Poetry

Poem – Murmuration

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Murmuration of starlings – geography.org

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Steer – Walberswick

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Steer – Walberswick

 

One of the glories of winter is watching the birds – where we live, the hungry waders and migrants come to feast on what hides in the mud.  There is even, sometimes, a small murmuration of starlings over the reed-bed by our little railway station.  Collecting my daughter from there, last year, I arrived at the moment when they began.  Quite a welcome home!

A little further up the coast the starlings gather in great clouds, thousands of them.  We had, as a family, discussed what things we would like to do over the Christmas holidays a few years back.  One of the suggestions was to visit an exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre, UEA, of East Anglian art.  We saw some paintings by Steer, of Walberswick beach, and also some botanical drawings by Mackintosh, drawn while he stayed in one of the fishermen’s huts by that same beach.

On the way back, we stopped off to look for starlings as dusk was falling.

 

Murmuration, Walberswick

We ran south along the ridge of dunes –
sea on the left, reedbeds on the right.
Behind dark trees the sky was red
and the sea –
purple and gentle in the evening.
The winter sun had shone bright
all day, the first sun for so long.
And you came with me, you all came
with me, when I said I wanted to look
for the starlings. So we run, laughing,
in heavy boots, towards that black
smudge in the sky over the reeds,
spreading and swirling, darkening
as the birds turn, moving together,
as we run together over the sand.

Mystery and wonder, the way they move,
a thinking cloud, and laughter
comes from the wonder,
and the running,
and the being together.

And as the mist rises from the sea, drifts
across the golden shining reedbeds,
and the birds darken as they swoop and
turn, our eyes are opened as wide
as memory – of this beach,
when you were children, when we came
here in the warm summer light,
laughing together in the bright waves.

 

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Poem – Candle

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Today is Candlemas

It is a time when we notice a turning in winter.    There are shoots beginning to appear, catkins are lengthening, and the buds of the blackthorn and the quince are swelling – the quince with a dark pink blush.  There is movement, at last, despite the cold and the damp.  The days are growing longer.  It is a time when, despite the cold to come, we can see that light and life are stirring again.

This poem, small and simple as it is, draws on these themes in my own spirit. Part of the process of getting ready for writing, for me, is lighting a candle.  At the moment I have a particularly lovely one given to me by my daughter for Christmas,  it has flecks of cinnamon bark in it and it smells rich and warm.  However, the words do not always flare up with the flame.  So, a thing I sometimes do, is write about what is before me, and in this case, it was the experience of not being able to write, and fiddling with the candle as I often do.  It became an illustration of the writing process, and a reminder to flow, to do, to begin, to not give up.

CANDLE

Sitting here, with a notebook open
at a blank, cold page, I light a candle,
hoping the fragrance, the bright flame, will help.

I watch it burn, but its wick is short and soon
its own heat has melted a pool of wax,
enough to drown it.  The thin red flame gutters,
splutters, as the heat drills down a narrow,
deep well with softening, curving walls.

So I take my pen, and press it down on the
wall, turning it in my fingers, pressing a
way through so the hot wax can flow.

And now the flame burns bright and steady,
the is air fragrant, and this page no longer blank.

 
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Poem: Aldeburgh Beach, January

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Photos taken at Dunwich Heath beach, a little along the coast, by Peter Skevington

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I love the North Sea in winter – its wild brown, its keen winds.  The coast is unstable here, lumps of WWII concrete, of building materials, and old fragments of glass  are thrown onto the shore.  The pebbles hiss in the breaking waves.  The waves in turn sound like a vast heartbeat.

The wind blows you alive, if you wrap up warm!

The photos above were taken this Christmas holiday, with my husband and son, as we stood on the beach and let the waves chase us.  We were not far, here at Dunwich, from Aldeburgh, where I went with a dear friend for a walk on a different day.

I am so grateful for my friends, and my family.  It is so good to be able to spend time with people you can be real and true with.  I feel very blessed to be able to count quite a few people as those whose company is as free as solitude, but enriched by their unique ways of seeing and being and insight.  The poem below attempts to capture something of my walk with one of these dear people, and I hope it can also say something bigger about the power of friendship.

I have been reading Bandersnatch, a Christmas gift from my son, which explores the relationships which formed the basis for the Inklings group, including Lewis and Tolkien, and it has clarified for me how much I need the encouragement and shared thinking and being a close group of friends can provide.  Our differences can give new vision and perspective, our mutual support can get us through difficulties that are too much for us alone.

