The thing is I love being me...
but if I had to be something else,
then let me be a thing with wings,
a feathered thing, that could lift up
and be anchored to the sky, or tilt
and let the earth fall away beneath
my feet;or let me be a thing with fins,
a deep-sea thing, that could dive down
and not drown, but fly through waters
beneath a distant flickering heaven
where wave-caps break, to wherethe earth breaks itself in two
and spumes quick-cooling fire
and black smoke plumes
and sulphur-breathing
creatures live.Sea Gull
(After “Bad Co” // Mick Ralphs & Paul Rodgers)
I sat on the shingle on that May morning,
with ashes floating towards the horizon,
going away from where you were from.I was a woman at the end of her questions,
knowing that the world would go on…
and watching the waters take you away.I watched the morning mourn its hours
waiting the turning of clocks and seasons…
and sat on the shingle at the end of days.I watched the sea gull that tipped his wings
and flew westerly towards the setting of sun…
and I knew that you were gone.Spring Morning, Cley
Between the gusts, a hidden warble.
Silver reeds, emerging from dark waters.
Low-flying geese, chasing and calling.Wind directly from the north
spitting arctic ice.
A swan high and silent against the cloud
almost unnoticed.
Flash of headlights down by the beach,
brave souls going down to the sea.Weather gods playing fast and loose,
brightening skies, telling lies.
Take a moment – pretend – calm.
Watch the patterns on the water.I am who you allowed me to be.
Chinchilla
Pure white
elegance,
and a stare
that would drop you dead
at 20 paces.Sometimes life
just isn’t
fair.~
(image from @stampsbot)
Six years on
I remember you huddled in the hall,
"It wasn’t meant to be this way,"
you said.I remember walking into the ward,
"Are you ok?" you asked.
I was not.I remember me and the cats not sleeping,
"What’s going on?" Claws and curiosity,
hacking at your bed.I remember the consultant telling me.
"Not ready - no-one ever is," he said.
I was not.I remember how the sun was setting
and the field was silent, and I walked home
alone. I called your best friend
and then my brother
and neither of them
picked up the phone.I remember telling Dodge and Felix,
and I remember how we slept togetherin your scent
and all of us alone.
The Comfort of White Flowers
Please don’t ask to walk with me
along the quiet roads, where soft
Venus hums among the comfreys.Don’t distract me from the bee
as she settles to drinking,
in the shade of nettle leaves:let me fall, enthralled, to the waiting,
the aching, the shrinking myself so small
that I might also taste such sweetness;let me hear the silence that hums
its consent to my not doing any thing,
any busy-ness, messy, living thing;let me cling to a white flower,
and for a lifetime, be for a moment, still.Tall Stories
I have no tall tales to tell,
only stories of the places I have been
that made me feel so very small.Arid places, in the high hills,
where flags pray in elemental tones,
and the land is shades of grey.Liminal spaces, almost in the sky,
where snow-peaks meet the clouds
and there are temples in the caves.Places where oxen skulls keep out devils,
and young monks wear track suits
and drink from plastic bottles…and cafés with no running water
offer free wifi, and Italian coffee,
and prayer wheels still turn.
I have no tall tales to tell,
only stories of where I have walkedand watched the world shrinking.
Beached
Not rotting, just resting,
waiting patiently for the tide.
Mill Cottage, River Bure
The cottage is still there
and the river churns beneath
the bridge, racing to no purpose.
It tumbles, and froths, and foams
in frustration at the absence of a wheel
upon which to ride.In summer, there are swimmers
braving the unnatural cold to feel
the pull of the current, imagining
being carried all the way to the sea
on a primordial tide.But this is April: wind and drizzle.
No-one’s minded to wade in
through the squelch of mud,
more bog than bank, dreary
with winter brash, but then:
a note of hope: the wren sings
its quiet overture to spring.Ode to a Breakwater
Is it only me that takes such pleasure
in this agglomeration of wooden planks
and rusting bolts? I confess a penchant
for the humble groyne, whose very name
speaks of pain, of withstanding,
groaning in its attempt to hold back
the tide-wash, to stop the beach
from running away to sea.Sitting on the shingle, my back supported
by your sturdiness, I feel not only held
but warmed…the morning’s sun leaches
back out of you, albeit damply, through
my pale winter skin.The sea is wise to your attempt
to disrupt its purpose and sets about
filling the spaces between the sleepers
with pebbles, small and twisting, loose
mortar to make the bulwark more fast,
but in doing so weakening your ability
to hold the most by letting the small away.Pretty pebbles, shining strata, against
the dullness of your brownish grey,
but we both know them for what they
are: mere stop-gaps that one strong wave
will winkle out and wash well away.On meeting a mole
at midday
So far from your tunnels,
black velvet fades to grey,
like some mad-dog
Englishman at noon,
what were you doing out?
