Author: andreaskevington

Poem: Gaia at Ely Cathedral

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I’m sharing this post again, September 2023, as part of the Season of Creation some Christian traditions are marking at this time. So many of us have experienced extreme weather conditions this summer. I write in exceptional September heat, surrounded by welcome green from earlier rain.

I hope you find this post a helpful starting point for contemplation.

Additional note, 24th September. I am delighted that this post has appeared at The Cottage, Diana Butler Bass’ rich and thought-provoking Substack, this morning. I’ve admired her work for many years, and it’s such an honour, and very exciting for me, to find myself in her company today, under Inspiration. It’s a profound exploration of envy and gratitude, and a reflection on the deep drivers of our climate and ecological crisis. It’s well worth reading and allowing it to do its inner work on us. You can do so here.

Original post, published 12th July 2021, emerging from lockdowns:

As we are beginning to venture out a little more, we thought we would pay a visit to Ely, and the vast indoor space of its ancient cathedral. They often have contemporary art there, which helps the old stones continue to sing, giving a new perspective on ancient truths. We knew that Gaia, an installation by Luke Jerram, was going to be there in July, and so we went and saw this beautiful, astonishing sight. The comparative emptiness of the cathedral space made it all the more powerful as it floated above us.

And as the space is vast, and it takes time to walk up to, around and beyond the piece, you do have time and space in which to allow the work to speak to you, to stir up responses, and to pray. I am sure that one of the intentions is to give us all an opportunity to experience something like “earthrise”, when the astronauts first saw the whole of the Earth from space, and how that shifted their perspective, and began to change the way all of us are able to see our home. The staggering, indescribable beauty of the whole called out my sense of awe, which sat uncomfortably alongside my awareness of the damage we are doing to our precious, unique home.

In the setting of the cathedral, as Gaia hangs in the nave under the painted ceiling which tells the long stretch of the Bible’s story, I found the language of repentance surprisingly, and helpfully, came to mind. Repentance both in our more familiar understanding of sorrow for wrongdoing, and desire to amend, and in the possibly more ancient meanings carried in the old texts, of returning home, and of undergoing a profound change of mind – a paradigm shift in the way you see.

Much of my writing celebrates the beauty of the natural world, how lovely, precious, and vulnerable it is. But sometimes, that love spills over into grief. So the old stones, and the old story, seemed illuminated by our current crisis, and, in turn, those ancient words seemed to express something necessary, and powerful, and, in the end, with the potential for hope.

You can listen to the poem here.

Gaia at Ely Cathedral

She seems to float, lit up with her own light,
slowly turning, blue and blooming with clouds
as we walk up, look up, small before her.

While above our steps,
the familiar painted roof
rolls on, telling its painted story,
from the tree, and the garden,
on towards this

fathomless shining beauty,
the ‘all’ that was so very good
in that beginning.
Now as she turns
we see how she hangs
below the story’s last scenes –
the gift of a beloved child
held on his mother’s lap,
held forward towards us,
loved and given and giving,
and the wounded golden king,
who gives still.

And below, below hangs the whole shining Earth,
dazzling, vast with sea,
turning and flowering with clouds
from the southern ice-shine,
melting although we do not see her weep,

And the land, those small green swathes
and swags, are dressed in white too,
a veil of vapour,
while the deserts spread brown
and red above our eyes.

The lands are small, countries
seem tales we tell.
What is certain is this one great
flow – ocean and ice and cloud –
and the unseen winds that bear them
through our blue, breathing air.

And the people stand beneath her,
lit by ice, and hold up their hands
as if to carry her, or hold her,
or save her from falling.

How beautiful it is.
How strange and wondrous
that we should be creatures
who live within so much living perfection.

And as she turns slowly
under the child and the king,
I wonder, what do those
familiar words mean now,
‘the sins of the world’,
as the stain of our reckless harm
seeps through the blue and green,
through all this living glory,

And is there any hope in our
waking up to beauty with grief
and loss, even as dust and ashes
float across the sky,
across us all, late as we are
in our repenting?


