Our beautiful river, the Deben in Suffolk, is in trouble. Testing of the water has revealed that untreated sewage is being dumped. The estuary is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, rich in wildlife, and yet still this is happening. The river is the economic lifeblood of the community, with sailors and walkers, canoeists and birdwatchers all making a vital contribution to the towns and villages by its banks. Wild swimming has also become increasingly popular since the pandemic. We solved these problems long ago – having dirty, unhealthy rivers – and yet, here we are. Economics seems to be a good servant of humanity, and an exceptionally bad master. That can change. The water company – here as elsewhere – can be held to account. Reform of practice is more than possible. You can read more about the situation and our local response here.
There was a rally and march on Saturday 23rd April, the National Day of Action for Water Quality.
I was very sorry not to be able to go, stuck in the garden with covid – although I couldn’t have a nicer spot to be stuck in. Counsillor Caroline Page (Lib Dems) asked if I felt up to writing a haiku that she could share on my behalf. I’m delighted to be asked and have had a go through the brain fog.
A poet herself, she read it out at the beginning of the rally.
Photo by Charmian Berry
It then joined the march…
Photo by Ruth LeachPhoto by Ruth Leach
You can see more pictures, and video clips, on twitter here
I’m very proud to be part of this fantastic community, who love their place, and seek to protect it.
Photo by Ruth Leach
River Haiku – April 2022
The river breathes life for fish, otter, bird and us: Now death flows, we speak.
It’s such a wondrous river. Let’s treasure our places, and care for them.
Updated 24th April 2022 to include coverage of the Day of Action.
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.
Things change, yet leave their mark. I was thinking about this as I looked at one of our apple trees, grown curved in its search for light. You can see the shape of the trunk most clearly in the shadow it leaves on the fence. It grew like this to adapt to the dense shade of a neighbouring shrub which grew faster than it, and cast it in shadow. That shrub died, it is gone now. Yet even as light returns, the curve remains. Grown like this, the tree has given us apples in autumn, and beauty all year. I thought about how the tree found a way of flourishing despite the shade, and admired its resilience. So, the poem is mainly about the tree, but also, murmuring away underneath, was an awareness of the tree as teacher, making visible something that is often hidden within us.
The tree adapted to its setting, and as the setting changed, the adaptation remains even though there is more light. We all do this, whether it’s growing accustomed to living quietly and distantly during a pandemic, or learning from a young age how to live in difficult emotional or physical circumstances. Even when things are better, lighter, more friendly, we can find ourselves living as if they are not. Patterns of mind can be changed, new growth can happen, but it takes noticing, with compassion, and stretching ourselves a little into the new, more open space.
As lockdown eases, we can go gently with ourselves as we try to asses what is safe, and what has become a habit that is no longer needed – and those assesments are far from easy. We can be gentle with each other, too, as we all navigate our way into more open living. The changes in how we respond may be, in part, due to patterns of being which were laid down long ago. These, too, can be nurtured into more helpful shapes that keep us safe and help us flourish, both. I believe we can become free from patterns that no longer serve us, and grow with full vigour.
All these things I thought about, as I looked at the apple tree. But mainly, I though how beautiful it was, and how much blossom it bore this year.
The apple tree, having grown in shadow
I follow the curve with my eyes, the way the thin trunk arches back, seeking light. On that side, the branches grow thicker, surer.
It bends away from the dense shade that was there, only weeks ago, a dark shrub that outgrew it, then died. Now, the blossomy branches lean back, away, from open light-filled space.
Cast in shadow, it grew thus, leafing and flowering, supple, adapting to shade, and seeking light.
I wonder, what will happen now? Now we have cut down that dense, dry growth? The thin branches on this side will fill out, strengthen, divide, reaching into the place that was once too dark, heavy, in time, with fruit.
But what of the trunk? Will it bear, one hundred years from now, that curve, lessened, perhaps, by years of thickening growth? The adaptation no longer serves it, yet the tree may still bear it, And the tree’s beauty is held in the grace of this curve.
