This carriage is older than the one I am remembering in the poem, but it’s the closest I can find in mood……
This poem has evolved from some prompts given by the talented inspirer and grower of poems Kate Clanchy .
As the seasons turn, many youngsters are setting off on adventures, and here I start with a memory of myself setting off for…. well, it’s a mixture of a university open day and later interview. The two figures, the young woman and the older one, were both me to start with, but they have taken on life and stories of their own.
So I imagined being there for my younger self, and reassuring her in a moment of uncertainty and anxiety. The practice of having compassion on your younger self can be a healing one. The older figure could be someone else though – a parent travelling in their mind with their grown child, an ancestor, a guardian angel, the presence of God, as well as your older self. See how it seems to you.
And to all setting off on adventures, and to all they leave behind – whether you are ‘you’ or ‘I’ – may this new chapter bring much good for you.
Train
You are on a slow rocking train with red and green seats, you wear a lovely coat, wool, velvet collar – not your choice.
You are leaving what you know the city falls away you are watching out of the window as a world unfolds
Your hands gloved, your eyes open. The colours are rich, for it is autumn you notice the red flush of hawberries
You wonder what this will be
The fields grow flat, the sky large, there is railway tea in a cup bitter and strong,
You shift in your seat, pull at your gloves
This is all new to you, so new, all this, and you do not know that I am with you – that older woman perhaps, sitting opposite, who smiles – whispering that this is the right train, the one that will take you away to home, home, home.
The cold wind seeps through the window and you breathe deep, filling with unaccustomed air
Years ago, years ago while still a child you stepped through a magical doorway, drowned out sharp voices with poetry, shared other lives as they spooled out of pages. You remember this now as you are held in a swaying seat, in the rhythm of wheels on track.
Your eyes fall back down to your book, uncertain.
The older woman looks up, leans forward just a little as the train rocks and sways and sings – tell me, tell me about the poetry she says, and smiles.
My garden has been a desolation for months – drying under the blistering heat. This past week, there have been a few signs of life returning. There is a faint blush of green. I can step outside without feeling grief.
Today is the start of Autumn, and September 1st marks the beginning of the Season of Creation for some churches and groups. There is much here on the blog that you might like to follow if you’re interested, under the tags Green, Creation, Everybody Now. You might like to start with Gaia.
Over the past week, I’ve been thinking about hope. I’ve been thinking about how, now this summer has brought the reality of climate change home to so many of us, there is a feeling of despair – people saying it’s too late, there’s no hope. While there is much that has been lost, there is so much truth in the old adage, where there’s life, there’s hope.
There is deep wisdom in the natural world, and I’ve been wondering what biomimicry can teach us about hope. And so I have been paying attention. I see, everywhere, life seizing every sliver of opportunity to live, to grown, to flourish. Even while Dunwich Heath still holds massive heat in its soils, those who work there are noticing signs of life returning, and birds beginning to fly. Life does not hope, it lives, often recklessly and in what we think of as inappropriate places. So I’m thinking I might try to Be More Weed, to rest when I need to and to keep flowering whenever the rain falls.
I’ve tried to express some of this plant hope – learning the hope of plants, in this poem. I think it’s appropriate for the day. I think it may also chime with other times when we feel that hope has dried up. If so, I hope it offers a drop of rain on dry ground.
It’s not hope, exactly
Last night, rain fell. The sky was luminous, flashing with white lightning, and the thunder rolled into my dreams
With the smell of earth softening. Life knows what to do with a gift
morning sees green begin to swirl through the lawn, rejoicing the hawkbit bowing under the weight of glorious pantaloon bees.
This is not hope, exactly – a tiny wildflower pushing through the cracks, the way ferns now rise again as a small brook sings over dead twigs, how pigeons rebuild their nest
Not what we so often mean by hope – it does not ask, is it worth it, what if we fail, what if the heat comes back? Life does not hope Life does not choose life
It uncoils greenly today grows today, lives, for today the rain falls. If all this softness knows only to begin again and again and again, then why not you, why not me, why not us? Is not this good green earth worth living for?
The lawn in greener days. The yellow flowers are from the hawkbit family, mentioned in the poem. Pantaloon bees love them, and only appear in the garden when the flowers are open.
