Birthday Love and Mess and Muddle

Birthday at  beautiful, bleak and wind-swept Budleigh... in the company of flocks of Canada geese and crows.

I'm overwhelmed with marvellous messages and cards and calls and gifts...feeling so loved and remembered....so touched by all the angels in my life.

And at the same time confounded by despair and confusion, headless chicken exhaustion and cul de sac tunnels.... all focused on replacing a fireplace in my living room. 

It appears I can't have the one I want.

 All substitutes are a compromise.

I'm trying to replace my old life with a new one. 

 Attempting to build a hearth at the centre of my home

  before I've laid my emptiness  to rest.

So all is mess and muddle in my head and in my heart.

 And the granite and limestone of the fireplaces stay in the showrooms

 while every night I burn logs in the open grate

 of the slate and cement fireplace I have inherited.

And let the white ash pile up in the hearth

in soft spent heaps.