Wörtersee at Dawn

Wörtersee at Dawn

 

We may still have quite a way to go yet until the world slowly returns to being somewhere where we are not all being advised to stay indoors most of the time and only leave your home for a small range of reasons. I took that advice on board straight away but it seems to me that some people have not taken notice at all.

I have wondered if I took notice earlier than most because I had read Stephen Kings massive book, The Stand. That is about a time so similar to what is happening right now; only difference was that that killer virus was an accidental leak made in the USA and not China. Hardly anybody survived in that story. So that has been in the back on my mind. Mr King can leave his mark on his constant reader as he calls us.

I have been a big fan of SK for a very long time and think that that was his best book. Its hard to pick a No.1 because he constantly writes great stuff, I read The Institute, very quickly last year, having pre-ordered my copy before the release date. We are about to start, If It Bleeds on Audible this week because Steve wants us to listen and enjoy it together , though I usually buy his books in hardback, to add to the reading pleasure.

The circle of people, friends and family, that we usually move in, have taken varied stand points in this strange world and I am not their keeper, so it was not for me to even say what I thought they should do. Not my business. The only thing that was my business was to let them know that we would be keeping ourselves to ourselves and not inviting ANYBODY into our home. We wanted to stay in contact, and have, but talks to visitors have been through the window across the little lawn. Only on alternate days, before dawn, do we go out at all for our run training, away from any contact. I pick up bugs very easily, I have registered that. I am not 21 any more either.

Whether through over active imagination or not I had a strange experience in the night. It was just after 2am and I woke up feeling quite cold. I pulled the duvet up tight and tucked it round me but I seemed to get colder and colder until I got out of bed and put on a thick pair of old jersey track trousers and a warm long sleeved sweat shirt and found a pair of thick socks. I put a knitted hat on and went out to the kitchen and put the kettle on to make a cup of cocoa that I mixed up with a good slug of Grand Marnier. Then I went back and sat up in bed to drink it. Steve was fast asleep, nothing wakes him. I have had a bit of a sore throat for a while and wonder if I was making a mountain out of a mole hill. When I told Steve about it in the morning, he said he had also had a slight sore throat we got a torch out and did our doctor and nurse thing and my throat did look sore and I accused him of having a sympathy ailment. He does seem to know when I have a problem no matter how slight.  Today I don’t feel that I have anything to worry about, I do sleep on my back on only one pillow, so maybe with so much time indoors I am just missing as much fresh air as I normally have.

Let’s get away from me and my imagination now and move to another way of thinking. The house diagonally over the road from us has had a constant amount of vehicular activity on two counts. The man who lives there has spent the entire time building a swimming pool in his garden that is thirty times as larger as ours. There have been vans of all kinds belonging to the builders working there and the last couple of weekends the house has been invaded by family and friends using the new pool. Cars everywhere, filling every inch of their very spacious driveway. Some of their family have brought bedding and stayed the night. It is impossible for us not to see all this, since our little house stands up on an seven/eight foot high bank and we eat our meals on a little marble top French table in the front bay window. There are no fences between us. 

Maybe between my caution, held firmly and sensibly and their caution; thrown to the wind big time there is a better level.  We will see.

I am however looking forward to the day when it is all over and on that note here is another of my poems written in Austria at Ironman time.  Steve and I love sports holidays in Austria and Switzerland. We have got our sights set on September as the latest possibility and hope to return to spending time away doing what I like to do. It will be short triathlon season though. 

Wörtersee at Dawn: Watching Birgit

The silence broken only by chatter of a water bird

and darkness gently touched by the crack of dawn.

Grebes calling to their young in water blurred

by the trail of ripples that paddling feet disturb

as a tiny grebe-lings peeps sound so forlorn.

What glow there is reflects a pale mauve light,

the full moon still bright, high in the western sky.

Little after four in the morning, still dark like night

when to my amusement and some private delight

my friend launches a plastic canoe, I don’t ask why.

At a dawn time that I thought was mine alone,

stolen from me, as her boat makes soft splashes.

She paddles into the lake passing a yellow cone,

grasping the moment to make this dawn her own.

I see her, as she heads for the suns first flashes.

Silently overseeing the morning at my look out point,

Woman and canoe float away, an image diminished

Reflecting as each changing hue the still surface anoints.

Only the speed of change can dare to disappoint;

 As miracles of nature are all too quickly finished.