Scrabbling on the footpath,
drought-dry gravel blunting
claws and yielding nothing
to flesh-pink paws.
Wide-eyed despite
the harsh, gritty, light,
you kept your snout
to the grinding stone,
kept trying to dig
your way back in.Just to say...
I went again down to the shore,
where we used to walk, and tried to read
the calligraphy upon the water.But I’ve lost the language
we used to share, and cannot find
the words, the ink bleeding
at the edges of the frame.
I miss you. Us. How it was.
I guess today was just another day.
Only when I took the photo for this post did I notice that one of the thre'penny bits my granddad kept was of Australian origin...now there's another untold story...how did that end up thirty years later in the pay-packet of a south Wales' miner. Oh, if only the coins could speak.
The house, the page, the tree
(after Alicia Ostriker)
I am thankful said the house,
that you removed all the trees
so that I can see the sky
and I can breathe,
and that my own roots
feel a certain sense of ease.I am thankful said the page,
for thoughts spilled in coloured ink
so that you can see the why
and you can breathe,
and that your own wings
stretch themselves to fly.I am thankful said the tree,
that my pear-white flowerspearl out from this soil memory
of the orchard where
it all began and we
can do whatever it is we need.Mycelium & Worms & Other things
Invisible under ground,
self-perpetuating,
with a thousand eyes,
they weave a lacework
of tunnels, that stretch
and stretch,and in the silence
when we have gone
to our own ground,
their jungle symphonies
will soar up the sapways,
the undisturbed songways,
of all the mighty trees.And the sound of colour
will bleed back into the world.
Cemetery Lane, Lunchtime
The gathering daffodil scent of loneliness fades along the lane of dreaming cherry trees, where the lost geese are calling back to crows. Two and fro, the arguments between the call of the wild and the harsh bliss of being home. Meanwhile, on the other side of the hedge the raven sits on his favourite headstone, supervising the cutters of grass and diggers of new graves and ignoring the mourners of last-year’s dead who wait for the peace to ooze from plastic sandwiches, the same consistency of cheese
as melted tar. The jets screaming overhead rain down promises, like umbrellas, or horse-shoes, or severed rabbits’ feet clutching clover, promises of holidays or holy days, or maybe just a few more, like, you know, ordinary days…without the lonely scent of cloudy daffodils.Remembering Gatsby
From the kitchen window,
beyond the fence, I see it,
the pale green security light,
on the church wall…and I imagine the lawn
as water, the wall as a pier.I can almost hear the music
and laughter, its unreality,
its shame.
I can see the light
across the water.I can feel the pain.
~
Artwork from the cover of the BCA edition of collected works of Fitzgerald...uncredited in the book.
Time
An imagined space
in which we can pretend
that things happened
and, what is worse,
that they may have been
important things.Teignmouth Beach
What is this old-blood sand,
trapped between iron and rust and chocolate?What’s with this tempestuous sky,
running between opal and lead and tourmaline?What is this quicksilver sea,
calmly fading all the colours to ‘old blue jeans’?And will I find the answers in the razor clams,
or must I untie the ropes that hold the breakwater planks in place, and count every single stone or limpet shell?Or shall I just keep walking…and let the wind & waves carry all my idle thoughts away?
Essence of Winter
(a group poem)
Fierceness swaddling tears,
a togetherness, listening
to the murmursDespite the hope and solitude
of emotions, there is focussed
the mystic.(words from writers & non-writers at a Cley reading)
Beached Rosebud
Roses are red, but they do not bleed
nor drown. Tossed into the water they swim
and wait to wash back up upon the sand,
among the stones of forgotten valentines,
all the lost love of granular heartbreak,
waiting out the waves, desiccating, fading,
only half-preserved in salt.Breakwater
Where the water washes
and a wooden altar stands,
we will gather stones and hopethat beauty still has meaning
that will make us think on more
than wood and water and stone.Darkness
Woke to a midnight moon,
and didn't sleep for the rest of the night,
listening to the wind.Walked in the rain,
to stand in a simple, white-painted church,
outside of myself,waiting to see what I have learned.
Flotsam
Old rope and weed,
woven into the beach,
in a lovers’ knot
of forgotten stories
and the undersea.Dawn
There are wide skies
aflame with the coming
of a new day.There are wide seas
roseate with the dawn
rolling waves.
