“Life on flat land is too easy for a lazy heart.“
Charley Lyman ~ Life in Portofino ~ made this comment on my blog which inspired us to write these poems in response
Adventures with a lazy heart ~ Laura Bloomsbury
Blind at first, in a haze of love laziness
sweetly swooning and prone to the horizontal
taking tumbles into a Midsummer night’s dream*
a spellbound fairy queen, lovely fool
of the sylvan scene, more ass head
than the well-beloved – those donkeys
braying balefully for fresher blood
Then full haste to a heterotopian haven
past the headland of hiatus, headlong into frothing
tossing seas, taking up arms with plundering pirates
and sea-legged as sailors in every Northern port of call
my body keel-hauled, I walked the plank and sank
through a tangled duct of valves and ventricles
Inside the chamber of the heart, in a pulsing play
the well-met by moonlight* joined head
and hands with mine, for an every day scramble
months of mountaineering and the uphill, years-long
struggle at the crossroads, decisions of direction
and riddles as prompt from an existential Sphinx
– until the beating stopped
*converse of Oberon’s speech to Titania in Shakespeare’s’ Midsummer Nights Dream
One of the More Unsettling Aspects of Human Geography -Charley Lyman
Oh, God, save me from the topography of ease!
How can love grow on straightaways? Accelerating
only. Never braking, upshifting, taking the corners —
never, never, never climbing the grade, reaching
a summit to fly recklessly down. Slight, rolling,
almost imperceptible undulations of emotional
entanglement; yet not tangled for you and I travel
in the same, unimaginably predictable direction,
and we become complacent, secure in our love.
Life on flat land is too easy for a lazy heart.
with thanks to Charley @ Life in Portofino for the inspirational quote and the pleasant surprise at seeing how differently we see things
PoetryPix 
Laura, pure brilliance! I am partial to your offering (only in part because it didn’t originate inside my addled bucket), and truly enjoyed the play of Midsummer’s madness.
I cannot find the reblog button. Help me, Laurawon, you’re our only hope!
Hi Charley – without that erudite and obscure enough prompt I could never have adventured thus. Besides your poem took off on such a high speed highway from the ‘topography of ease’ that I followed in the draft – struggling to keep up at times and hence it became a sort of dream!
p.s. And just for you I have allowed the re-blog button
Both of these are great!
The collaboration was certainly enjoyable for me – thank you!
Reblogged this on Life in Portofino and commented:
Laura caught the line and bid me to fly. Then she soared. Awesome. Thank you, Laura.
Hope we can fly some more in 2020 as and when the prompt fairy does the magic
Wonderful!
well Hello there Jilly – good to see you and thank you for your comment
Brilliant and beautiful poetry Laura. especially the first for me.
thank you – Charley’s is very different from mine and it is the contrasts I like most here
Can’t even begin to describe the visuals this set off in my head. If only I could print them. Or transfer them to my camera 🙂
heartening to hear that! perhaps you could make them into a pudding 😉
😂
What fun – collaboration is a good thing. Your poem went galloping along, then Charleys’ allowed things to settle down. And I see over to the right that you’re going to NZ soon – wow, lucky you! I can’t wait to hear about it. 🙂
excellent feedback and observations – Charley set the pace but unlike his armchair meanderings, I could only take off
p.s. yes am really starting to look forward to it now that Christmas and New Year distractions are gone