Thank you to all my friends, and may you, reading this, have such sources of goodness in your life.

Aldeburgh Beach – January

We stood there, friends, on the beach,
facing into the east wind,
being blown full of cold,
icy and alive,
by a wind strong enough to lean on.

We stood on a cliff of pebbles
new thrown up by storms,
near the edge,
where stones rattled down,

while the sea, high and brown,
roared and crashed,
mist and foam flung
with the generosity of joy,
into our faces.
Our lips were salt with it.

In the sound of the wind we brought
our heads close enough to speak –
of the breath of God, alive,
breathing into us,
the glory of God in the brown shining.
The power of each small thing,
each small thing,
as the spray and the pebbles
danced wild around us.

Epiphany – a creative writing possibility

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Yesterday morning, we were in Bath Abbey, taking part in a beautiful service to celebrate the coming of the Magi, and the way God moves and speaks to people using a language they understand.  The sermon, by  Rev Evelyn Lee-Barber, explored this theme very thoughtfully, and she encouraged us to  think about where we were in the story too, and how we might respond.

It reminded me of a creative writing/meditation I did some time ago, where I used the words of the wise men to explore the story deeper.  I wondered if you, dear readers, would find it helpful to do yourselves.

You can write the words out on a large piece of paper with plenty of space between the phrases.

“Where is the one

 

 

Who was born

 

 

King?

 

 

We have come

 

 

 

to worship

 

 

 

him.”

 

Read the story slowly, allowing your imagination to dwell with each of the characters, and places. Ask what about this story speaks to you today, might be with you this week.  After you have spent some time in open quietness before God, when you feel ready, expand the words of the wise men, filling in the spaces you have left on the page.  There is something about allowing gaps that helps slow down your reading and thinking, giving time and possibility to the work of the Spirit, allowing the meaning to unfold before you.  The spaces matter, giving you space to think and feel and respond, to allow the words to engage in dialogue with you.  The gaps can be where the light gets in, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen.   Why not give it a go?

Perhaps you could share what you have written in the comments section, if you would like to!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Christmas poem, written in childhood

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Primary school was not a happy place for me.  I am dyslexic, but hadn’t been diagnosed at that point, and found a fairly traditional education involving spellings, handwriting, and learning tables by heart almost impossible.  I spent much of the time looking out of the window, and imagining.

While I couldn’t copy of the board, I did go home and write – often long epic misspelled poems – and occasionally, when we could write freely at school, I was brave enough to just do that, write freely.

My teacher, unknown to me, entered this poem in the high school Christmas Poetry competition, and it was commended.  That was such an important moment for me.  It was the first time I felt a sense of possibility at school – that I could do something, and maybe do it well. I am so grateful to that teacher for believing in me.  I showed her some of my scribbly notebooks after that.  Words and actions that encourage, that show you believe in someone, can seem such a small thing to the one doing them, but they can change the world of those who receive them.

 

When I was compiling Prayers and Verses I decided to include this Primary School poem, as it meant such a lot to me at the time.  I hope you enjoy it too.

 

The dawn is breaking, the snow is making
everything shimmer and glimmer and white.

The trees are towering, the mist is devouring
all that is in the reaches of sight.

A bell is ringing, the town is beginning
slowly, gradually, to come to life.

A candle is lighted, and all are excited,
for today is the ending of all man’s strife.

 

Let us encourage one another this Christmas, look for the good even in unlikely places.

 

 

Advent – a poem

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As we are close to the darkest time of year, it’s good to go and snatch what moments of light we can find.  Sometimes, I have to sit still, in the face of the cold wind, and allow my eyes to be open, just looking, before I begin to see the hope, the life, the turning of light’s tide.

We need the light now.

 

 

Advent

Now, at the turning of the tide,
when the days shrink small,
and night seeps through shadows,
the river flows with palest light.

Now, when light and life seemed frail,
and failing, the tide turns, water returns,
eddying and rippling the  slow, chilled, flow,
a river new filled with salt, with wide sea.

And the white gulls dive, and lift their heads,
and rise, quicksilver water
pouring off their opening wings,
beaks full of flailing, silver fish.

And here, on these grey banks,
flowers are open again: stems
split and burst with green leaves and
yellow petals, new touched with life.