And always small and high
is a single gull,
just flying.What if...
What if we could be baubles and mittens,
snowmen and reindeer?
What if we could be robins and yuletide trees?What if we could be winter birds and Christmas stockings,
cartoon penguins and snow globes?
What if we could be evergreen wreaths and children on sledges?What if we could be more moon and stars, more way-shine,
simply remember and dance in snow?
What if we could be more candle, and accept the dark & sweet?What if we could be a sparrow, or more like hot chocolate,
more gingerbread man, more polar bear?
What if we could be more sparkling, more tree-top singing?What if we could be the peaceful season, the tidings of joy,
more giving and forgiving?
What if we could be everyday acts of loving?Loving the stars
(after Sarah Williams:
The Old Astronomer To His Pupil)
I wake at three in the morning beneath the stars.
Have you ever strayed from a dream into a fantasy,
loved how the one merged into the other, the wonder,
the unreality of all that depth of sky and
stars close enough to touch?Too beautiful a night to waste in sleep, I remember
fondly my father’s arms around me as he pointed
to Orion and the Plough and Cassiopea’s Chair.Be silent, he said, and hear the song of eternity.
Fearful folk have cowered before the immensity
of our ancestral pathways through the sky, but
the truth is written there for all to see and know.Night is when the vaults are opened.
Returning
We stood on the edge of the marsh
and one of our voices said,
“I wanted to be part of a flock today,
- thank you.”We huddle and skein
and all our voices rise
to the autumn skies.And I know that I am home.
Late Harvests
September's ending,
I should be cutting back
the sage, but look to wasps
and bees still sipping, drinking up
the last of summer's sweetness.
I can wait awhile, forgetful of
calendar dates on pages,
while the season lives out its fulness.
Seasons
Summer waits on the shore,
in bright waters and the green
of subterranean weeds, while
Autumn floats down to meet her
on the first fallen leaf.Fermain Bay
(a little haiku trail)
A single feather
floats: an abandoned staysail
catching the west wind.A snatch of seaweed,
a mermaid’s blood-red wishbone,
touches, swims away.Beneath the ripples,
a blue eyed god lies waiting
his time to be born.A Wild Day On The Beach
Oh, I needed that! Just being on the beach
with the sea in full fury, the noise and the hypnotic churn
both telling me “Don’t think. Just sit. Shut up. Open up.”That balance between attraction and fear.
I really wanted to go stand in those waves,
and I am not stupid enough to do so.Always the sea washes through my soul,
but when it’s wild it scours me clean.Vision, through a window
Wildflowers – ok, call them weeds,
- and a bistro table set, rusty shades of blue,
tattered curtains hide whatever arguments
inside are keeping me from being out there
on the waves, the surf, the ocean, living out
my dream, but people pass and maybe one
or two, will understand how it feels, the having tried and failed...…to ride beyond the sunset into
a something beyond the windows,reflections and salt-wrecked patios…
Bayfield Woods
May we always have a steal-away space,
where light is dappled through limes and
and oak and ash,
May we always have a sacred place,
where ferns unfold,
May we always know where the wood
awaits us,
And may we keep our promise
to return.
Tonn a’ chladaich
The beach wave gentles along
the rolling cliffs, settling souls
stirred by crashing waters.Dusky hued cliff clover,
clambers along the edge,
muting tumult.Heugh daisies cushioning
ladies, surviving on the wild
edge of unstable land.Thrifting, thriving, being
wild in quiet ways,
heads held high,strong spined,
and silent,
unassuming.
Woodland Wedding
Sapphire and diamonds
are traditional promissary rings
but I don't need gemstones.
Weave me instead a coronet
of bluebell and stitchwort
and emerald leaves of oak.
I will wear a veil of Queen Anne's
lace and bear a spring of hawthorn
for a poesy.
We will walk the old drovers way
to the hidden stream, and there
yellow iris will bear witness
to our vows, and cups of butter
will drink our health, and water
lights will dance our dream.
The ferns will soften us to our rest,
and the stars will send their brightest
merriest jest, and we will sleep where
cattle breath once blessed the
newly-wed.
The artwork is by Gertrude Abercromie & my thanks to Sue Burge's "Poetry Gym" for the prompt.
Marsh Voices
I can yield no more;
all my inner ghosts drowned at Arwen’s Ford.They’re always singing,
always such a deafening, a wrangling, and a ringing.
Your clouds, are they Cirrus?
Or cumulus tumbled and flown from wedlock?Taffeta, glass, and truth gone by.