Such shapes of growth and thought persist, gently, strangely, known or unknown. We make allowance for the ghost of a shadow no longer seen.
Next week, all being well, the rules will change here in England. We’ll be able to have someone local in the garden again. Having all this time with no human visitors has made me thing about who I’m tending this garden for. It’s been rather nice to leave aside my imaginary visitor who might critisize my rather haphazard and untidy methods, and just go with what I want, and what the garden seems to do. I hasten to say that my dear friends who came and sat with me last year, when inside was out of bounds, are always delighted to be here, and say no such thing! The critic is internal, and I am seeking to encourage her or him not to worry, to look at what is beautiful instead.
I’ve changed my emphasis this year. Previously, I was being quite purist about going for british native plants, wildflowers, and I still do try for those first. However, that did leave a long gap in the latter half of the year when there wasn’t much for the insects, so now I’m going for abundant life – plants and a style of gardening that encourage insects, birds, any other wild creatures that are happy to be here. I am protecting tender things from the muntjac, but the deer is welcome just the same. You can read about my planning for later in the year in my poem, Dreaming of Flowers.
Hospitality, then, in my garden, is the largely hidden from human eyes at the moment. It is fairly unconcerned about what other people might think. It is simply what I, and the wildlife, like. This winter, I’ve done other things to shelter nature. I’ve put up a couple of bird boxes, and made a bee hotel, and had piles of cuttings where ladybirds overwinter. I might write about those later. For now, I’m just rejoicing in a few of the flowers.
An edge of the lawn, left unmown, where the primroses have settled. I planted the crocuses in the autumn lockdown.
Hospitality Lockdown III
Alone in the garden. Mild. The early insects stir, hum, fly slowly towards the flowers I have planted – startling yellow aconites, the shrub honeysuckle, primroses, crocus – oh, those two together, the purple and the yellow, how they shine, how they bend their impossibly thin pale stems as they follow the sun, as they accept the weight of bees.
This garden is still a welcoming place. Cut off from friends, from human hospitality, from tea and laughter, from human notice of these opening buds, even now the garden hosts such a banquet.
It sustains and rejoices so many – the hoverflies, like this one, resting in the yellow aconite all this time as I write.
I have spread a table here, welcoming all this life, and together with all these, I receive the early warmth, I rest in the fragrance of flowers.
Just to add – today, I saw the first male brimstone butterfly visiting the primroses. So exciting!
On some maps, especially old ones, part of the wood near where I live is called Maidens Grove, or Maidens Grave. I can’t help wondering what was the fate of the maiden, and how long ago her story may have been told. It feels ancient to me, something passed down and down until it was forgotten – but perhaps not by all, perhaps someone knows the tale, still, and still tells it.
At some point this land seems to have been used as a quarry, and there is an abrupt slope down to the bottom of the wood, which I like to reach via a steep and narrow path through an arch of holly bush – it has the air of a portal, an entrance into a different world. And down here, it is different. The soil and the plants are darker and denser, and the land is crossed by streams. It’s here I gather the ransoms, wild garlic, when they emerge. It’s here I look for snowdrops. The paths are thick mud. You need to think about how the weather was a few days previously to guage how robust your boots need to be, and the trees sometimes suffer from the unstable ground, even though more sheltered from the wind.
The trees that fall are left where they fall, food for so many creatures, giving back to the soil.
And so, down here in Maidens Grove, or Grave, I came across a new loss, a huge straight tree pulled out of the ground. The image of it wouldn’t leave me alone. I’ve been trying to find a way of writing about the vastness of the losses we are all facing with the pandemic, and the desperate sorrow of each one of those losses. This poem isn’t it, nowhere near, but something of the sadness of the time seeps into it. I don’t want to look for signs of hope, for the new life that might come, and yet in the wood at least I found myself noticing such signs, by hopeful reflex, and began wondering if I could accept that they were there, even by the grave of a great tree.