 

 

Woodpile – a poem of fires that are to come

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I seem to be having something of a “Dark Advent”.  This year, the early beginning of jollity and glitter have left me rather cold.  The forced expectations of everything  being right with the world are particularly jarring.  I am feeling a bit “Bah! Humbug!”,  for much of it is.

What I have discovered, waiting in the dark, is that I’m not alone here.  In fact, there is a whole rich tradition, a whole season dedicated to such waiting, and what is more, you find that there are other people here, too.

Hope, after all, is  at home in the dark, in places that really need it. Advent is the season of almost unreasonable hope. Whether we feel the sting of expectation over our material provision – the perfect presents, the perfect dinner, the perfect home – or in terms of relationships – it’s all about family, after all, sitting happily together – we seem to be missing the point.

The point, as I seem to be finding, is that we are indeed waiting in the dark.  We are waiting for God with us.  For, astonishingly, God joins us in the dark.  God does not wait for us to clean up.  God does not expect the perfect Christmas.  Jesus was, after all, born in a stable of all places, literally in the poop.  I also remember that they went to Joseph’s family town, and no one opened their doors to the disgraced Mary, except the one who lent them the stable.  Not the perfect family, either, then.   Things are dark indeed, before the light of glory blazes out.  Before we see the light that is coming, that has already come.

The first Sunday of Advent, we went to an evening service at the beautiful Ely Cathedral.  We started in near darkness, and gradually, the light of candles spread.  We sang, and heard sung, songs and readings of longing, of waiting, of expectation.  Songs sung very much in the darkness, but looking for the light. Songs of a long waiting.  It seemed to me to reflect both a great truth, and my own experience of this season.

So, this poem about my pile of wood for the winter is a poem of perhaps unpromising, dry, cold material, that will, in time, spark in our grate, and warm us.  Our local woodman brings us logs that are a mixture of off cuts from his tree surgery, and cleared wood to keep the heaths open.  It’s hard to imagine, looking at it, that it contains so much heat to be released by the lighting of one match.

So Advent, a time of waiting, and of preparation, can seem as hard as stacking wood in the freezing cold.  But once again, we find the work of hope, even unreasonable seeming hope, can bring light, and warmth, into the chill of waiting.  We’re not aiming for perfection here.  We’re certainly not aiming for pretense.  We’re aiming to lift our eyes to see that hope is coming, and we can welcome it, and be warmed by it, even in the coldest  of places.

 

Woodpile

I love building this woodpile,
gloved hands holding frost-rimed logs,
piecing together the structure,
small circles nestled between large –
the colours of the dry wood,
orange, deep yellow, brown bark
mottled grey by lichen,
each one speaks of the years it has known,
the weather it has withstood,
the earth where it grew.

Each tree’s wood has its own
qualities – ease of lighting,
denseness, brightness of flame,
and these I appraise as I build.

Wood bought, wood gathered,
wood cut from our place, piece by piece
the pile grows, our defence against
the cold, the long nights of winter,
the snow that has already begun.

By chill sunset my aching back,
my arms, heavy with the weight of wood,
are glowing with the heat
of fires that are to come.

 

November Sowing

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We have a couple of small veggie patches in our garden.  Maybe, when the garden was planned and the trees were smaller, they were in the perfect place.  Now, they are rather shady, and need just the right weather for things to thrive.  Leaves will grow, though, and sometimes surprisingly.

There are often some seeds left over by the end of the season, and sometimes, I feel inclined to plant anyway.  Maybe, with a mild winter, and some protection, they’ll get a head start in the spring, before the trees are in full leaf.  As I was planting, I thought about all the times when it can feel too late, hopeless.  When we can feel too old to start something, or as if we have blown our chances.  Whatever it was we dreamed of, it can seem like there isn’t enough warmth for our dreams to grow.  It can feel like planting in November with chilly fingers.

I love the defiance of November sowing.  What is wasted by taking a chance, anyway?  A few leftover seeds… and who knows? Come the spring, my veggie patch may be full of little green plants.  I may have good things to eat, and to share.

 

It is not too late!

 

 

 November Sowing

I planted seeds today, scraping my fingernail
into the corners of old packets:
cavolo nero, romanesco, mizuna –
such names – exotic, full leaved, sharp.

I sowed them where I sowed before,
under tall trees thick and damp with falling leaves,
remembering how spring was baked dry,
and summer was pitted with rain, lightless.