And is there hope,
hope that we might be granted
this grace – time
for amendment of life,
to tend the garden
with its leaves and fruit,
shining and greening,
to take part in the work
of loving and healing,
of restoration,
of making all things new.

Looking at Gaia from behind the communion table brought to mind the words of repentance from that service, and I was aware of my sense of what “the sins of the world” might mean was creaking open a little wider.

Poem: Matisse Cut-Outs, and a nod to David Hockney

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Matisse, The Parakeet and the Mermaid, 1952

I shared a poem with you last week – What the space holds. Writing that poem reminded me of the extraordinary Matisse cut-outs, imagining the negative spaces left when his scissors had finished thier task. I realised that I’d never shared with you a poem I wrote about those works…..

Tate Modern in London had a very beautiful exhibition some years ago, in 2014, of these late and astonishing cut-outs. I was deeply moved by what we saw and experienced. You can still buy the catalogue from The Tate – and other places too – if you’re interested. As ever, as a book that accompanies a major exhibition, it is a revealing and insightful exploration of the work.

A thing that struck me was the contrast between the photos of the frail but engrossed artist, towards the end of his life, and the vibrant, joyful celebration of life itself that the cut-outs embodied. The vitatlity of the art he created sang from the walls. Finding it hard to make art in the ways he had before, he developed this extraordinary technique to transform his relatively confined spaces into a paradise of form and colour.

I felt the deep wisdom of this response, this openness to beauty, to nature, to life as a whole. It seemed to offer a brightness that could illuminate our days.

Henri Matisse working on paper cut out. Undated photo. Getty images

Matisse Cut-Outs

The rooms are thick and warm
with people looking, in reverence.
There is a hush
as we move like pilgrims
through doorways
and spaces full of quiet light.

There are photographs of you, in bed,
or tucked in a chair, old and crumpled.
Yet, in your outstretched hand is that
long stick, tipped with charcoal,
drawing, drawing,
or a curling pile of paper at your feet,
unravelling from those black scissors.

When the outside became unreachable
you turned your rooms into a garden,
with swallows dancing on the walls,
and fig leaves, and pomegranates,
mermaids and stars.
You are covering your walls with
bright cut-outs that sway in the warm breeze,
lavender and myrtle, while you breathe deep. 

This is what you did
while pain nagged close,
while death grew closer.
You made the beauty
you could make.
You made joy visible.
You did not stop –
in the shadow of
so much destruction,
so much war-grief –
you kept the charcoal
and the scissors moving,
an Eden at your ending.

I thought again about this exhibition a few weeks ago when I went to the Lighroom at King’s Cross with my daughter to see David Hockney’s Bigger and Closer (not smaller and further away). I loved the way the projections immersed you in the work, especially the Spring pieces he’s been developing using an i-Pad. You felt the power and beauty of the trees bursing into life, the brightness of the green, the froth of the cow-parsley. I bought a book as a souvenir, Spring Cannot be Cancelled, which I’m currently reading. It’s particularly good at capturing the mood of lockdown in his Normandy studio, and the intensity of the observations of the arrival of spring that time of isolation and deep uncertainty generated.

I was wondering whether to couple these two art events together, I do hope Hockney has many more prolific years ahead to enrich us all. I do not mean to suggest that he is an artist at the end of his life. But it seems to me there is something in common between these two artists in the intensity, freedom and joy of their later work. There is a real clear-sightedness and poignancy in the appreciation of beauty, and an urgency too. There is a deep embodied wisdom and wonder which pours through to the viewer.

It reminds me of Mary Oliver’s “instructions for living a life”:

“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

Exodus poem on Diana Butler Bass

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A couple of years ago, during lockdown, I felt drawn to explore the stories of Moses and the Exodus.

One of these was inspired by Moses and the burning bush, where he takes off his shoes because the ground is holy. This poem now finds itself at Diana Butler Bass’ The Cottage, as part of her marking of the season of creation. It’s so good to be part of this beautiful musing on an important season, to be marking a shift in awareness as we begin to pause and reconsider our relationship with the rest of life on this dear blue-green planet.

