Waiting for the time

Strange dreams recently and for some reason I woke up remembering this bird on the beach in Sicily this September - it was there all afternoon, moving only slightly when a dog went past, looking at the waves as if it was waiting for something. It seemed too late for it to be guarding eggs, but anyway, they'd have been washed away.

With a painful tooth abscess, pain killers and now powerful antibiotics, I suppose my dreams are bound to be affected.

But I'm also waiting for writing time, for poems, to get back to bigger prose projects. I'd like a solution, which some writers seem to have found, to time. Earning a living takes up a lot of it, even now. I am preparing resolutions for the coming solstice.

Since Aldeburgh, there's been a rather worrying message from the Poetry Trust suggesting a scaled down poetry festival next year. It's becoming a grim winter and I've stopped listening to Radio 4, stopped Facebook (as much as possible). In pain at 4 am this morning, I turned to Willa Cather's descriptions of a much simpler life. I was interested in her description of one character as being perpetually angry because of reading the newspapers. The hysteria right now is exhausting.

In this mood, I'd like to think the bird was just watching the sea. As I did that day when I wasn't watching the bird.