creativity

Not only but also

/ andreaskevington / Leave a comment

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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

/ andreaskevington / Leave a comment

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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.

Honesty

/ andreaskevington / Leave a comment
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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.