Female pantaloon bee, showing her yellow, pollen-coated legs. From Freepic.com
At the end of my last post, the poem Heat, I mentioned that I was working on some pieces that grew out of our recent walking holiday in Northumberland – on the way to Lindisfarne. I’m still working on the poems – one of the later ones by the logic of the walk has come first, and I’m wondering how best to order them….. However, a month or so back I wrote this piece – a quick garden poem – which I thought I’d share with you while I’m working on that sequence.
British readers may have heard about, or remember, the terrible loss of elm trees in our landscape in the 1970’s. Here and there, some elms are returning as low growing hedge-trees, or elm variants such as the wych elm. When I saw this little beauty growing in a wild spot in my garden, I thought at first it was a hazel – but it’s an elm, I believe a wych elm. I’m so delighted that this quite rare tree has found refuge with me. Nature has a deep capacity to find a way, and that continues at least for now. Life wants to live. Sometimes, it needs our help, as with the red kite, and at others, it needs space to seed itself – although I don’t know what love and care may have gone into tending this tree’s ancestors. We keep working, keep making space, keep seeking to give life room. For some, it is too late, but each part of the web of life we cherish matters more than we can imagine.
wych elm
Wych Elm
I remember the great trees dying, as a child, I remember watching the leaves wither and crisp. I remember the whine of the chainsaws, watching them felled and falling
Limb by limb. Felled and fallen and carried away to be burned in great smoking bonfires. I remember the consternation, the grief that prickled across the land – my own, too. I did love those trees, the feel of the bark under my soft climbing hands and feet.
And now, leaving – as I do – things to grow much as they will, I have found a wych elm flourishing low in my garden – surrounded by other, more exotic and fragrant shrubs. There, it has remained hidden. It is wondrous. It is a miracle.
Once more, I have felt an elm leaf’s sandpaper roughness in my hand, have marvelled at its points, like a precious diadem, a green man’s crown, priceless.
I imagine future vastness, looking up into its great sheltering boughs. But I will keep it low, away from the beetle that flies by night. And there, it will grow, and I will offer it shelter, this place a refuge for us both.
The earliest blossom in our garden – mirabelle, or wild cherry plum
After I sent in the manuscript for my first book of poetry – The Year’s Circle – a couple of months ago, I felt I needed a little creative winter – of rest and quiet and recovering energy. Lately, I’ve been finding things catch my attention again, and my pen and notebook have been coming out into the garden with me.
What follows is the closest to a finished poem that has emerged so far, and I thought I’d share it with you.
Last year, in the long hot, dry summer, we had an abundance of fruit. I thought this year the trees would be exhausted, and take a bit of a sabbatical too – it’s a healthy pattern….. but this spring, hot and dry as it has been, has been awash with blossom, and now, in the few days of rain we’ve had, the fruit is beginning to swell. It’s looking promising!
Blossom
The blossom opens – first mirabelle, then pear, apple, cherry, Iranian quince,
A white tide frothing and foaming over the garden, dazzling, loud with birdsong, petals opening like hungry beaks in nests,
All opening in turn, and all, in turn, shaken by the sudden shifts of wind – how hot it gusts now. So the petals fall, they tumble over faded daffodils, spent tulips.
And so it seems that all is lost, all that blossom, all that promise, all that beauty scattered on the wind. How the spring days scutter away.
And yet, I have come to know that all is not lost, even as the petals fall. They had their purpose. And that purpose – invisible at first, then the tiniest roundness of stem, of not yet – a held breath of green before summer’s ripening. And it will come, it will come, in its time.
I’m particularly pleased with these two small trees. They’re both a few years old now, and this is the first time they’ve started developing tiny fruit. The top picture is a pear, the bottom the Iranian quince – fragrant and delicious. When I see these small, new fruits, I’m reminded of that rich and ancient civilisation that has suffered and is suffering so much.
I’m sharing another poem from my collection-in-preparation with you, as promised. I started gathering and writing poems last March, and so this Easter poem – and the one to follow – were amongst the first new ones I wrote. So, quite simply, here it is….
Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre by Harold Copping
Mary in the garden
It was in the garden that Mary stood weeping. First light, first flush of green spreading over the warming stones. A quiet place, now.
Alone, shocked, bewildered, she did not see the flowers opening at her feet, or hear the song of the turtledoves.
For she is one who stands by a tomb lost, deserted, heavy-burdened with grief – the weight of a million tears – as if this grief might carry the pain of us all.
And seeing you, she did not see, thought you were like a second Adam, tending the garden in this strange new dawn.
Then, you spoke out a name – her own name. Mary. She knew you then. What must have risen up in that broken heart, touched as she was by your tenderness. Yet as your eyes met, her hand stopped in the warming air between you, singing with birdsong, shining with light.
John 20:11-18, 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
If you would like to read the story, you can find more in the link below….
Here is another poem of resurrection – this one exploring the deep, unwitnessed moment of awakening. I’m intrigued by the stirring of seeds, the quiet power of life returning in Spring, and the imagery of spring filled my mind as I thought about Easter resurrection. My forthcoming book – The Year’s Circle, publisher Wild Goose – weaves together poems from the church seasons and the Earth’s seasons. In this piece, I hope, the presence of spring hums through.
I love the way Eastern Orthodox icons celebrate resurrection not as an event involving one alone, but as something including all those needing to be set free…. and gives us an insight into the pattern of life out of death, hope out of despair, new out of old.
Before first light
Out of the earth, the grave, the tomb, the darkness, life steps out into a shining spring dawn.
Out of the seed, the grain, the stone, the pip, life uncurls in a shimmer of new green.
We do not see the moment of breaking, of rising, it is hidden in the dark womb of the Earth.
But perhaps the ground shakes, a tremor in the deep, as the stone rolls away and death’s imperial seal is broken.
Then, out of a cave humming with clear morning light – no need of grave clothes, no need of husk and shell and stone and seal,
No need of the linen napkin for it is finished, and folded –
Out of the earth who tends her dead, there is a great greening, an awakening, a rising up. Life, and life, and life is stronger even than the grave, and love is stronger than death.
And look, and see, all things are being made new. Now, and now, and now.
Matthew 27:65-7, Mark 16:1-7, Luke 24:1-11, John 20:1-10
If you would like to use this poem, please do so, giving my name and this blog as reference.
I’m sharing another poem from my collection-in-preparation with you, as promised. I started gathering and writing poems last March, and so this Easter poem – and the one to follow – were amongst the first new ones I wrote. So, quite simply, here it is….
Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre by Harold Copping
Mary in the garden
It was in the garden that Mary stood weeping. First light, first flush of green spreading over the warming stones. A quiet place, now.
Alone, shocked, bewildered, she did not see the flowers opening at her feet, or hear the song of the turtledoves.
For she is one who stands by a tomb lost, deserted, heavy-burdened with grief – the weight of a million tears – as if this grief might carry the pain of us all.
And seeing you, she did not see, thought you were like a second Adam, tending the garden in this strange new dawn.
Then, you spoke out a name – her own name. Mary. She knew you then. What must have risen up in that broken heart, touched as she was by your tenderness. Yet as your eyes met, her hand stopped in the warming air between you, singing with birdsong, shining with light.
John 20:11-18, 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
If you would like to read the story, you can find more in the link below….
The Proclamation of the Virgin Mary by Harald Slott-Moller
Hello blog readers! It’s been a while since posted. I’ve been working on my collection of Poetry for Wild Goose, Iona Publishing, and have now submitted it. It’s been a huge project, taking me just under a year, and I’ve loved immersing myself in weaving together a pattern of words and images. I’ll let you know when I have news of a publication date, but I know it’ll be a little while before they get to it. As a quick reminder, it’s called The Year’s Circle, and it follows the seasons of the year – celebrating the unfolding natural world and the seasons some churches follow in their prayers and readings.
As many celebrate the Annunciation on 25th March, I thought I’d share with you the poem I’ve written for the new book. A meditation on the angel’s visit to Mary. In the book, I’ve placed it in Advent, at the time when we often celebrate Mary. It certainly suits spring too, with the stirrings of new life we see all around. I hope it also reminds us that new beginnings are often hidden, small, and in unexpected places. It reminds us to look beyond the surface of Empire and power, and see what is happening elsewhere. Those things may be more important than we think.