Poems this lockdown aren’t coming so easily. You can read about the very gentle, informal project here. I will continue to share them with you as they emerge. Shared experiences are hard to come by, and I am encouraged to find that we can find connection here, on line, and I hope that with this poem, we can take a walk in the woods, wherever you may be spending this difficult, winter lockdown. So thank you for your time, and your company. I hope we can all find hope, in due season.
Maiden’s Grove/Grave
Here, down in the sheltered hollow of Maiden’s Grove, or Grave, dark paths of deep mud are laid across with sticks, marks of the care and kindness of those who have walked this way before.
Here, these paths are edged with the first signs of ransoms emerging, pale and curved, beckoning in all this darkness.
Here, as the small stream cuts slowly, year by year, through layers of gravel and clay, a great tree lies fallen, stretched back into the heart of the wood, green with ivy only, blocking the water’s flow.
Its fall has splintered many branches, and about it, other trees stand wounded, open, half felled by this great fall. I feel the moan and the crash of it, its life-roots darkly upended,
but here, the deep bowl its roots have left is already filled by the seep of water, black with an ash grey sheen, where a few of last year’s leaves float, overshadowed by this great spread of root and earth.
The bowl is new in this old, shifting landscape, not yet softened by new growth –
and yet so soon, so soon, its surface pits and circles with movement below, stirred by some creatures who have found it, already, already made it a home.
This dark bowl seems a spring from which the stream flows now, a source, a beginning, down, over stones and branches and spoilheaps of mud to here, where I stand, where the dark path crosses.
Around it, a tangle of brambles and a scatter of birds, and unseen, a creep of creatures comes to this place, the tree’s root-grave, sprung open,
rolled away by a mighty wind, so full of life, already, and already that life begins its work, softening, decaying, and now,
I am allowing myself to wait, to wait and see who will come here, what will rise again here, in Spring.
In a few weeks, the ransoms will be up and fragrant and ready to eat.
This new lockdown, I am writing in my notebooks again, letting what emerges, emerge. You can read about the Lockdown Poems here – their immediacy, their rootedness in my place.
Once again, I have begun writing what I see, and what is before me in this moment. Whereas the earlier poems, starting in March, are largely written outside, this one is about looking out. Beginning to write is a revealing thing. As I proceeded, I felt that what I was exploring was that sensation of being stuck inside – looking out, but not with longing. I am looking out at a world that is far from inviting. Cold, wet, and darkening as it is. Once again, that small moment, that everyday feeling of watching the rain, seemed to unfold and reveal a wider and deeper difficulty. Not so much of being stuck inside, but of not wanting to venture out into a world that seems alarming, potentially dangerous, as we face the terrible acceleration of the pandemic’s spread. It is truly terrible, the grief that is echoing around our closed rooms, the potential for harm in each interaction.
But venture out I will – the natural world still offers its hospitality and welcome, however cold and dark it seems. The garden and area around still see me tramping about for exercise and refreshment. I had a new waterproof coat for Christmas, which is making all the difference to how I feel about being outside just now – at least from the point of view of the weather. The pandemic is a different matter. My venturing is limited now, circumscribed and circumspect. I notice an increasing tendency to some anxiety at the thought of “out”. That anxiety is well founded. I am listening to it, and taking what precautions I can. As we all are.
It will not always be so, though. We will emerge. For now, the balance and relationship between inside and outside has shifted, profoundly connected to the natural world as we are. We can feel cut off from the winter, we are certainly cut off from each other. But even now, there are tiny wonders to be seen out there, small hopes and shifts, if we can raise our eyes and look.
Inside. Outside Lockdown III
Inside, looking out, through golden light to cold grey, through glass and warm air and stillness, to where the cold wind shudders the trees.
Outside, the curved seedpods of the tree peony drip with ice rain, glittering
While candlelight and lamplight are reflected in the glass, and glow orange in the darkening grey garden.
And a tumble of birds comes, and goes, comes, and goes, chattering endlessly on the feeders that sway in the sharp wind
And if I hold my nerve, and hold the gardener’s gaze, even from here I can see that fuzz of green on the ice-furzed soil – Herb Robert, violets, the tissue-paper yellow of wet primroses, and the soft spears of bulbs just beginning. Bluebells. Cerise gladioli.
