Writing through a block , ‘Unfinished Prose’ by CMurray

by C Murray

(Winter 2009/10).

It’s always best to begin with an image, for instance , a pigeon has alighted on my tree. The tree is a Winter Flowering Almond and there is a pigeon in it.

The growth of the tree has atrophied in sections because it had been rooted too closely to the house. I have decided that the pigeon is a male, because of the purple ring at his neck and his confrontational sidelong appraisal of me.

I imagine the image I provide for him as I sit with my feet firmly planted on the wooden boards, and watch my tree.

It is a distinct luxury to have not alone a tree in flower outside one’s window; but a pigeon to observe, along with some wintering bees.

I have put a chicken into a pot about one hour ago and it seems that the wine and bay leaf is permeating the very wood of the boards upon which my feet rest. I can feel the bones of my feet nestled into my boots, upon the floor and the wood seems permeated with the smells of cooking.

There is a child dancing in the room next to mine.
There is a bird in my tree.
There appears to be a layer of sleet silting up the gathering cloud.
There is a wind rushing through the acid new leaf that makes the blossom
pinkish.

I had maybe wished a rainbow.

The two atrophied branches dismay me, one ends in a set of extrusions alike in appearance to a dragon head.The other lops quite impotently in the breeze; It has a mechanistic plumb-like sway, that could if I allowed my imagination carry
me, transport me to a place wherein the building of walls occur.

I have decided that it is more beneficial to examine the tree than it is to indulge in transports of fancy, not matter how delightful and provoking they may be. The whole tree is obfuscated by the twelve-paned window which confronts me.
The glass is warped and a naked screw juts out on the upper-right side.

and there it finishes, though it’s got me thinking about The book of Fabulous Beasts by Jorge Luis Borges .

'Birds and Animals' by Leonard Baskin, artist and illustrator.