey on that day.

No reason why, no thought before,

He simply picked his bag and left,

Four stops before the usual place.

 

And still without a question raised

He left the station, walked into

The town whose name he’d always seen

But never thought a real place.

 

He wandered on without a goal,

Just looking at the streets and shops,

And people on their way to work,

And none of it made any sense.

 

He stopped and stared up at the sky.

Same sky, same day: different life.

 

Journal Entry – 19/11/1998

Who is to say what is anachronistic and what “just is because it is”? The is nothing intrinsically odd about how fields are arranged: they “just are”. If one landowner tried to straighten out their field, all hell would – more than likely – break out. People protect what is, no matter how absurd, no matter how bizarre the chance configuration of elements that produced such a ridiculous status quo.

Writing on a journey changes the way that I travel. Rather than sporadic and unfocussed thoughts I fill my time with words I can return to. It imposes a form upon my thoughts, which are by their nature scatter gun. I look up from the book and it is a kind of freedom, as if I am stepping out into some kind of dream. Then I return back to the blue lines of the page, and I am back into reflection and into the strictures of the world of writing: the world of work.

 

Photography by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)