I hope the link below will take you to her rich and thoughtful exploration of this theme.

https://open.substack.com/pub/dianabutlerbass/p/sunday-musings-f9a?r=46vqv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

You can find my original post and poem here.

Gaia at Ely Cathedral. You can find out more about that here.

Previous visits to The Cottage can be found ..
The Sower and the Soil
Mary, at your feet
Jesus washes Judas’ feet

Poem: What the space holds

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Gradually, we’ve been reducing the size of the unmown places in the grass. It’s been growing so fast this year, and the flowers have had a second and a third go. The sun and the rain have kept everything flourishing. There are small frogs and grasshoppers, and many bees still. It’s worth going very slowly, giving everyone a chance to hop out of the way, and leaving places of refuge. Little by little….

I wish I’d taken a picture of this patch above in the week before it was cut, when a round shape appeared flattening the stems. We were pretty sure it was the muntjac who is a regular visit to the garden – earlier this year, there was a youngster too. You can read more about the deer in the garden here and here. She is a joy.
I do worry about her crossing the road between the woods and the garden, about the speeding cars – but the only time I have ever seen her trotting along the road, everyone stopped and waited for her to be safe. Kind drivers!

As I sat by her space I imagined her presence. I felt the hum of the cars through the ground. And I thought of all the places where the creatures who used to make a home no longer do – all the absences. I felt the loss, even as I felt the beauty and abundance of this late flowering meadow. And so this poem emerged, in fits and starts. It’s taken its time, has a basenote of loss, and I hope it carries the gentle tenderness of the deer, and the many creatures I feel kin to even in this one garden.

What the space holds

There is a space in the long grass,
a flattened disc of green stems,
while all around late flowers
nod. A curved bowl, waiting,
rimmed with golden light.

Low down, face close to grass,
I hear the hiss of breeze through
stems, the buzz of bees, crickets,
even, perhaps, butterfly wings.
But there is no trace of whoever comes
here, night after night, and circles, and
settles to sleep. Too sweet a hay-smell
for fox or badger, too big for cat.

I open my mind’s eye to the night,
quiet, and across my heart
a dark shape with long,
delicate legs steps gently,
picks her way through the black
shimmer of stems and fills
this space with a shadow –
a shadow whose heart beats and
ears twitch. I see a dream-deer,
breathing, her brown sides rising
and falling as the space fills
with living warmth, with the
softness of deer, with the gentleness
of one who comes by night.

And as I dream, as I treasure
the absent deer, I think of all
the empty spaces
and places, holding now
only memory, fading,
or worse, nothing.
I think of the absences
that there have been
and that are yet to come.


Patterns cut out of sky where flocks of birds,
tumbles of bees and butterflies are not,
but once were. The rivers where
there were fish, who are not.
Places where the beavers and the big cats
and the red squirrels are not, and their spaces
cradle nothing, empty and mourning,
Earth’s arms aching.

This soft round space that has
become a bowl of dreams
does not know if the sweet deer will
return tonight, as car sound
rumbles through the earth.

This bowl in the grass
ringing with her absence, with
the absence of all creatures who
are not here, but who once were,
as I run my finger around the rim,
and feel the tremor of loss upon me,
and through me. May she be safe.
May she and all creatures be safe.

The final lines of blessing draw on the Buddhist practice of metta, or lovingkindness, meditation, which I have found deeply helpful and incorporate into my prayer and contemplation regularly.

When I was writing about the spaces where creatures are not, I remembered a wonderful Matisse exhibition we went to of his cutouts, done in his final months and filling his rooms with birds and flowers. I imagined the pieces of paper uncuring from his scissors and falling to the ground. I wondered if what we would be left with would be these negative spaces, with the birds and flowers no more, or if we would find our hearts opened to care for those we share this beautiful green world with.

Poem: Unknown – oxeye daisy

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Growing a garden which you hope will enrich and support wildlife, as well as provinding beauty for your own eye, is always full of suprises. This is no formal experiment, where we surveyed the insect and bird populations before we began to do things differently – in no small part because the process is changing and evolving and not based on a single decision point.