But now, today, this low slanting sun is warm.
Now, in this out of season sowing
with leftover seed, I am surprised
to find myself hopeful, joyful
even, at this extravagant gesture.

I know full well that they may never grow,
But maybe, just maybe they will.
Each day is a day for sowing,
it is not too late.

 

 

 

From Prayers and Verses

Help me to be patient as I wait for your kingdom
and your righteousness:
as patient as a farmer who trusts that the rains
will come in their season,
and that the land will produce its harvest.
Keep my hopes high.
Help me to pray to you and to praise you.

 

Mud from Coleridge’s Garden

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The Ancient Mariner, at Watchet harbour, where the poem unfolded in Coleridge’s mind. The rope is particularly powerful.

 

On our Somerset holiday, we visited Coleridge Cottage.  I was not expecting to be so overcome by the place.  Each room was full of connections to his life and work.  Each room echoed with the poems – they flowed across the walls, they came out of the earphones by easy chairs, they whispered to me out of the leaves of books.  To be in the room where he wrote Frost at Midnight  and to sit in the Lime Tree Bower  were deeply moving experiences.  I still remember my marvelous English teacher, Miss Rowlat, talking to us about the Lyrical Ballads, with its paradigm shift of a Prologue, and then to be in the place where Coleridge and Wordsworth met and talked and where these ideas came into being – was beyond words. The Ancient Mariner found voice here, too.  So much wonder in one small, simple cottage. It is not often that I am left speechless.  I was here.

Mud from Coleridge’s Garden

I picked up my muddy shoe –
an unfamiliar pale grey clay,
a leaf stuck to the instep –
and slipped my hand inside
like a glove
as I looked for a cloth

and then I stopped.
It was that leaf,
I remembered the shape –
a jasmine leaf from
the Lime Tree Bower
where I had sat speechless
as I listened to that poem
so full of leaves,

and the pale grey clay
from the damp paths,
from that grassy space
so full of ordinary beauty
it filled me, too,
despite my already full heart.

I walk with muddy shoes now,
each day,
hoping to be rooted to that same earth,
leaving a sprinkling of
Coleridge’s garden
in this lighter, sandier soil.

 

 

Sorrows

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Much has happened this week.  Today, Remembrance Day in the UK, I am acutely aware of the importance of keeping peace between the nations, of reconciliation and forgiveness between us, of acceptance and inclusion for all.     Reconciliation, and an acknowledgement of the sacred worth of each individual human, seem further away now than they did.
This poem is a personal one, expressing something of an attempt to keep perspective among sorrows.  I know that for many, and for all of us from time to time, any such attempt can be impossible.  I wrote to try and express  what can feel like the constant task of not being overwhelmed, and to remind myself that when I can, it is worth the attempt.

I hope it also contains a gleam of hopeful truth.  Not a truth that ignores the darker realities, but that is prepared to see the possibility of light coming in the darkness. Both are real, but I find that if I can stay with the hope of dawn, even the darkness can take on a different quality.  Actions that lead to hope seem more possible, more achievable.  It is worth living for hope, not because the things we hope for will necessarily come, but at least in part because if we set our eyes on a kind and generous future, we are more likely to live in a kind and generous way now.  At least, I find that to be the case.
To all of you who are feeling a weight of sorrow, I hope this helps. May dawn come soon.

Sorrows

I carry stones in my arms.
They are grey,
and powder me
with dry dust.
They have sharp edges
my fingers find like
a tongue with a tooth.

When I notice,
I put them down,
stand up straight

Look, the sky is full of blue,
of high white clouds,
the trees chime with
golden pennies,
and a buzzard soars,
weightless, with its thin cry.

Look, there is one last flower
growing in the cracks,
and one last bee.

Who would have thought that losses
could be so heavy?
I find them lying on my eyes
in the dark, heavy and hot,
and on my heart and stomach,
heavy and cold.

I put them down.
Seventy times seven.
The work of Sisyphus.
Again. Again.

Look, there are stars in the darkness,
a whole Milky Way of them,
there is the softness of dawn light
coming, coming.
Take courage.
Begin again.

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Photographs are from the woods above Selworthy Green, Exmoor, and the coast at Watchet.

The reference seventy times seven is to something Jesus said when asked how often we need to forgive.  I used it here for any work where painful memory or thought keeps on surfacing, and we keep laying it down. Sisyphus  refers to the Greek myth of one who repeatedly rolls a boulder up a hill, only watch it roll down again.