Creative Writing

Memories ingrained in walls of sand,

A forgotten time,

Footsteps echo through tunnels of sand,

The tick tock of time.

I hear the whisper of Victorian ghosts.

They’ve been tapping on our ceiling,

tapping away for

some time now, years.

Nobody visits or shows us love,

or fears,

just waste,

a landfill site

to the human race.

I left my elephant,

watched him pick up the pace,

his whole frame,

a huge immersion flame,

roared away from me in rage.

After years of neglect,

Elephant stormed, stampeded.

The Cherub’s confused face

trickles tears of sand,

his wings,

carefully carved,

melt,

and foam back to quarry,

clamouring in

vibrant magnitude.

The clown and I,

named Mahout,

no longer servile,

no longer amused,

Pat and Biddy

were planning telepathically

for a way out.

To bring down the House of Sand.

After a century of neglect,

their contorted faces wrecked,

they wanted to get back to the land.

In the past, they’d been the best of friends,

but all empires fall to an end.

It was another time, another place –

the middle of another century

when sand dust trickled down my upturned face.

And there, exploring underground

I came back to the tunnels and the rooms

of the undiscovered country I once found

and then couldn’t forget.  Do you hear that sound?

It is the chisels working night and day

to sculpt a chamber from the yielding sand.

Meanwhile, above, the Empire spread:

a growing stain, a splash of vivid red

across the globe.  Down there nothing changes.

A mouse might scurry across the floor,

a spider spin its silken thread

between one statue and the next

where limbs stay still and blank eyes stare.

The ghosts are trapped and can’t escape

into the blinding upper air.

You’ll find him at the Sand House,

cocky in his flat cap and Sunday best.

No eagerness to please, his hard stare

puncturing any nostalgia.

He’s with his horse in the sunlit garden

its mane and tail braided with ribbons.

He holds a loose rein. Man and horse

tethered together. Both yet to be broken.

Stories to be shared

Ancestry is declared

Notorious around this town

Depleted – it’s all now underground.

Historical site

Others may not know of its plight

Under the pavements on which we walk

Submerged beneath soil and rubble

Excavation may reveal some trouble.

A Quintessential marvel

from a time gone by.

A celebration of who we were.

Honouring the monarchs

and what we achieved.

Our arm going round the globe

so the sun will never set.

Until it does.

At least we made an elephant

a best loved pet.

A holy cherub keeps a careful gaze

on the mischievous school boys

exploring the tunnels and

gaining memories that will be with them

always.

One sunny afternoon, Arthur, the stable-hand, not an imposing man in statue, with dark features and a kind smile was tasked with grooming Sir Charles, the prize Shire Horse, who had recently taken a roll in the mud—and then, to add to his mischief, in a pile of charcoal left behind by the coal merchants. Arthur stood before the magnificent beast, hands on his hips, as Sir Charles looked back at him as if to say, “What are you going to do about it?”

“Blimey, Sir Charles! You’ve gone and made a right mess of yourself!” Arthur said, shaking his head. “If folk see you like this, they’ll think we’re keepin’ a walking chimney!”

With every stroke of the brush, clouds of dust and charcoal puffs erupted, making Arthur chuckle. Just then, Henry Senior, the son of the household and a self-proclaimed horse expert, ambled into the stable, dressed in his best waistcoat that stood out against the chaos of the barn.

“Arthur! What on earth is happening here?” Henry Senior exclaimed; eyes wide as he took in the sight of his beloved horse covered in soot.

Arthur grinned. “Well, Henry, it seems Sir Charles has taken up a new hobby:  I reckon we’ll call this one ‘The Midnight Stallion.’ What d’you say?”

Henry Senior crossed his arms, attempting to keep a serious face. “I think it’s a disgrace! A horse of his stature should be dignified!”

“Dignified, you say? Look at him! He’s got more character than half the folk in town!” Arthur replied, trying to hold back his laughter. “Besides, a bit of charcoal never hurt anyone. Might be the new fashion in London!”

Henry Senior rolled his eyes, but a grin began to tug at his lips. “Fashion or not, if Father sees Sir Charles like this, he’ll have a fit! We can’t have a charcoal-covered horse at the summer fair!”

“Then it’s time for a Clean-Up!’” Arthur declared, puffing out his chest as if leading a charge. He grabbed a bucket of water and marched toward Sir Charles, who was clearly enjoying the attention.

As Arthur splashed water onto the horse, Sir Charles shook his great head and flung mud everywhere, covering both men in a fresh coat of grime. Henry Senior gasped as muddy water splattered his pristine waistcoat.