Last time I shared a poem with you, I hinted at the mysteries of not knowing. There are so many creatures I have no name for, yet, and I’m content to find out slowly. You can read that last poem, about the twilight creatures, here.
This new piece carries a description of an unknown insect. I’m afraid I didn’t have my camera with me, and still don’t know what it was. Maybe one day I’ll find out! (Edit 22/7/23 see end of post)

This second “Unknown” poem also holds within it a reflection on seeds, and our tendency to see things as small acts.

Unknown – Oxeye daisy

This morning, the oxeye daisy cradled
an insect I had never seen before.
Unknown, unimagined,
strange and handsome.

Long, black, elegant, with an
abdomen scriven in yellow runes.
It stroked its long, curled antennae tenderly,
as if they were locks of hair. 
Not knowing me, it knew no fear.
It did not fly as I gazed.

That small pinch of seed from last year –
tiny, dry as sand – each day brings a
new and wondrous fruitfulness,
an unanticipated beauty,
a new joy, a new abundance.
The scattering of it was
no small act, it seems.
And I am coming to think that
there are no small acts, after all.

For those of you who are interested in the readings followed by many churches, now is a time when the parable of the Sower is often called to mind – along with other seed related parables. This reflection on the scattering of seed, and the fruits that follow, draws on the insights of those stories. You could begin to explore those insights here, and here

Edit 22/7/23: In the comments below Caroline suggests it was a longhorn beetle. Here’s a picture from the Natural History Museum – a spotted longhorn beetle. It’s the one I saw! Welcome to the garden, little friend.

The Sower and the Soil, finding myself at Wild Goose unexpectedly!

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Once again, I am astonished, delighted and honoured to find something I wrote has made its way in the world, and is keeping the most excellent company with Diana Butler Bass as she shares from the last day of the Wild Goose Festival in The Cottage.

Please do take the time to read her reflections, and those she has gathered. It is a rich feast, with much to refelect on. The theme of Sower and Soil seems more relevant than ever as our soils become depleted on many levels. I am very struck by Cathleen Falsani’s reflections on the parable of the Sower from Matthew’s Gospel, which really resonate with me.

You can follow the link to Diana’s post here.

Van Gough’s The Sower

The parable is one I’ve returned to again and again, it seems to carry richer and different meanings whenever I encounter it. Here are some links to posts on the subject, in case you’d like to follow today’s readings.

My retelling of the parable is here.

More here

And the post with the blessing that Diana Butler Bass shared is here.

Thank you for joining me here on the blog. May all our soils be fertile, may we tend and care for them.

Poem: Unknown. June twilight 10 o’clock

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A starry wood – photographer unknown.

Welcome back to the blog! Thank you for joining me here in the garden again.

One of the great joys of summer evenings is going outside to look at what’s happening in the warm, long twilights. In particular, I love to look for bats as they tumble and swoop over the long grass, and above the shrubs. Last year, we had a bat recorder in the garden, part of Transition Woodbridge’s wildlife corridors project. It’s fascinating to find out what treasures we have, and to work together to try and encourage more. There was an evening event with feedback, and you can find out a bit more about it here, following the links. I was sad to have missed it, as we were away. But I know there are bats here.

The garden at night is a very different place from in the day, quite mysterious. I’ve been thinking about the many creatures who come to or live in the garden who I don’t know and can’t name. I’m learning all the time, but the more you find out, the more you realise how much you don’t know. I’m learning too not to mind the mystery, to find out what I can but to just enjoy the beauty and variety of creatures we get to see, and hear. To notice the detail and the behaviour of creatures that may in time help me to find out what they are, but now the noticing is enough, and a real source of delight. We know the muntjak and the fox, and a hedgehog from time to time, are there at night, we hear an owl and know there are mice, and probably voles, but the unknown creatures bring something special to the experience of being in the garden too, Not rushing to id everything, but instead being open to observe with awe, is something I’m coming to love. You don’t need to know what things are called to appreciate them. You can also do your own naming!