Anunciation
I see her standing at the doorway of her home as the earth quickens at her feet, awakening.
A sudden shaft of light falls on her and she raises her face to feel it warm on her winter skin
For one joins her there, on the threshold, with great wings folded. An indication, if one were needed, that he comes from another place, is made of other matter.
And so this strange meeting begins at the threshold of Earth and Spirit, Word and Flesh, Eternity and youth. The shining one greets her with a song of God’s favour, of one-to-be-born of her – as she draws back a breath into her accustomed room, afraid,
Tests the future with a question. For this high favour will take her down a dark path, and a dangerous one, with sanction and scorn and incomprehension – her own too.
Yet, even so, she takes that tentative step forward, towards the light, gives her Yes to all this, to being a God-bearer, carrying the Anointed One in the closed blood-dark room of her womb.
And so begins this strange folding of the infinite, the Alpha and Omega, into a single cell within a slight girl, the most vulnerable of forms, this Mary, full of grace. What strange and troubling gifts are these to stir the brightening air.
Luke 1: 26-38
The Annunciation by Domenico Veneziano – Fitzwilliam Museum collection
Many paintings of this scene are strong on architecture. Artists, like Domenico Veneziano, were experimenting with their newly developed techniques of managing perspective. This one has a tiny pinprick in the centre, the vanishing point on which all lines converge. They ususally place Mary inside, or in some kind of indeterminate space like this one – a sheltered, nearly outdoor space. As I was meditating on the passage, I was struck by the image of thresholds, of liminal space, tentative and uncertain but open to possibility. In these early paintings, you often find the angel and Mary facing each other, like this, across the space, and then your eye is drawn to another line directly from the viewer to the background of the image. A window with a glimpse of a view, a door – in this case the door is closed. The closed door is a symbol of virginity, but here, I can’t help thinking of another collection of symbols – the closed off way back to the Garden of Eden, a way out of the confines of law and punishment, a door out into the freedom of a rich and green landscape. This line, front to back, out of the picture, forms a cross with the direction of gaze between the two figures, and that intrigues me. It does seem like an invitation to walk that path out towards the spring, towards new and abundant life.
I notice that many of you good readers are looking at my blog for poems on the themes of Holy Week, so here is a link that will help. I have a couple of new pieces for Easter Sunday, I’ll try to get those up here in the next week. Please do feel free to use my work, crediting me and this blog. It’s so good to know my work is being read in different parts of the world. Thank you for your support.
I’m sharing this post again, September 2025 as part of the Season of Creation some Christian traditions are marking at this time. Meanwhile, I’m continuing to work on a collection of poems for Wild Goose, The Year’s Circle – and this poem is part of that work. I’ll be sharing more on that as we go along.
I hope you find this post a helpful starting point for contemplation.
Additional note, 24th September2023. 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.
I’m working away at my collection of poems, The Year’s Circle, weaving together the seasons of the year and the seasons of the readings many churches follow. And we’re coming up to the story we call the Transfiguration – when three of his friends see Jesus in an otherworldly, shining – vision? or what was it? – with Moses and Elijah from the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s a pivot point in the gospel accounts, important and central, and also strange.
Some have interpreted this event as a revelation of Jesus’ true identity, and perhaps a foreshadowing of the resurrection appearances, and perhaps a glimpse of the Universal Christ – a theme explored by Richard Rohr in his book of that name.
As usual, there is no explanation, no interpretation in the gospel accounts. And there’s something about the event which encouraged me to explore the way it asks questions of us – what we think is really real, and really lasting. How we see – do we see glory? Do we see cloud? Those explorations reminded me of the medieval work, The Cloud of Unknowing, and how beneficial it is to be open and patient with things that are beyond our understanding. It feels like a story to sit with in contemplation, expanding our way of seeing, inviting us into a deeper and truer experience.
