Touch
So long ago, loving hands touched these old ivory keys.
The day you left me roses, your favourite piece of music.
I placed my hands where yours had been,
Knowing I would never see you again.
Those beautiful roses faded, your memory still sharp,
Keeping the pain of lost love alive
Time can be so cruel when memory, I wish,
had faded alongside the roses…
© Anita Dawes 2021
Photo Challenge #341
Relaxing, as Earth spins away below
Blue and white clouds drifting by, floating free
Time out to play Baker Street, her favourite tune
Can this haunting melody be heard
In interstellar space?
Will she receive a response
An applaud, request for an encore?
Is it her own private moment
In the silence of space?
© anita dawes 2020
This saxophone makes my heart soar!
Image by Pixabay.com
Do you suffer as I do?
With a melody in the back of your mind
With words you cannot find
Taking the 45 bus to Brixton
A middle-aged woman in the seat behind you
Humming the tune in your head
Do you ask her, only for her to say
She has no idea why it’s in her head
Days later you’re passing a building site
Where the tune is being whistled
by a burly bricklayer.
He too cannot answer your question
A child in the playground, skipping to your tune.
You end up standing in a record shop
Humming it for the assistant
He places an EP on the record player
It’s the tune from an advert,
no longer stuck in your head
The title of which was ‘Many Rivers to Cross.’
It almost drove me crazy
I wondered if we had all crossed the same river…
Image by Pixabay.com
When I was seven, my mother bought me a black velvet dress for my birthday. It had a white collar with white cuffs on the small puff sleeves.
I felt like a princess, and couldn’t stop rubbing my hands over it. Mother told me to stop doing it, as I would ruin it.
My stepfather Joe said he would take me and my brothers to the park. As we left the house, my mother said not to give me any ice cream.
We played on the swings for a bit and then Joe brought my brother’s some ice cream.
I walked away, wondering if he would do as he was told. I didn’t go far, for I hoped I knew better than that and I was right. Joe handed me an ice cream, telling me to please be careful.
I said I would, but what child can eat an ice cream without getting it down themselves? Not me anyway. I kept rubbing at it, making it worse. The velvet was sticking up where I had rubbed it and there was no way to hide it.
All the way home, I wished Joe would run away with us, but he told me not to worry. He would say it was his fault, which in a way it was for buying it for me. I know that’s an unkind thought, but when we got home before he could say a word, mother ripped the dress from my body, leaving her nail marks on my back because the fabric was too hard to tear.
Joe got both barrels of her temper until I thought his ears would swell and drop off.
This memory has returned, because my daughter who lives next door, was playing a song I haven’t heard for a long time. It was one of my favourites, called Black Velvet.
It’s a funny old life isn’t it, the way old memories come back?
Anita Dawes 2018
Book Description for Let it Go…
You read about families where everyone is happy and life is wonderful.
That wasn’t my family.
My mother coped patiently with a drunken, obsessive gambler of a husband and a daughter with an insatiable sexual appetite. I loved my father, but he kept us one step away from the poor house. Loving my sister was harder, basically because she hated me and constantly brought trouble to the door.
Me? I couldn’t wait to grow up and live my own life.
Then everything changed. Unbelievably, Dad won a guest house in a card game and suddenly we were off to a new life in Cornwall. A beautiful place, steeped in legend and mystery. Would trouble leave us alone now, or was it merely biding its time?
Trailer:
Trailer:
Mercury
Mercury is quick and powerful, like the liquid it is named after. Yet its surface has a golden glow.
The Winger Messenger, the Magician. Still watering our Earth with grand ideas.
Mercury is also known as The God of Numbers, of Magic and Writing.
Some have called him The Trickster. This may be so, yet the twin snakes of mercury are a sign of healing so he cannot be all bad, not in my book.
Mercury can give you that moment of clarity, that thought that grabs your nether regions and will not let you go until you put it into action.
I have had those moments. I am also an Aries and often start something yet do not finish an idea. Mercury has given me many things to think about.
As I leave this mercurial Planet, I swear it winked at me. The kind of wink that usually means I’ll tell you later…
It is time for me to meet the King of the Gods…
Venus
Our cool blue sister Planet, our Morning Star.
Her true face hidden by opaque layers of cloud and sulphuric acid.
This doesn’t sound too pleasant for the Goddess of Love.
What lies beneath her shimmering clouds?
What secrets does she hide?
So often, the true face of love goes unrecognised in the daily grind.
How many of us have let go of that one person that should have stayed in our lives? What of those small acts of love we so often brush aside in our hurry to get on with our day.
Would that we could put love in a bottle and keep it with us. Spray it on our wrists in times of stress. A new kind of Rescue Remedy?
Times up, Mercury is calling me…
As I look back towards Venus, our closet Planet, I feel her blue shimmer reach for me, reminding me that love is a lot closer than we think…
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Our Earth
I will start my journey on Earth because this is where we all live.
Our wonderful Planet swims on the edge of the Milky Way like a newborn waiting for mother’s milk.
We live on this magic ball, spinning on its axle like a trapeze artist.
On occasion, there is a wobble, and I often wonder if this wobble coincides with those wobbly moments in my own life. Like any good trapeze artist, I re balance and stay on course.
There are too many beautiful things to see and do, so many beaches to visit, warm seas to swim in and beautiful sunsets that should never be missed.
So many people to converse with and learn their way of life.
Long may our Earth continue to spin in our spiral Galaxy.
I am off now, to see what I can find in this perfect alignment…
As I look back towards Earth, I see the Northern Lights and my soul is baptised by the glorious colours of the dancing river of lights…
I am now heading towards Mars… Please join me on my journey tomorrow ?
Anita Dawes
Whenever I am down or feeling one of many shades of blue, I usually need a piece of music to get my soul moving again. I have had many favourites over the years, both songs and instrumental, but this piece has kept me going now for years.
I defy anyone listening to it, to ignore the challenge it presents. The challenge to rise above yourself and take wing is overpowering and always fixes all my broken bits.
So today, on this special day of resurrection, I pass on to you my gift of a moment I will remember forever…
