Author: rainevoss

The phone rang

like a cracked bell in winter,

splitting the moment into before,

and after.

.

I was holding a cup of hot water

steam rising like a small ghost

when that ordinary day halted

because you’d run on ahead…

.

You were always faster than me;

outpacing gravity,

diving deep blue seas

and being you, inimitably!

.

Now, in gasps of silence

I find you in my sleep.

In songs and street names.

In deep and happy memories

of white houses

and orange rivers

and scamming tuppenny phone-boxes.

.

Your mischief was infectious;

fridge raided midnight snacks

scoffed beneath the candy-stripe sheets of top bunk land

while listening to the saga

of Good old ‘Mrs No School’.

A reference only we will understand.

.

Dad jokes galore

factor high on the score

of things to remember,

and smile.

.

And not all the time,

but just once in a while,

I’ll picture you laughing

and riding your go-cart

down the concrete steps

of Gelli Crug.

.

But for now I’ll cradle your absence

in small, sharp pieces and hope that heaven is a place.

.

I hope it has scuba,

and herpetology

and people who appreciate your wit.

.

If it isn’t,

we shall not worry.

For we will find you easily

in every place that love looks.

.

©LorraineVoss.Feb2026

The Autumn Song

.

He wakes each day to quiet, empty rooms;

He thinks (a touch too much) but seldom speaks.

His blanket swallows dawn like pauper’s debt.

The walls rehearse his name, then let it leak

back into the alabaster plaster.

.

He falls through days like dreams that won’t be kept.

Each step erased, each breath a brief deceit.

His heart’s a house where many guest have slept.

He never learned the language of the sweet,

never bent the knee and never asked her.

.

The end arrives in iambs, soft and slow;

a tidal drum beneath his ribs’ thin dome.

Unwittingly, she’ll call to ‘no one home’.

The shape of him just skin stretched over bone

and from this moment he shall sail alone.

.

.

©LorraineVoss.Jan2026

Viewed from space,

the storm, not cold but careful

spreads, step by forging flake

until the Earth lies white as dry bone.

.

As the freeze advances

photons ricochet and albedo rises.

Rivers run under

and the ragged rock is smoothed.

.

Cities dim;

all hullabaloo muffled,

their heat eased

with blanketing drifts.

.

From orbit

there is no audible hush,

no reductions as such,

just a vision of time-lapse lace.

.

The world in obvious spin

practices ‘stillness’

without the slowing of time,

while

.

somewhere outside

of slick meteorology

the Earth, briefly and brilliantly,

reflects more heat than it keeps.

.

.

© LorraineVoss.Jan2026

There’s a murder in the evening air
retreating to the treeline
and in the sunset distance
a murmuration weaves
its mobius of swirling hush
mellifluous in silent rush
and in the tush a clutch of mice
rehomes from sickled sheaves.

The sky’s a little darker now;
the breeze a little colder.
The alder and the ancient oak
have jettisoned their leaves.
The mist is ghosting on the fields,
Autumn yields to winter
and the flying fox shall sleep ’til Spring
upended in the eaves.

.

© LorraineVoss.Nov2025