Earl Mott’s painting of the Transfiguration
When I was reading Luke’s account I was struck, as I often am, by his ordering of the events. There seems to be a theme emerging, with questions of who Jesus was, and also, what greatness might mean. And so I wrote a short series picking up those themes and exploring them. There are other events woven through that are not covered by the following sequence of poems – the Feeding of the Five Thousand, for instance – which is developing a sequence all of its own.
If you are looking for something to use in your devotions or public worship for the Feast of the Transfiguration (on 6th August), the parts stand alone, and can be used singly. But I was intrigued by the flow of ideas and wanted some space to ponder them on the page. I began with Herod, troubled and awkward in his guilt, and moved through the stories to the little child, standing in the midst of them.
So, here it is….. four poems following a trail.
Who? Luke 9, Matthew 16-18
I Herod
Herod found you a question he did not know how to answer. Perplexed, he heard whispers that you were John back from the dead, a ghost to stalk his conscience, shock his dreams, or the great Elijah, or another prophet.
He sought you out, he tried to see you. Perhaps to ask you who you were. What might have been, what could have been, if he had met you then?
II Peter’s confession
You asked those who knew you best, Who do they say I am? and Who do you say I am?
To the first, they gave the answers that blew in the air like smoke, whispers that swirled dark around Herod’s palace, and through courts and crowds. John the Baptist, back from the dead. Elijah. One of the prophets.
And to the second – a moment’s pause, an intake of breath, a strangeness rising – to be asked to name, to more than name, one they knew daily, and loved, and still, barely understood. How to give answer to such a question?
But Peter did. The vast words formed in his mouth. He called you Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one.
How good it is to be seen, to be known, to be understood. How warmed you were by those words. Enough to give him a new name – Rock – and a new identity – foundation stone. For all his impulsiveness, changeability, you knew him as deeper, and truer.
And yet a sadness enters here. The anointed one does not walk in greatness. The road you will take is hard and stony. A way of weeping. And a warning enters too – those who consider themselves God’s guardians will subject you to death, yet death will not hold you.
Such words cannot be borne. Such an upending, a contradiction, such pain. They fall to the earth like so many hard-shelled seeds, trodden into the dirt and snatched up by dark, shining beaks.
Sometimes our seeing falls away and we catch a glimpse of deeper truth. We say we see the light
Away from everyday thinking, on the mountain, in prayer, weighted with sleep. Perhaps we see a beloved face lucent in sudden light.
But here, on this mountaintop, three friends lifted up their eyes and saw – what shall we say? to whom shall we compare him?
Shining like the sun, as white as light, as bright as lightning – the one they walked with, ate with, laughed with.
Was it like the lifting of a veil, or perhaps a dragonfly splitting his dark skin to emerge a jewel? Was it a peering through the door of heaven, or coming to see the glory of things here, and now? I do not know. I do know it feels a moment of endless truth.
And in that moment, Jesus, Elijah and Moses do not speak of the glory that blazes around them, they talk of the pain that is to come – as ones who can understand. I hope there was some comfort in it.
Something like comfort too in the sightless seeing cloud, shekinah, that reveals how we do not and cannot see – God is beyond us
And yet is with us, as close as mist filling our lungs, beading on our skin, as close as one we love.
And then they hear that true voice speaking tenderly, calling him beloved, and saying to listen, to listen to their dazzling friend.
Words they will carry in their hearts, words which in turn will carry them on that long wide-eyed walk down the mountain, and through all that is to come.
As above, also reference to Isaiah 40
IIII Greatness
It is not what we think. Greatness is not the pomp, the power, the show, the mountaintop.
It is the welcoming of a little child. It is the being like a little child. In doing so, we draw closer to the one who calls Jesus beloved, the Son I love.
Greatness, a costume cloak of purple and foil. Let it slip from your shoulders. Let it fall.
As ever, I’m sharing with you work in progress. There may be some tweeks and amendments before things land in the book – Wild Goose, Iona Publishing, next year. Also, as ever, please feel free to use any of my material that helps, referencing this blog as your source. I love to hear about where my poems fly to, and where they land.
Here is a link to some more I’ve written on the Transfiguration. It includes extracts from my retelling, and some thoughts on how we might come to see more truly. I hope you find it nourishing.
Andrea Skevington 