This is based on something we saw on our holiday in North Queensland.
Cape Tribulation
Around its motionless scales the earth
and air teem with life. Fangs bared,
it gapes at the empyreal sky
from the hot night tarmac. It receives
the ancient light of its stars.
It is elemental.
Coaly eyes absorb the luminescence
of eons, older than all its ancestors.
In the vastness, the stars go back forever.
Tim Fellows 2021
One I wrote last year for World Mental Health Day. Much has been written about men's mental health and their inability to deal with it. Things are improving but it's slow going.
Crayons
Crayons are scribbling
in his brain again. Their colours,
so vibrant when he was young,
are faded now. Worse still,
they are waxy, stifling, dark
and corrupted.
Some brief flashes spark
in his memory, his mum's
bright red lipstick, the blue
sea and skies of summer holidays
before his Dad, wielding his child's
cricket bat, stole away.
A single tear tracks the contour
of his cheek at what his mum
would think of him now.
The empty bottle and the canister
of pills lying on its side
his only company.
He lays his head on the table
as the brown crayon takes over,
laying layer upon layer,
and as he closes his eyes
he feels the black one between
his finger and his thumb.
Tim Fellows 2020
