Poetry

Silk

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c 2016 Matthew Ling

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c 2016 Matthew Ling

 

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Selworthy Green, Peter Skevington

A November poem for today –
when the days are growing darker, a poem which tells of a moment of brilliant light.

When the sun is low, and when dawn and dusk happen at times when we are more likely to be about, we can sometimes catch a moment of pure glory, like this one.
The sun hit an angle which not only illuminated the spidersilk that covered everything, but transformed it – the silk acting like a prism and splitting the light into its rainbow colours.
Everything in that plain muddy field shook with all the colours, all the light.
Even an unremarkable morning stroll can leave you breathless with wonder.
Even in dark times, we can look for the light.
Keep looking.

 

SILK

November – early morning –
clear sky – rising mist.
You note details, how it was
when it began,
when the spidersilk hummed with light,
the way a wire hums in the wind.

Just one or two threads at first,
then each blade of grass, each reed,
joined in strands of brilliant light.

Silver shakes and splits
into red, blue, violet.  Threads
shuddering into colours of such
brightness, such purity.

Even backs of crows
are iridescent white,
and heavy water-drops
that bend the reeds
flash indigo and orange

for a moment –
a long held breath
Then the silk turns silver again,
and then it vanishes.
Brown mud. Green grass.
A field where cows swish slow tails,
and the curlew and the heron
walk through reeds.

 
With thanks to Matthew Ling and Peter Skevington for the use of their beautiful photographs.

Sunday Teatime Penygroes – for All Souls Day

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The second of November is marked as All Souls Day by many churches, following on from All Saints Day the day before.  As the nights close in, we remember those who have gone before us.  We honour their memory, and remember that we are not alone, that there is a cloud of witnesses in those who have gone before.  We treasure their wisdom and their memory.

I wrote this poem as I remembered a childhood visit to my great grandparents in South Wales.  I remember the sensation of going back in time, of encountering an entirely different age, it seemed to me.  I remembered their kindness, their gentle laughter, the way they switched between English and Welsh.

Recently I discovered something about my great grandfather that makes me immensely proud.  During the General Strike of 1926, he was arrested and imprisoned for leading out 800 miners in support of their colleages who were suffering terrible hardship.  He was a man of honour and principle, a man of deep faith.

There are many others who have gone before us, whose lives we may barely know.  Today, we remember those we do know, we remember them in the love of God.

 

SUNDAY TEATIME –  PEN-Y-GROES

I remember that room so clearly.
My last visit,
although I didn’t know, then.
The room was dark,
peaceful among voices.
Rich browns of paint and polish.
The black kettle over the fire.
The tick of a clock.
Two voices speaking in
two tongues of
times far back,
tunnel-dark under the earth.
The smell of coal.
The smell of baking,

The table spread.
A gold-brown velvet cloth
topped with creamy-white lace.
Best china – edged with
gold like an open Bible.  Quiet.
While through the window were
row after row of cabbages and leeks
and tomatoes, waiting in the green sun.
The henhouse was empty.
They used to scratch and cluck
they said, and smiled.
So much, so much is left behind.
This poem was first published in Poems to help you through the Week

 

 

Redshanks

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Photo – Clive Timmons

 

When I walk, I often take a notebook, and sit and watch.  Watch isn’t quite the right word – it is more of an opening yourself up, a forgetting yourself and becoming lost in what you see before you.

This poem records a moment of change, when, with a rising wind, the birds began to fly.
I wondered what it was that moved them.  Whatever it was, it moved me, too.  I got up, and walked on.

 

Redshanks

Light on grey mud, grey water,
clouds high and thin.
By the edge of the river
redshanks probe thick
cold with their long beaks.

The wind breathes
over the flowing tide,
ice breath that mists
the watersheen.
And the birds begin to lift,
first the northernmost, then
up like a piece of loose lace,
flashing dark and light from
opening wings.

They circle and cry, raising
long mudsplattered legs,
wingtips close now, wheeling
the air into many breezes.

And what moved them, and what
tied them?  That pull, the breath
of wind over the water. That nudge,
seeing open wings all about them.

That longing  to fly

 

October 21st

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This poem is a product of my not-quite daily practice – of simply writing to fill up the page.  It is a discipline learned from Julia Cameron’s invaluable The Artists Way, where she advises Morning Pages – filling up three A4 pages every day.  You are not attempting to “write” or do anything creative, you are just getting to the end of the pages.  In the process, all sorts of interesting things will happen, but that is not your concern.  You are learning to silence your inner editor, getting it to turn the other way while you are in the first tentative stages of creating.

Once you have got used to simply writing, and not reading or thinking about what we have written, after a few weeks of filling up pages, you can begin to go back and look at what you have written.  Sometimes, amidst all sorts of moaning and lists and thinking on the page, you find you have the beginnings of something.  Sometimes, it is like mining ore.  Once your inner critic learns to leave you alone, you find all sorts of things emerge, like this.

