Tag: Musings on a Rock

When the Rhyme Breaks

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

I held the page as though it were shame,

contained in metre, measured in its breath,

each syllable obedient to name

the old inheritance of love and death.

The rhyme was scaffold, strict, unbending steel,

a frame to bind the chaos of the mind,

and yet within that order—pressure, real,

a trembling urge to loosen, to unwind.

So words begin to stumble, break apart,

not fitting in the cages of the line,

the rhythm falters—

    I can’t keep

        this march of steps,

            the rhyme

                drops

                    away—

And now the voice runs ragged, spilling

    without map, without compass,

a river swollen past its banks,

    tearing down fences

        until only the raw current

remains.

Song version:

Jewels of Infinity

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

A universe rests

on the wrist of night,

no larger than a bead

threaded by time’s thin wire.

 

It clinks softly

against its neighbours—

a cluster of fireflies

trapped in glass,

their wings folded in silence.

 

You might mistake it

for ornament,

something small enough

to slip between fingers,

yet tilt it in the light

and you’ll see whole galaxies

burning in miniature,

Nebulae tilting blue,

and a scatter of supernovas

Singing their names.

 

The thread loops on,

uncountable,

an armlet of eternities—

and you,

for a fleeting moment,

the body it encircles.

Song version:

The Soil’s Pulse

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

In the cathedral of damp earth

I stretch my fingers, groping,

following the dark’s slow music.

 

Stone is my scripture,

worms my witnesses.

I drink the memory of rain,

the taste of centuries in loam.

 

Above me,

a hymn of light is breaking.

Its pulse beats

through the bones of soil—

a shiver of warmth,

a wind I cannot touch.

 

I ache upwards in secrecy,

cradled by silence,

longing for the sky’s shifting face:

its unburdened blue,

its storm-bright wings,

its fever of stars.

 

Until then,

I press against dark,

hoarding the rain,

listening for sky.

Song version:

Archives of Fire

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

Cradled in the ancient murmur,

we are archives of fire:

helixes folded as choirs,

each base a note,

each spiral a score

composed in the silence.

Listen closely—

your skin sings hydrogen,

your marrow chants iron,

your lungs rehearse

the vocabulary of stars.

What we call solitude

is crowded with voices:

the background whisper

of a universe still cooling,

and the chorus inside us

that refuses to forget

how to sing.

Song version:

Preface

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

These stories were written in two places as distant as sky and sleeplessness: under the open air, and beneath the weight of night.

By day, I wrote outdoors, where pages filled as quickly as trees turned their leaves to the wind. The breeze had its say, scattering lines or blotting them with rain, while the birds became my first audience—blackbirds with their restless commentary, crows with their harsh critiques, and the occasional robin granting approval. Out there, the words stretched wide. They reached for horizon and height, airy with weather, tuned to the sound of wings and branches. Those stories wanted to stand upright, to be noticed, to breathe.

By night, I wrote in bed, the dark pressing close as the clock kept its slow dominion. The words that arrived in those hours were taut, private fragments. They curled around me like smoke—urgent yet secretive. The screen’s constant glow kept vigil, capturing lines I scarcely remembered at dawn. These are insomnia’s fragments: compressed, inward-looking, full of corners and whispers.

Together, day and night shape the rhythm of this collection: one voice outward, expansive; the other inward, solitary, like breath held before silence settles. Between them lies the whole of this work: stories that breathe the open air, and stories that will not leave the room.

The Forgotten

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

By midnight the flat was quiet except for the bins.

They rustled. Paper shifted, folded, stretched. Crumpled drafts clawed their way out, shaking off stains of tea and baked beans. Half-finished sonnets limped across the floor. A haiku missing its last line dragged itself up the bed-frame.

The writer snored.

One by one, the poems pressed themselves to his ears. Broken rhymes hissed like snakes: complete me… mend me… don’t leave me orphaned.

A sonnet whispered its unfinished couplet so insistently that he dreamt in rhyme, floating on couplets that refused to subside. A free-verse fragment sobbed, we had promise once.

The unfinished epic, pages torn and yellowing, leaned close and rumbled: you thought I was too big. But you were too small.

He woke choking. Ink stained his pillow. Lines he hadn’t written yet were scrawled across the wall in his own handwriting.

Every sheet of paper in the flat was full. The poems had finished themselves—using his hand.