Outside seems far away. A different air. A different light. But soon my boots will be on my feet, and my coat wrapped about me, and I will feel that frost, and the cold wind, and I will feel the ice rain again.
To keep our spirits up, a reminder of what is to come.
Here in England we are back in lockdown – I think it’s Lockdown III, depending on how you count the November one. It’s exhausting, and so difficult for so many, with all the chopping and changing. It’s dreadful to watch the numbers of sick and dying rising every day, and to hear of the hardships lockdown brings too. It’s relentless. I am so grateful to the science and health professionals who are working so hard to both tend the sick and find ways of overcoming the virus. I am so grateful for the promise of the vaccines. I only hope we can get them delivered quickly and effectively.
In the first lockdown, I wrote snatches of poems which often started from times of quiet, seeking stillness in the garden. You can read about that here. How much of that I’ll do at this time of year I don’t know. What this lockdown will bring we can’t say. But I find myself drawn again to the gentle changes of weather and season, plants and flowers, as a way of steadying myself, and marking the passage of time, and connecting with something beyond myself which gives glimpses of hope.
In the November lockdown, or circuit-break, I’m not quite sure what name to give it, I indulged the gardener’s delight of ordering and planting bulbs for the spring, and began dreaming of flowers – I found myself waking with planting schemes forming in my mind. I needed something to look for beyond the shortening of the days, the closing in of the weather, and the uncertainty surrounding Christmas. I found it was effective. It was someting within my control, something I could do to introduce an element of hope and change and the promise of beauty. It gave me physical work, too, which in turn helps with sleep.
And yesterday, the notebook came out, and tentative jottings began to emerge.
So I don’t know whether this will become a regular practice, but, as in the first lockdown, I thought I’d share with you whatever it is that comes up, and see if that connects with you, who are kind enough to share your time and attention with me here. I hope we can peep outside, and see something that lifts us. I hope we can receive the gifts this dark season gives, and perhaps bring a few sprigs of green inside. We can plant hope, even here.
So this poem, which might be the first of a new series of Lockdown poems, draws on the earlier planted hope, and receives encouragement and delight from seeing new things spring up. I also wonder – what this time? What might I do during this lockdown? Of course, there is no necessity for there to be anything, it is enough to live in these strange days, but, I am wondering what there might be that is within my scope and power to do, to begin, to dream of….
Dreaming of flowers Lockdown III
Each morning, now, as the sun nudges fitfully up, I do my rounds of the garden,
sometimes under a wide umbrella, walking with as much grace as I can muster, careful not to trample the sodden, spongy ground.
I am looking for fingers of crocus, ready to spread, and snowdrops, grey-green in the dark soil. I am looking for what I planted, and for what has inched in patient drifts through the waiting ground.
And there, and there, I begin to see. Each day, I hope, a few more, and a little taller.
On better nights, I dream of flowers now, and wake to think of flowers. Red and purple and orange, spread like velvet, loud with bees. The hard knots of bulbs I planted in fistfuls by November’s shrinking light – in a fury of hope, in defiance of the narrowing circle of my life, of our lives – they will awaken.
They are beginning to do their work now, this time, within me, locked down once more, they are beginning to push up from the cold dark depths, beginning to green in this faintest, tentative, stretching of the light.
And what this time? What will I do that could push through the darkness with green spears of hope, could fill my dreams with the scent of life?
All the photos in this post were taken by my husband on a wild and stormy day at Walberswick.
This is a strange New Year’s Eve. It’s disconcerting to think how little we anticipated what this year would bring at it’s beginning. It throws our attempts at planning and new resolutions into all kinds of disarray, if we try to look ahead. So I’m attempting to leave the future where it is today. I’m trying to look deeper, at some of the lessons this year of a long pause, a long hesition. I’m noticing that there are things I can take forward…. the things I miss and therefore know their worth, the things I don’t miss as much as I expected. Knowing the value of community, connection, kindness more keenly, I’ll look for ways to nurture them in these new days. Knowing how the natural world has sustained me this year, I’ll be looking to continue to deepen my appreciating, and active care.