So this theme, of unknown and unnamed things, begins to unfold in this poem. I think there might be a few more pieces exploring this way of seeing too.

I don’t have the tech for night-time photography, so the words will have to do.

Unknown
June twilight 10 o’clock

We went outside to look for bats,
up against the navy and turquoise sky,
up among the slick sycamore leaves,
up above the long grass where
pale moths flutter.

We waited in the thickening dark,
quieting, and then saw a black shape
twisting and swooping amongst
the other night-flyers –
a heavy beetle lumbering,
ghost-moths, silver gnats.

In the day, all can seem
sweetness and light. The smell
of roses and lilies hanging in the soft air.
Our own familiar world, we can think.

But now, darkness reaches
closer than our
outstretched fingertips.
The bat flies overhead,
joined by another,
and another,
and we hear sounds too
down in the long grass
down in the deep cover of
the borders.
A rustling and a moving
that grows louder as the
space is transfigured
by darkness, strange
creatures blooming in the
imagination, unknown
and unnamed.

As looking up again, I see
the gathering stars
sometimes obscured by
stretched and fluttering wings.
There is so much unknown
to me, so many names
have never been on my lips.
The quietness of unknowing
is upon me, even as

I seek to learn. And
I find I am discovering, mainly,
what it is to live in wonder,
to walk slowly, and in awe.

My Last Supper poem on Diana Butler Bass

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I am delighted and very honoured that my poem, Jesus washes Judas’ feet, has been featured on today’s edition of The Cottage, by Diana Butler Bass.

You should be able to access the whole rich piece here..

https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/thursday-in-holy-week-washing-feet

It’s always good to know that our words are part of an online community. So thank you to all who are joining me here, and I do hope the poem helps bless your Easter.

Little free pantry

Jesus washes Judas’ feethttps://andreaskevington.com/2019/04/09/poem-jesus-washes-judas-feet/

Poems: Seven Sentences from the cross

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Elizabeth Frink, at St Edmundsbury Cathedral

I’ve noticed that a number of you are turning to these poems as we approach Easter. Thank you for reading them, and I do hope they are helpful to you as you begin to meditate on Good Friday, and prepare for sharing that time with others – families, groups and congregations. Please do feel free to use and share them, saying where you found them. I love to hear about that.

Below the poems, you’ll find some links to other posts on this blog that you might find helpful too.

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do

We don’t know what we do,
from the careless word that
starts a fire of anger,
to the careless killing
of a butterfly  –
who knows what
wide effects,
what winds and rains,
begin and end with just one death?

We walk in darkness, so often,
and so often, we close our eyes,
we do not wish to know.
And Jesus, seeing this,
that his life would end
with angry shouts,
with fearful washing of hands,
with indifferent playing of dice,
Knowing all this, even so, he bore
our lawful unthinking violence,
our blundering disregard for consequences.
Another would pay for our actions.

Yet as the ripple of our acts flows out,
through the world, who knows where,
so too, now, flows forgiveness,
following on, spreading and transforming,
watering dry ground, lifting burdens
and carrying them away.

2

Truly I say to you today you will be with me in paradise

Even as he hung upon the cross,
even with blood from that false crown
running down, not wiped away,
he saw the two men at his side,

One joined in mocking with the
priests and soldiers,
speaking from his pain,
and one did not, this second kept
his eyes on something else – a hope.

A hope the one he looked on was a king,
and of a kingdom where such things
as crosses are not lifted up,
a hope, even, of an end to death and pain –
this pain, this death.

And, ah, his king begins to speak,
of paradise.
What a world to gift him dying there.
A word of such sweetness, freedom, peace.
See  – clear water flowing, and flowers,
hear the sound of birds, the lazy
buzz of insects, the flutter of their wings.

What a word, at your end, to hold to,
to capture our beginning, once again.
But even more than this,
to be with him, beside the king,
seen and known,
held in the loving gaze of one who
hung up on the cross.
Might this, even this, be paradise?