I am enough of silver, all day blue, and defenders do not win.Nothing worth the stating
in this world, where newly murdered lie in the marram,and greater sins
offer the sun excuses from this newly smelted morning.
Cattle Wisdom
Contentment is a quiet sky,
and greenery, and the water
that flows along the field;it is knowing where the grass
grows at its most lush and how
to rest easily to chew the cud.Contentment is accepting the field
with all its weeds, and finding our
own way to the river’s edge.Dew Drops
She sits quietly and smiles, and
hides the constant pain she refuses
to talk about, but is there behind her eyes
when she nods a silent yes.She laughs about her penguin-waddle
which means, something else is going
oddly wrong, and that too is pushed asideto speak of my week or my day on the marsh and how the rainbows rise and larks sing,
and geese come and go.
She would rather share how much
she loves the way dew alights on grass
on summer mornings. She would rather
laugh through her memories of romance
with the man still by her side, and let the
candles dance where she can no longer.She loves a lantern, sparkles, and living
light. She loves green things.She buys me elephants.
And lays fires in the room where I will
sleep and watch the moon cross the sky.Setting
I am all the red-gold colours, white-hearted
with the heat of every love there ever was.I welcome the rest of evening, the sinking into to the molten leaden sea at nightfall.
The clouds that veil my undressing soften
and pull my shades, stretching evanescence,
allowing me fingers, tendrils to paint a path
across tide, and harvest fields in the sky,
and spin mysteries that reach toward
you on the shore.Towards Tomorrow
Above the dark waters,
above the fiery phoenix feathers,
a simple gull flies towards morning.Imbolc 2023
You may find the promise of spring
in hedgerows, snowdrops, crocus,
in budding leaves and birdsong,
but I know that winter’s tiring
when first the beach bows
to an arching sky and sea
calls for discarded shoes
and brave toes to be
caressed by cold.Conservation Options
Talking
about all the
xenophobia
in our
destructive
existence,
reminds
me of all that
is still here,
still to pray for,
to be reprieved.
Secret Gardens
Where do we go in the dead of night;
what lights shine in secret gardens?Waking leaves green and soften
the place where rain has fallen
and candles are not lit and
interloping paths are strange
un-wild ways,and the door is ever open to
the darkness, the deepness
of un-tamed dream-space.Who are they now?
Who are they now, the Elders?
Where have they gone, the wise ones,
who held all that was sacred?How long is it since the pure-in-heart
and ancient-in-wisdom, looked upon
the path ahead and turned aside?And will they return?
It is hard to live in the world of man, and yet
the oaks still stand
gnarled and twisted and bark-stripped
and deep-grooved, and branch-shed,
and leaning over the road,and wounded and
open-hearted.
Where are they now, the elders?
They wait in quiet lanes
and by the woodland paths.And you will know them
by the silence of their beckoning.Abstract
What is wild, or life?
Not only that which breathes, but
stones and fallen leaves.Lily
Is there anything more wild and free
than sunlight?And are we ever more arrested
by the natural world, than when
it makes us stop……and see.
Reality
It lay there, still bloodied and gnawed. I foot-dragged shingle over it and tamped it down to feed the earth-living things
and hoped it would rot and disappear,
but truth is it was too near the door, and I would tread upon its grave too often to rest easy.I let it resurface and was surprised
at the humanity in its paws, how hand-like
they are holding that single pebble
like a holy book, and the flowing nature
of its gown, a rain-drenched shroud.So what do I do now?
Tree
Don’t drape me with plastic, or flowers,
nor tie me with ribbons and string,
clothe me only warm sphagnum blankets,
and birds stopping by to sing.For pearls give me mushrooms that gleam,
for diamonds string dewdrops on webs,
cloak me in gossamer mists of a morning
and crown me with a ruby at sunset.
What would you do?
If you were tiny, and your rapid
heart, outraced the minute
a thousand to one;if you’d become a poster-boy
for some strange cult, purely
because of the colour
of your skin;If you woke too early and slept
too late, and were harried to
live the frozen months on
scraps, and ice;would you still climb the highest
tree, and sing?We are all sometimes Gull
We do what we need to do,
not what others want of us,
yet while we’re slamming down
head-first after soggy bread
on Christmas day, we don’t
know just how beautiful
are the wings that
hold us.
Last Light
Longest night steals in;
trees spread their black
fingers into the sky and
across the waters.Darkness does not fall,
but waits for daylight shades
to fade to grey and outlasts
that flash of white,while blackness oozes
from the banks.Wintering
I do not wish my old life back
nor the people from itbut how I miss…
the way they made me feel
and how I feel the sadness
of this new world.