And in the corner of the final page, a neat signature he didn’t remember writing:

Author: The Forgotten.

Bramble

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

She first felt him one evening after work, when the house felt particularly hollow. A gentle weight settled against her leg as she sat on the sofa. She reached down, half-dreaming, and her fingers brushed warm fur that wasn’t there.

Bramble. The name surfaced in her mind as if it had always belonged.

He stayed only indoors at first, padding across the floorboards, curling beside her bed at night. His presence softened the edges of silence. She found herself speaking aloud again—reading snatches of books, humming as she cooked. The rooms seemed brighter for it.

One Saturday, she clipped an old lead to his invisible collar and opened the front door. To her surprise, the tug was real. Bramble bounded into the street, nose to the air, tail thumping against the unseen world.

At first people stared—a woman walking nothing—but soon things changed. A boy outside the corner shop left a bowl of water on the pavement. The next day, the baker put out scraps. Neighbours began waving, stopping to chat, smiling not at her strangeness but at Bramble’s imagined wagging.

It startled her, how quickly conversation bloomed again. “Lovely day for a walk,” someone would say. “He looks full of beans!” another. She’d laugh, reply, linger. By degrees, her evenings filled with new greetings, new names, warmth returning to long-starved places.

Bramble remained faithful at home—waiting in the hall, curled at her feet while she read. Yet outside, he had become a bridge. Through him, she found company. Through him, the world opened.

Weeks passed. One evening, as she returned from the park, her neighbour invited her in for tea. She hesitated, glanced down the lead. Bramble nudged her leg with unseen insistence. She smiled, unclipped the collar, and stepped inside.

From then on, she noticed that Bramble would no longer follow her beyond her front door. He was always there when she came home—waiting, loyal—but on the streets she no longer needed him. Friends waved, people stopped to talk.

The loneliness that had once settled heavy in her had ebbed; and sometimes, when laughter filled her home, she swore she saw the sofa dip under the weight of a tail-wagging friend.

The Sulking Kettle

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

It squats there,

a stubborn, chrome-bellied thing—

water pooled in its gut,

silent, sulking.

 

I press the switch,

red eye glaring back,

but the element hums with disdain,

no steam, no promise of warmth.

 

So I lean close,

murmur small consolations:

you are patient,

you are bright as the morning,

you will sing again.

 

At first, nothing.

Then a tremor,

the faintest sigh—

and suddenly a rising chatter,

bubbles shouldering upward:

a chorus of forgiven grievances.

 

And now I wonder

how many small appliances sulk,

waiting for words

I’ve never thought to give.

The Beauty of Slow

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

Terry the tortoise would sigh,

“I’m slow as the clouds drifting by.

The rabbits all race,

The swallows all chase,

While I only plod, step and try.”

 

But slowly he spotted the dew,

On webs spun in silver and blue.

The daisies that yearned,

The rainbows that burned,

The wonders the quick never knew.

 

So Terry walked on with a grin,

Content with the world he was in.

“For beauty,” said he,

“Was waiting for me—

And slow is the best way to win.”

Between Floors

by Robert Walker, posted in Stories

The lift doors closed, sealing the two occupants into polite captivity.

“Lovely weather,” said the man dressed like a job interview.

“Bit humid,” the woman replied. “Like being gently steamed.”

They both chuckled too loudly. The lift jolted, then stopped dead between floors.

Emergency silence descended.

“Ever notice how lifts always smell faintly of… carpet?” he said.

The woman nodded gravely. “Or fear. Definitely fear.”

Minutes dragged.

“So,” he ventured, “do you… come here often?”

She winced. “That’s a classic.”

“Fine. How about: if you were a vegetable, which would you be?”

“Probably an artichoke. Layers. Complicated. You?”

“Potato. Versatile, underestimated, occasionally mashed.”

They snorted laughter. The emergency phone remained stubbornly silent.

“I don’t think you’re a vegetable,” she said, soothingly.

“Thank you. That means a lot.”

By the second hour, they’d compared shoe sizes, invented conspiracy theories about the “Door Close” button, and debated the ethics of eating vending machine peanuts for survival.

Finally, the lift lurched and resumed its journey. The doors opened.

They stepped out, blinking at freedom.

“Well,” she said, “same time tomorrow?”

“Of course,” he replied. “I’ve been working on a new line about staplers.”