3

Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother

And still he sees, looks down
towards the one who bore him, bearing this,
the pain – not her own pain – worse,
the pain of watching one you love
twisting on those wooden beams,
the nails piercing her own flesh too.

The time has come when all the
treasure of her heart is broken open,
scattered, lying in the dirt.
What use to hold in mind
the words of angels,
the wealthy gifts brought by the wise,
what preparation Simeon’s warning,
when now she sees his agony with her eyes.
But she is not alone, his friend sees too.
John, who writes it down,
bears witness, even here, even so.
They turn their gaze upon each other
and see each other with new eyes –
a mother, and a son.
Gifting them each other –
his one last act of love,
this giving, from an empty cup.
This task of care can be ours too,
to behold each other in our pain,
and in our sorrow, walk each other home

4

My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

You felt your generous heart forsaken,
you felt the absence of the one who helps,
who was beside you, in the beginning,
who knew you from before first light.

We know too well the sparseness
of your isolation, without light,
and companionless,
in the darkness of our own long night.
And yet, within our dark, we find you there,
Find you have waited for us long days, and years,
while our poor eyes have
grown accustomed to the dark,
have learned at last to see you through our tears.
So as you know our pain and feel it,
you break our separation with your own.
Help us see the forsaken all around us,
invisible and in darkness, but seen by you.
May we seek each other in the dark,
May we have courage to cry out,
like you, and so be found.

5

I thirst

The well is deep, and you have nothing to draw with.
Where now that living water?
Where is that spring within you, gushing up
to fullness of life?
Do you remember, now,
the woman by the well?
Your deepening talk of thirst and water,
as now, again, you humbly ask another for a drink –
this time,
a sponge of sour wine?

Do you remember too, as the taste dries on your lips,
that wedding feast, where water changed to finest wine?
The richness and fullness of that beginning
soured to this cold bitterness.

You are our source, the spring of all our rivers
and still you thirst like us, need help to drink.
And so give us this grace,
that as we do for the least of these,
we may know we do for you.

May we see you
in each thirsty face.

6

It is finished.

All things come to an end.
Even pain like this,
Even the anger and the cruelty of a crowd,
of us all,
even the certainty of those so certain
of God they hang a man upon a tree.
Even the punishment and scapegoating
even violence,
even death.
The work is done.
It has all been borne.
You have poured out your love, your life.
You have carried our sorrows, suffered
under our iniquities.

Your head bowed now, you sink
into the final pain of nails,
your body bears no more,
having borne all.
The work is done.

7

Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit

There is darkness now, deep darkness,
over the face of the deep,
and no hovering like a brooding bird,
instead, the temple curtain torn in two,
from top to bottom,
and the Holy of Holies empty.

God is not found there,
but here, with this dying man
on a tree,
He calls out father, and talks of hands,
and we remember what his own hands have done,
how many were healed by their touch,
raised up and restored from cruelty and death,
and now, he too will be held in loving hands,
a reconciliation beyond our grasp,
a trust even at this moment of last breath.

Dying, he taught us to die,
dying he brought us life.
May we be reconciled, may we know
at our end, the comfort of those hands.

img_0630

The church at Selworthy Green

Bless you


Good Friday Meditation

Other Holy Week readings, prayers and poems

Poem: The Wash, high tide, knots rising

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RSPB Snettisham

Last month we took a few days to visit Norfolk, staying by the Wash. UK viewers of Winter Watch and others may have seen some awe-inspiring film of one of the UK’s greatest wildlife events – sometimes called the Snettisham Spectacular. Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to see it for yourself. We decided we’d go and try and catch this sight, when a very high tide drives the birds off the mix of saltmarsh and water, into the air in huge flocks, and down into lagoons cared for by the RSPB. Their website (linked above) will help you get a taste of what its like, as well as some information about when these high tides happen.