“Now you’re really in style!” Arthur laughed, doubling over.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake—” Henry Senior started, but he couldn’t stifle his own chuckles. “If only my father could see me now!”

With a teamwork that could only be described as hilariously chaotic, Arthur and Henry eventually managed to scrub the worst of the charcoal off Sir Charles. Just as they stepped back to admire their work, the stable door swung open, and in walked Henry Senior’s father, a strict gentleman with a reputation for order.

“What in the blazes is happening here?” he boomed, eyeing the dishevelled stable, the muddy horse, and his son’s soiled waistcoat.

Henry Senior stammered, “Uh, we were just, um, checking on Sir Charles… his, uh, new look?”

Arthur beamed, ever the instigator. “A bit of a makeover, sir! Quite the trend, if I may say so!”

Henry Senior shot him a warning glance, but it was too late. Their father raised an eyebrow, and for a moment, the tension hung heavy in the air. Then, unexpectedly, the old man burst into laughter. “A fashionable horse? Now that’s something I’d like to see at the fair!”

William Senior announced “Henry, capture old Sir Charles and his master on the old gallows, will ya?” Authur and Sir Charles stood gallant and proud staring into the lens, a moment that reverberated in history for millennia.

I would have remembered, I would have remembered, but she never told the story of the tunnels or the abandoned house, not even once.

As a ten year old girl with eyes as bright as stars, even if Mother had said no, absolutely not, she would have grabbed her sister’s hand anyway, and said “Come on Mew, get your coat on, Pat’s taking us to see the elephant!”

Pat was older, bolder. He held court in the cloisters under the stern gaze of the queen, with the other boys sitting at his feet in quiet worship.

He said he should have married Jean. I wonder why he didn’t.

But if he had, there wouldn’t have been David, or Tony, or me.

The boys went to Beechfield School. The house had already been buried in ash but the schoolboys could still explore every twist and turn of the tunnels from their source in the graveyard, all the way up to Priory Place, if you believe the stories.  

But I never got chance to hear those stories.

A stern face, a cudgel, weskitt

There are shadows

The long roads travelled

Fortunes fought for

None attained

Wife met, children?

Grit and determination

Stopped in his tracks

Dust-filled cloisters

cut by shafts of light.

An upturned face,

a head of curling hair

flanked by stone wings.

Celebrating man’s glory,

domination over nature,

and other men.

Forging the steel of Empire

from crushed, gritted stone.

A searching angel’s face,

filled with wistful desperation ;

dreaming of clouds,

dreaming of life,

reaching for heaven.

But what use are angel’s wings here

where once men toiled

as you rest in endless time,

entombed in darkness.

A grand creation, carved from sand,

Our heritage then destroyed by time.

How could a house be formed of sand

And then that house be lost to time?

With scant regard its fate was sealed.

I walk the path, though now so dark

Where forebears trod, when bathed in light.

How could a place now deepest dark

Have once been blessed with precious light?

A mystery to so many now.

This place was once so full of life

But now it’s deathly silent, still.

How could that tunnel, oozing life

Have met its fate and fallen still?

We wonder, puzzle, what have we done?

But now the Sand House rises up,

Its story told to folk anew.

How could the memories not rise up

Retelling what the world once knew?

A fading legend back from the brink.

Caught forever in black and white and fading

light, set in an alcove, high beside

an arch: a face emerging from the wall.

Its mouth more grimace than a smile, cheeks

wide and rounded as an Olmec stone, but also

a chinoiserie mask , all set beneath

a sprig of fringe and rising, pointed hat. No clown

as it’s been named, this head belongs

to an unknown fiend, an imp or sprite, a puppet

a billion grains, a foe or glaring omen

from some ancient tale, its sightless eyes, a vision

carved from darkness, fixing us in sand and time.

From their tropical

Land to the dark underground

Fettered, both, in sand

I met a traveller on that northern road

Who had seen those corridors of stone

Hewn out of the living rock

Half-hidden and concealed from view

There were creatures from an antique land

Mystical and menacing to the eye

And these men there did not understand

They chose to bury them away from sight

And now they lay in time forgot

But in our dreams they come alive

At the first crack of light

salt lace seams unwind spinning

around her apron strings

Biddy slips from her sand shoes into clogs

clomps down the cloisters

her skirt sweeps the stairs

as she stomps up the steps

this stone wallflower will not wait to waltz

dizzy on tipsy cake she swirls

circling the ballroom, squaring a quadrille

stamping her feet, dancing a reel

dreaming of music, of patterned polka

Biddy and Pat tripping the light

and leaving dance steps in the sand