Needing To Escape The Flatlands (Again)

I had been suffering from writers’ block for too long,
words stuck between my heart and the page.
This blockage was finally cleared on one of my
visits north to stay with my parents, where
the northern version of me could tap into
the still air of the North Lincolnshire flatlands
and the ringing in my ear is quietened.

My brain recalibrates as I travel North.
I have been known to get lost in
my thoughts to the point that I could almost
fall asleep at the wheel. The old road north
is like a record player,
I feel the memories pouring out as I travel.
I like to think of me also in London
at this very moment, as if there are two
versions of me working simultaneously.
In recent years I have found inspiration
comes in small bursts, like the springs
I see on my walk around my local park
in the Highbury Stoke Newington
liminal zone. Here, in my old home town,
the ideas come as a river. Not a gushing torrent
but as a steady, strong stream of writing.

But usually after 48 hours of heavy memory
overload, or intense blather with my family,
the flatlands begins to weigh down on me again,
as it did all those years ago. It’s at that point
that I feel a strong need to be elsewhere once more
– so I can think of the Flatlands, rather than exist in it.