The poem I’m sharing with you today was written at a previous New Year. We nearly missed the foot ferry between Southwold and Walberswick while out on a long winter’s walk with our family. It ran till sunset – and sunset was upon us. It speaks of a happier time, when family could stay, when the foot ferry was open, as well as The Bell Inn at Walberswick. Today, husband and I did a long bright blue walk along the River Deben’s bank downstream from the creek, as far as you can now before the breach. It was beautiful, full of birds and ice. Little flags of ice clung on to the reeds after high tide and flashed in the sun. But I did remember this Walberswick walk, and the strange feeling of being suspended between the two shores, the two closed gates, in the hands of the ferryman whose course was sure even though it seemed to slant so across the water.
It helped me thinking about today, where I feel suspended between two shores. This year, the new shore seems further away, and harder to know. We are not used to feeling quite this adrift, and uncertain. Trust, hope, faith, love – and action drawn from these – are important now. But so is sitting with the uncertainty, with the not knowing where we are going and what we are doing. Perhaps in this space we can dream of a shore with warm, welcoming lights, with togetherness, with hope. Perhaps we may find we can be such a shore for each other, and keep lights of hope and welcome burning in the long cold nights.
I’ve shared with you another poem about winter walking along this shore, and a murmuration of starlings. You can read that here.
Crossing the Blyth at sunset, at the turn of the year.
We walked fast towards the ferry – nearly too late – and saw the ferryman on the other side, the gate closed behind him. But we waved, and he came, his blue boat a long wide curve across the river.
Behind him the setting sun, the treeshapes black against the orange sky, How beautiful it is. He helps us on board, offering me his hand with nautical courtesy, and then shuts the gate firmly behind us.
So we thank him, and our blue boat begins to churn those golden waters rippling with a fast tide, as we seem to hang for a time between those two closed gates, between those two jetties, in neither one space, nor the other. We are somewhere else instead, where all is gold, where darkness lies behind, where the lights of the houses and the wide-open pub are ahead of us, lights that warm with the hope of welcome.
We are suspended for a while in this Adnams-blue boat with the diesel and the saltsmell and the cry of the birds, bathed in light, trailing an ice hand in water the same colour as the light. Here we are. This moment. Between two moments. How beautiful it is.
It feels like disappointment after disappointment, crisis after crisis in the run up to Christmas this year in the UK. We’d carefully pieced together plans for seeing those we love, and tried to work out how to do that as safely and joyfully as we could, only for those plans to be upended when it was rather too late to make alternatives. Some of us may find that our cupboards are full, and our guests are not coming. Others, intending to be away, are finding it hard to stock up with Christmas goodies – or anything – in time.
For Suffolk folks, the Little Free Pantry at St Andrew’s Church, Melton, might offer a solution to at least the food sharing aspect of this difficulty. You can read more about the project here. It’s a very simple idea. Anyone can come and leave some food at the pantry, and anyone can come and take some food.
Leave what you can, take what you need.
So, if your cupboards are looking a bit full, and you are sad that you can’t share your food with your nearest and dearest, why not consider sharing it with your neighbours? If you find yourself in need of this and that, why not come along and have some? I find it’s helped fill a sad space to leave a few things to cheer someone else. It’s helped me to pass some Christmas cheer on. Why not complete the circle by receiving it? It’s looking quite full and festive at the moment.
Access to the pantry is via the lane to the right of the church, cutting across the end of the Rectory drive. You can see some photos of the way here.
Opening Times:
Monday to Saturday, 9 am – 4 pm Sunday, 12 noon – 4 pm Open during the Christmas holidays
You can leave items at the Rectory outside of these times. A link to the Church website can be found here.
Apologies for the blur – I still haven’t worked out how to get a clear shot while wearing a mask!