Of course, there are never any guarantees with nature, but we got up very early and went to Snettisham in the dark, on a cold February morning, full of anticipation. I’d decided on flasks of coffee – which turned out to be an excellent idea! It was the most moving experience, deeply awe-inspiring, to see a landscape so full of life, and the wildness behaving freely as it should. I am sure that there have been times when there were more birds, and more wild, here, but it was nonetheless a glimpse of a more beautiful world, the world closer to how it should and can be.

You may also be aware that this precious landscape is vulnerable, and a new development could have a huge impact. If you want to find out more about that, you could begin here.

I wanted to try and capture the beauty of what we saw, and also the depth of experience that aroused in us and the others perhaps who were gathered there, and so this poem recounts the journey through the dark, and into the dawn-light of this beautiful sight.

C and A Wild Images Knots

High tide, the Wash, knots rising.

Out in the Wash-marsh,
the dark-before-dawn,
we walked
uncertainly, deeper in,
listening warily for water
sounds, mud sounds,
as we heard, out on our right,
the loudness of bird and tide.
Restless, growing, imminent.

The path seemed so long
in the dark, unknowing and
unseeing as we were.
On and on until at last we came out of
hedge-shadows and reed rustles,
out on the open bank of shingle,
with a chill wind blowing,
with the dark softening into the grey of
mist and ice-fret, as out of the
greyness emerged
a gathering crowd, moving, looking,
watching that density of black birds
emerging too, out there on the
mudbanks and sandbanks,
crowding as the water was rising,
All prickling with anticipation,
all readying for flight.

Through a lens you could see the
black backs of oystercatchers,
tens of thousands, all facing one way,
bright beaks aligned like many compasses.

And further out, paler knots,
rippling over the shrinking land,
their voices sounding together
as water lapped and lapped ever deeper,
full of fish washed in on this rapid tide,
followed by the hungry seals,
heads up, and hunting.

The bird noise grows, and the waders
begin their great lift,
A few at first, tip toed,
up and down like dancers
performing the perfect jete. Then,
as waves pour over their islands
and there is no room for all these birds,

They lift and stay lifted, from the edges,
like a great cloth, swirling now
above fast running water
rilled with small waves.

And then the oystercatchers
begin to pour like dark smoke,
like sentient smoke, as one,
all to the right, pour down
into the lagoons behind us.

While the knots, catching
the rising light, rise too,
turning pale now, loud with cries
and loud too with wings,
like a great crowd running joyously,
like a shining cloud swirling in the wind
but with mind, with being, with will,
a great pale creature rustling
and winding through the air over us,
close and low, and then down
in a whispering snake’s head behind.

And again, and again, rise up more
swirls of birds, faster and wider by
the tens of thousands, of wings
all together, birds turning together,
a miracle of unity,

As wings beat like hurried feet
as more people rush to look up,
and the waves take more and more
ground from under us all.

And I cannot tell you
what joy, what exultation –
And I write from longing to tell
you what joy, what exultation,
we humans, standing, feel
in this wide and wild abundance,
this wild and wide abandon.
This deep unity, this wide-wild-eyed
seeing into the communion of things.

As a sudden sound is added even to
all this loud crescendo,
like thunder, like jets,

The rise and beating of great wings –
pink footed geese
beyond number, beyond measure,

filling the sky with clouds of
moving birds, spinning fast now into
great skeins that wind over the deep
distance, loud and louder
bright on the dawn,

Bright with the wonder of wings lifting,
Bright in this new, steady,
giddying light.
A light that washes through us all
A light that holds us all
As dawn breaks us wide open.

If you search online, you’ll find some films of the birds, like this one.

I hope this gives you a glimpse of how beautiful a sight it was, and how transformative.

Yesterday evening I had the great privilege of reading this poem to open a series of talks organised by the Woodbridge Climate Action Centre. Local friends, tickets are free, and are going fast. The series is called Regenerating Living Landscapes, Working with Nature.

It is possible that a recording of last night’s event may become available. If it does, I’ll make sure there’s a link to it here.

19th May Note:
As you can see from the list above, tonight is the last talk in the series. Once again I’m delighted to have been asked to read something, and the poem I’m going to read is A Good Place, which is also on this blog. As usual, click through to read it.