Joe Lake

Joe Lake's Opinion

The gold pot is here again. It’s an engraved glass goblet filled with gold coins donated on the night that the winner receives for reading their original poem of no more than 40 lines. Friday night, June 29 at the Burnie Library at 5.30pm.

Winter is here and I’ve got the heater going in my little study that overlooks the grounds of the university. My film script has come to a grinding halt. The action is all set out and all I need now is for the compulsion to kick in and I’ll finish it in a couple of days.

Sonnet

There is no fear in love when it commands

Your mind and urges you to copulate

As fireflies are lost within their dance,

Their need, this drive, this dream to populate. 4

If all this want, this must, as one relates

This touch as union is determined

And could become a being that creates

And is as arbitrary as the wind, 8

Then we infer this as the devil’s work,

This something else that guides the instinct

Is and was a dream-time’s quirk,

As unity is one, still quite distinct. 12

No matter how one tries to regulate,

These lovers never wish to separate.

© Joe Lake (from Songs of Love, 2012)

Fear Of Darkness A serial novel by Joe Lake.

(So far: Julie meets a social worker who says that she is from five hundred years in the future who gives her a ring to travel in different dimensions. They step into a parallel universe and return. Susan leaves but warns Julie not to turn the ring as this could be dangerous. She tells her husband of the ring and they go for a short excursion into the void. When they return, John is tempted to turn the ring while she is asleep, hoping to get some advantage from the journeying.)

John sits on the side of the bed and holds the sleeping Julie’s hand as he fingers the ring. He is about to turn it when out of nothing, a woman in a lycra suit appears waving her index finger as she says, “No, husband of Julie. You mustn’t. Julie is chosen, you are not, but if you’d like to journey, I’ll show you your future grave.”

John sat and looked at her wide-eyed. Then he shook his head. “Who are you?” he said.

“We are travellers who normally can’t be seen. We are from another dimension and are looking for people like Julie who is chosen.”

“My wife?”

“Yes. It’s her genes that are precious and can help humanity to better itself. We know because we see effects in the future.”

“Will you wake Julie?”

“No. Hold my hand and close your eyes and I’ll take you to other places.”

John held her hand and closed his eyes. There was a whooshing and as he looked, they were flying into a vortex of light. He felt no up, nor down, only the glittering sparkle of streams of aurora-like lights. He closed his eyes once more and when he opened them, he was floating near Saturn with its multitudinous rings and moons gently spinning all around him. His hand was still held by the woman. His head felt light. There was warmth all through him. He looked at her and asked, “What is your name?”

“Starina,” she said as she smiled into his eyes.

“My name is John. I’m Julie’s husband.”

“I know,” she said. “Do you like what you see?”

“It’s like being inside a planetarium, only we seem to float in nothing and yet I can breathe and feel.”

“You are not really here, only your mind. Your body is asleep in the van.”

“Can I move around?”

“Yes, just look at a distant star and then close your eyes. I’ll take you there.”

He closed his eyes and found himself floating, like a gliding bird above the clouds of a huge planet. As he pointed his finger to one of the two moons he could see, he was instantly transported onto its surface and with his feet, he kicked the soft dust that lay all around as in a desert. He stretched out his arms and with his left hand still in Starina’s, he flew over the surface of the moon as if he were a bird.

“I’d like to be able to fly, always,” he said.

(To be continued next month)