Of course, our current crisis has left people with real worries and practical difficulty in providing for themselves and their families. The Little Free Pantry is a way of neighbours showing love and support for each other at a difficult time. If you are facing hardship, there are others who can also give help. You could try the local Salvation Army, and the wonderful Teapot Project. The Teapot Project redirects food that would otherwise go to waste, passing it on. They make wonderful frozen meals, too. You can order the food at full (very reasonable) price, or pay as you feel.
With this terrible virus, our normal instincts to reach out to each other are constantly frustrated. In these very dark days, we may long to give and receive love, and support, and practical help, and not know how to do it. The pantry is in some ways such a small thing, but it is a sign of hope and of the love we long to share. And the food is not a small thing, it really does help. The fact that it’s there, that people in the neighbourhood are looking out for each other, helps too. That feeling that we are not alone is so important. Joining in with the giving and taking of the pantry connects us. Why not give it a go?
For those who are not local, there may be food sharing schemes where you live, or you could consider starting one?
I’ve been working on a series of poems drawing on the first part of Exodus as we have made our way through this strange, upended year. I had a sense that these stories had something to say to us, speaking into our year of pandemic and political upheaval. I feel I may be nearly at the end of the sequence – maybe one more, but we’ll see.
I’ve been mulling this one over for a couple of weeks, and felt at the end of last week, I’d soon release it into the world and see how it got along. Reading it again today, in the light of the Presidential election, I’ve hesitated. As I was writing, I was thinking how important it was for us to be able to see something of ourselves, from time to time, in those characters who are not the heroes of the story. So often we assume we are Moses, or Miriam, and very rarely wonder if there are aspects of our lives where we might be Pharaoh.
And so I was thinking about the ways in which we may – knowingly or not – participate in systems, and make choices, that are in the spirit of Pharaoh. I was seeking to make a gentle equiry of myself – are there ways in which I might be hard-hearted, grasping, not recognising the consequences of my actions for others? I was speaking to myself, and to our consumerist societies, in addressing Pharaoh in this poem. Of course, we have Pharaohs in our age too, be they elected or other sorts of political leaders, or people of immense weath, and power over our lives, and the state of their hearts matters very much indeed. Maybe one reason they matter so much is that they do seem to embody the values we come to live by. If you want to mull over the role of leaders, be they kings, emperors, or their elected equivalents in power, you might turn to this passage from the Hebrew Scriptures, 1 Samuel 8 – quite a picture of a hard and grasping heart. As ever, there is much wisdom to be found here.
My poem is what it is, and I will trust it, and release it into the world as intended. Its narrative frame is the series of plagues that struck Egypt, recorded in Exodus 7-12. Each time, Moses warned that there would be consequences for not letting the slaves go, and each time, Pharaoh refused. I’ll post my retelling of the story, and some more thoughts about the plagues, soon. It’s a difficult, heartbreaking part of the story of the Hebrew people’s road to freedom, and so important. But in the meantime, here is my meditation, here is what came to me, as the story filled my mind.
Stone Heart/Let Go Exodus poems 10
You will not let them go, you will not unclasp your hand, your heart hardens even as the people suffer, and so troubles run together, clattering across the exhausted land, the exhausted people – Nile turned to blood, undrinkable, frogs and gnats, sickness and storms, locusts and darkness,
Each thing connected, all interdependent. The river dies, and its death ripples outward, and still your heart is hard, and still you will not let go as the frogs hop from poisoned mud, and gnats rise in swarms, and all brings death and disease,
You are asked, again, and again, to let them go, unclasp that grasping hand, release the slaves who work this land, as the land itself cries out, exhausted from the taking, and taking, and not letting go
barren under a hard human heart, groaning under the bent human backs, as you take life and strength from mud and field and hand.
Step aside, Pharaoh, from your endless taking. Instead, let go, release, free, unbind all this wealth that seems so necessary to you now.
Open your hands, do not trust in your grasping, as Moses stands again, and stretches out his hand again over the weary land. Soften your heart. Let them go. They were never yours to hold.
Andrea Skevington 