One of the things I often find myself doing is describing what I see around me.  This is what I did.  To honour the process, I have called the poem by the date, rather than giving it a subject.  It is a record of this moment, this sitting in the garden wrapped against the growing cold, writing.

 

 

October 21st

How lovely the light is, low and golden,
falling in sheets through low, golden trees.

And the birds sing now, this morning,
in a song sharpened by last night’s frost,
the first – cold, clean, white.

The red roses are scentless with ice,
petals rolled to elegant, sugared points.
And above them the tall, brown seedheads
rattle gently in a gentle breeze.

I will cut them back, but not yet.

They hold this moment, now,
in their full, dry cups, swaying
between summer’s fallen petals,
and spring’s sharp green.
And coiled inside their
tiny black seeds are
flowers without number,
scattering in the icy breeze.

Not only but also

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This poem emerged from another solitary walk.  My feet beat against a hard path, and as I walked somewhere quiet, and beautiful, these words – and this pattern of words – began to emerge.
I had been thinking about the ways we sometimes speak of God, the things we tend to see God in, the images and symbols we use, and the things we tend to overlook.  I had been wondering why we pick the things we do, and what might happen if we looked at other, less promising subjects, and wondered if they too could tell us something about God.  What would we see if we looked differently?
It was a kind of walking contemplative practice,  one that I find fruitful.
By the time I got home the words were beating their own footsteps in my head, and I picked up some scrap paper, and wrote this:

NOT ONLY

Not only in these things
is the Glory of God to be found.

Not only these, but also
in the curved world bending itself
to a newly opened eye,
and the longing that clouds its closing.

Not only in the high and echoing hills
where rocks raise themselves
beneath the shutterfast
night and day of heaven,
but also in the long grey
half-light when dawn will not break.

Not only in the hands of the potter,
but in the cracked rim of a dropped bowl,
and in the one who could not hold it.

Not only in the mystery of words
and the fullness of music and
the pull of a brush through paint,
but in the fragments of self
we leave and find daily –
folded among shirts, and papers,
and hands on a still lap.
Not only in the bright beauty of stars,
but also in the black strangeness of the
space between.

Not only in the white smoke of the waterfall,
but also in the dustsmell of first drops after drought.
Not only in the green fluidity of the forest
or light through a new leaf.
Not only light but shadow
not only sea but dry stones
not only abundance but desert.
Not only
but also.

 
The photos above are of the Preseli Hills in West Wales, with a view of Carn Ingli – the Hill of the Angels – and also Mwnt beach, a departure point for ancient pilgrims to Ireland.

Now, as the days of darkness come

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As many days as I can, I walk by the River Deben near my home.  Sometimes I walk with someone, but often I walk alone.  Alone, the experience is different, opened up differently.  It  becomes a quiet form of prayer – one which begins with an openness, a question
– Hello, what is there that I need to notice today?
Alone becomes companionable, the openness becomes openness to one who is always there.
I look at the birds of the air, among other things, although, this day, it was more the birds of the water.
It seemed to me as I watched the cormorants that the growing darkness of the season was maybe something I needed to dive into, under the bright surface, that there was treasure even here, even here.

If you wish, you can listen  to the poem.

 

 

Now, as the days of darkness come

Now, as the days of darkness come,
I see the slick oily surface of the water,
low light skims it like bright stones,
as the geese arrive in broken, twisted skeins.

And there is the egret
in its startling whiteness,
probing the mud,
and a pair of cormorants,
dark as pitch,
forming their strange low circles.
Then, as I watch, they slip down beneath
the bright surface, into hidden water.
And I, too, I hold my breath,
while they are hidden, in wonder
at the unexpected airiness of their bodies,
sustaining them, in that cold water, for so long.

Fig

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Last autumn, I went to a warm and inspiring poetry morning in Burgh parish schoolroom – a tiny but beautiful space on the edge of the ancient churchyard.  It was part of a series of such mornings, but I was only able to make this one.   The people there made me so welcome, and we shared tea and cake and some beautiful poetry on the theme of Autumn, which we had all experienced on our way.  As I left, one of the other people there kindly offered me a fig from her garden.  It was most precious.  I took it home and baked it with a little sherry and honey, and eating it was an act of thanksgiving – for her kindness, for the morning, the welcome, the poetry,  the beauty of the season, for life.
As it baked, I wrote this.

Thank you again.

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The fig is heavy in my cupped hand,
warm, still, from the sun,
purple and green.
I walk slowly, for the skin
is thin, ready to burst open.
I feel the juice, the seeds,
move inside, sway with me
as I walk

from the room.