A Wish Granted
I woke to a world of fairy-dust
and glitter,not true snow-fall, more
a sugar-coating,
an end-of-Autumn shimmer,
winter’s coming.
Wet wood (close-up)
Translucence rises from logs and leaves,
pearlescent, alabaster, sepia memories of
the aging and the birthing, the quietude
of autumn: woodland decaying into life.
Autumn Falling
If I should fall in Autumn, then let me lie
where golden leaves will be my coverlet.Let the gentle mists sing me to my rest,
and early evenings welcome me to home.Instead of swan-song let me hear the honk
of returning geese and believe that I will fly
in a shimmer of golden wings rising
into the morning Autumn sky.
Hieroglyphs
We look to the stars for the alien life,
which already lives beneath our feet, and writes to us, in hieroglyphs
trying to find a way to speak,while we look far beyond the place
we live and do not yet understand.The scarab first caught my eye, emerging crablike on the Cromer sands,
then the overflowing horn of plenty,
its silver shimmering creator coiledand dived leaving all the cryptic faces,
goggled, helmeted, spaced out andplanned for me to wonder at, puzzle out to find the four-ribbed tube-breathing prototype of man.
Landmarks
We think of famous places,
natural untainted spaces, or those
magnificent castles and country piles
of bricks, and gentry lives, but whose
landmarks are those?What relevance to your growth
and being who you are becoming
registers in that earth, or those walls?Make your own marks on the land!
Create your true points of reference, and
raise the smallest statues to your beliefs.
Or plant – or maybe save – a tree, to
shine golden in the evening against
life’s stormy sky.Autumn Encroaching
As we edge towards the darkening,
lanes are lit by summer’s lingering.
Fairy-sconces of toadflax torches,
shine by the hacked-back hedges,
while beyond the rusting gates,
and long-forgotten fences,
bright green fields stretch
out their aching sinews,
refreshed by autumn
drenches, and then
relax their greens
into fading sage
and brownish
beige, as all
summer
colour
fades
away.
If I could only photograph one thing
I would sit and weep for being
made to choose, between the paling
of the sky at dawn, and the fading
of the earth at dusk.And in my tears I would find the
answer, if I could only photograph
one thing, I would choose
“reflections”.I would picture the distorted world,
rounded in a raindrop, gilded
in an office window, impressionist
river paintings.Low tide would gift me light,
clouds and cliffs in the shimmers
of the still-wet sands, and gulls
upside-down.In puddles I would find the autumn
leaves, the wellington joy of children,
and in the dark of the mountain tarn,
I’d find the echo of miracles.Tread not so softly
(After W.B. Yeats)
Though my dreams are scattered
at your feet, run wildly on.My hopes are as firm as the
dunes where the marram grows,
as the quicksilver of the evening seas;they have all the fragility
of the moon at dawn,but fear not your treading
across my heart, run free,
run wildly on.The Seeds of Memory
Soft ice cream and the pointless drive
along country lanes, which you haven’t yet
figured out is one of my favourite things, idle
rides on roads to somewhere, or nowhere,
just looking at the places in between.The gentleness of cygnets on the river,
in their end-of-summer grey, thunder clouds
fallen down without rainfall, soft feathers
on the water, and beyond the tree-lined
bend: the skipping light.Reed-streams below the surface, and
why I wouldn’t swim where such fickle
greenery lies waiting to entangle the
unwary; ramshackle boats and one
sleek beauty of polished wood that I
held back from stroking.Old flint walls and hidden park-land
beyond its old-money rusting fences,
tree-tunnels, and macho fools who jump
from the stone bridge into the weir,
impressing no-one.Poppy
Be still blood red heart
of paper whispers, there is
bee-work to be done.
Weed Bug
Lonely seven-spot,
forages in the shade of
a ragwort sunburstThe Gatekeeper
Hearts of burnished bronze,
and silken fawn, held in the
palm of lime green leaves.Water on white campion
Flaming June is doused,
and sopping, sobbing still.
Night-scents are wasted
when moths cannot fly,
wet-winged, grounded,
hungry for the sweetness
hidden in that pale blind
eye.Marsh Moment
22.6.22Heat on the river path has me slowing
to the pace of swans, languid and diving
beneath the water, seeking shade; has
me retreating to the few trees
and the breath of leaves.A swing has been strung on a branch,
seemingly grown specifically horizontal
for that purposeand looking as though it has been
there forever,waiting for childhood to return.
I regret just walking on.
Orange Tip Settling
Impatience flutters,
alights on the perfect bloom,
folds wings, disappears.
© 2017