And mostly I think on the darkness, the craven, the barren. I think on the bitterness. And I empty. But that vase I sometimes fill with fragrant roses and wild stems, fresh, with heads blooming, bursting bold. And until decay, as winter threatening, displays it's rot, I revel in perfumed rainbow shards, generous moments propping up the props populating this sensual false spring. And I am there In the beautiful, bathing in a rich purple light lightly dappled by leaves from the last few elms which stand away purposefully distant, sentinels in time, a time that is past, as we all are. But not now. But not here. And I knot a crown of cornflowers and buttercups and sun shaped daisies and anoint her, placing upon her head the bright hues which shine blue and golden and crisp white. And she smiles a broad, deep, open mouthed 'yes', all the while, I, observing the inside of her upper lip, her gum, pink and wet. And then her eyes, grey-green, ghostly and girdled by a circle of paler, softer fractals. And she sees me... A furnace blast with a lumpen force cleaves my skull and I spark, absorbing sun, soaking in her, goddess of my emptiness. She places her fingers into the grey and she grips squeezing electric, being shocked by the tales sketched in virulent palette that trickle worm into her and out of her lips. And I grasp her hair gently tugging it pulling her nearer. I'm fishing. But there's really no need to reel in. She's definitely hooked and she's swimming. And above us in the high branches of the bedrock elm the rooks are home, observing our rituals, hearkening to our squawks, purrs and barks. And I'm loving them with their flapping, squabbling and nesting. As I am, ours. The rooks, Can teach us a thing and almost... I can almost hear, hear rookspeak. And the voice I think, I think the rooks repeating cry Says 'Keep her!' 'Hold her!' 'Love her!' says 'Keep her!' 'Hold her!' 'Love her!' says 'Keep her!' 'Hold her!' 'Love her!' And the sun shines. It shines royally on us, on this snatched at day And I feel it, I feel the heat and I know she's feeling it too. Somewhere... Sometimes... And when I'm filled, the beautiful, it's as real as the real And I ask you 'Why insist the everyday is more than the ethereal?' Perhaps your logic and method scientific emboldens you... Those I discarded some time ago, so as to witness and to reach out to my beautiful ghosts. And I'd rather be beside the great elms, in the beautiful, in purple, than walking with you on those mean and trite grey skied grey days as we march unwittingly into the terrors. The beautiful is dutiful, she glows in my bones. I am her home. She paints hot, she papers me bright. And when I am taken and stretched across the infinite cold she will burst forth from my fractures and she will set you ablaze.