There was cake,
and bunting,
and people,
and we read together – Keats’
“Ode to Autumn”,
while the hawberries glowed
from one window,
while the brown stubblefield sloped
through the other.

How rich, how full
this life.
An unexpected gift,
fragile in my hand.

Light

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It’s nearly the equinox.

It is noticeable now, how quickly the light is drawing back from the edges of the days.  Outside jobs cannot be left. A torch is sometimes useful.  I do mourn the loss of light, but know that the darkness has its compensations – lamplight, wood fires, stars.

Below is a poem I wrote on Sizewell beach.  The photos above are from Walberswick, a little along the coast, where the North Sea has the same dark beauty.  I sat on the beach as the light faded, both watching and experiencing the loss of it, and the spread of the deeper blue of early night.  I saw my field of vision narrowing, and had a sensation of being, therefore, somehow at the centre, at the focus of what light there was.  An illusion, of course, based on the wonderful way the eye works – but a powerful and helpful one.  It enabled me to get off the beach when I finally turned my back on the sea.  It is like having a lamp for your feet.

While it lasted, that sense of being at the centre – one of many centres – was a place of prayer, a sacred place. I was aware of God, the source of light – and also of the light, the sea and the sky that were around me.  It was one of those times outside time, when we simply are, and are aware of that which is greater than us – aware of our own smallness, and our own participation in something vast, and beautiful.

Light, and its absence, have been on my mind as I have been writing about Jesus’ I AM sayings, particularly “I am the Light of the World”.  Perhaps that’s why this villanelle surfaced in my memory.

It is a loose interpretation of the verse form, with its three line stanzas and repeated lines, circling around, but it was the one that seemed to fit what the poem was trying to be.

 

LIGHT

Here, quiet on this stony shore, light
drains from the edges first. Blue deepens to blue,
leaving one pool of brightness against the night,

as the starlight, faint at first, shines bright
on the black waves that rise and fold,
here, quiet on this stony shore. Light

flecks the foam that trembles and shines white,
as the circle of darkness turns closer,
leaving one pool of brightness against the night.

Now, in the blackness, bright birds stop their flight
and shut their starfilled eyes against the dark.
Here, quiet on this stony shore, light

shines on white pebbles, shimmering and starbright
as shadows seep and spread like tar rising,
leaving one pool of brightness against the night.

The stars, the foam, and the pebbles shine with light
that washes and wells and rises
here, quiet on this stony shore. Light
leaving one pool of brightness against the night.

 

 

Honesty

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Image from higgledeygarden.com

Where do ideas come from?

You may have decided you would like to write, or paint, or undertake any creative practice, but  white space stares back at you from the paper, or the canvas, or the screen, and your mind feels as blank as the page.

What helps me is to begin.  That means deciding to fill up a page – not trying to accomplish anything grand, or anything specific – showing up at the page and filling it.  Often I do this outside, and often I end up writing about the things I see around me.  Sometimes, as I do sisomething catches my attention.

This time, it was the seed-heads of the honesty.

 

Honesty

The seedheads are drying.
They were purple green, fleshy,
lit up dancing by the summer sun,
and now they are thin, and dark,
like the cratered moon seen
through thick smoke,
or burnt paper with
smudged, forgotten words.

And now, as they dry,
the seedheads rattle and split,
shucked by the north wind,
shedding one half of themselves,
the darker half, those thin circles
rolling over the green lawn.

What is left is shining like
an open shell, glowing
in low light like
so many clear moons
caught in a white net.
Now, they are showing
their heart-colours,
pale and lovely at last.

Rain

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So, today, it rains.  I am loving listening to the sound of it fall o the dry ground, the coolness, freshness, even the greyness of the sky and the newly soft light.

While waiting for the rain, my mind turned back to this poem.  I wrote it a couple of years ago, and so the raspberries in the pictures, this year’s crop, are healthier than the ones described below.  Water has been on my mind as I’ve been working on my  new book   on John’s gospel – water poured out as an offering, water to wash the eyes of the one born blind, water the bubbles up within you, so you are never thirsty again.  That gets closer to the other kinds of thirst here, in this poem.  There are many things we can be thirsty for.

Rain

The breeze stirs the raspberry patch,
the leaves with crisp yellow edges
rustle under their net,
and under them
are deep red fruits, dusted grey,
The colour of blood spilled
not today, or yesterday,
but months ago.

They are strong,
an intense sharpness.
They have lost their sweetness.
Yet, even so, the blackbird balances
on the net,  reaching down
with a hard yellow beak.

The ground beneath is grey, too, and
fissured like the fruit.
The heat rises, stillness falls on the ground
like thin shadows.
This thirst, this longing for rain,
grows stronger.
Desperate.
Joy, and gentleness,
love and lovingkindness.
Presence and peace.
These I long for.
I need them like flowing water.
Come like the rain.
Come to us like rain.