Garden

Flags

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Seeds – such extraordinary, tiny, dots of potential, each one full of flowers.  I tend to let the plants I love run to seed, and then I have handfuls of treasure to bury in the ground, for the seed must fall to the ground to grow.  In this case, the ground is the small and unpromising strip of land beyond my boundary, by the road.  It does no harm, that I can see, to sow here, and it carries the possibility of  something beautiful happening where there was little beauty before.

The difficulty with planting wild seeds in wild places is that they are unlikely to grow.  As such, they can seem more like signs of disillusion and futility than of hope.  I was wondering whether we can engage in acts of hope, of planting, of goodness and joy, for their own sake, and then, simply be delighted when something beautiful comes of it.  I sow and I forget that I sow, but, nonetheless,  I now have a few small flowers of campion, scabious and harebell growing where none grew before.

The sun and the rain are beyond my power, but the sowing is entirely within it..

 

Flags

The seeds are ripening now –
bluebells and red campion,
scabious and harebells –
in this space, this enclosed
garden space

So I offer them to friends,
and I cut the ripe stalks down
and gather them in my hands,
carrying them like so many
ceremonial flags –
my colours.

I take them to the thin strip
of ground beyond my flint wall,
making cars slow for me
as I scatter in this hot,
unpromising soil.
Yet, nonetheless,
I am filling it up with seeds,
slowly, year on year,
colours blazing in my mind.

Most will not take,
but the seeds are there,
and the ground is there,
and so what is there to do
but to sow, freely,
not expecting return,
amazed and laughing
when they grow.

 

 

 

Nest

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Pigeon update: and today, just a few moments ago, they fledged!

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andreaskevington's avatarAndrea Skevington

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Poems can tell stories – I hope this one does – stories which seem to have a meaning beyond the events.  This is a story from the past week or so in my garden –  one of the many that unfold daily.  The story of a pigeons’ nest I uncovered.

As I began writing, I thought of the dilemma we all face as humans sharing their home with other creatures – how to live lightly, how to nurture and care for all who share our little bit of land.  As a large and powerful creature in this world, I have responsibility. I wrote about feeling like a giant in my own garden in Pulling up trees. In this instance, I had not seen the parent birds going in and out of this shrub. I thought I knew where all the nests were. I thought I had left it late enough…

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Nest

/ andreaskevington / 1 Comment

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Poems can tell stories – I hope this one does – stories which seem to have a meaning beyond the events.  This is a story from the past week or so in my garden –  one of the many that unfold daily.  The story of a pigeons’ nest I uncovered.

As I began writing, I thought of the dilemma we all face as humans sharing their home with other creatures – how to live lightly, how to nurture and care for all who share our little bit of land.  As a large and powerful creature in this world, I have responsibility. I wrote about feeling like a giant in my own garden in Pulling up trees. In this instance, I had not seen the parent birds going in and out of this shrub. I thought I knew where all the nests were. I thought I had left it late enough. I was mistaken..

As the days passed, I cheered the two youngsters on as they adapted to their new situation – a nest with a view.  Their mother just carried on caring for them, a little nervously at first, protecting them from rain, feeding them, sheltering them from the midday sun, even though they were now exposed to the crows, and the buzzard, that fly overhead.  Without that care, they would not have survived.  With it, they are thriving still, despite my unintentional assault on their home. No one in this family is giving up.

When I speak positively of their new, open situation, of course that is not about the birds, but about me.  The birds are better off hidden.  I was beginning to think of how we, when faced with hard change, can raise our eyes, and find courage and hope in even an unaccustomed view.
The world is full of parables.

 

Nest

I leave things wild.
I plant flowers the bees
and butterflies
love.
Ground cover
covers the ground,
and frogs and newts
rest in the shade.

So, this is not what should happen
when my window is crowded with leaves
and I wait till high summer
till the birds are quiet
to cut
hard and deep.
Satisfyingly
the ratcheted loppers
slice through wood.

I stop

As I see those two strange
black creatures,
yellow feathered,
shaking in their nest.
I step back, as quietly as I can,
shaking too,
a destroyer of their world.

Inside, I close the curtain,
peep around to see
the mother bird nestles them,
tends and feeds them.

They thrive and grow
in this newly open nest,
small strange dinosaurs,
now fledglings
stretching their wings,
seeing all that space
all that light
in which to rise,
and fly.

 

 

 

Days

/ andreaskevington / 3 Comments

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Hurry.  I am ill suited to it – especially as the days grow hot.  I wrote this poem as a kind of rebellion against the feeling that my time was constrained, not my own, running away from me while I seemed to have none of it for the important things.

So I snatched time, and wrote.  As I wrote, as I paid attention to what was around me, I felt the time slow.  I felt myself breathe again. I felt the hard shells of the seconds soften, crack, and open like the seeds in the ground – become things of infinite possibility again.  I realised that, although my home is not the manor described in the poem, there are ways in which it is.  I can inhabit my days as if they were timeless, spacious, connected.  By slowing, by paying attention, by breathing, I found what I needed.  Most of all, though, for me, it is by writing.  Writing freely, writing the moment before me, is a kind of contemplation. It can become a kind of prayer.
I am reminded of Mary Oliver’s great advice –

Pay attention   Be astonished   Tell about it.

This poem was highly commended for the Crabbe Memorial Prize.
You can listen to it here

 

Days

There is little time –
flowers run to seed so fast under
this strong sun, this dry blue sky,
their leaves curling crisply, blanching.
Their hurry towards death unsettles me
as their stems rattle brown, poppyseeds
pouring through my fingers, tiny and dark,
pouring away like hard-shelled seconds.

I want to inhabit each day slowly, quietly,
as if it were an ancient manor among gentle lands,
with warm red brick thick with years,
that smells of fires, and of rosepetals
as they overflow cracked china bowls,
where time hangs in the spaces between
each tick of the clock, and open doors
let in the endless songs of trees.

There, I could think – uncurl fresh leaves,
as time shimmers like the deep pool, full of lilies,
where the bright dragonfly waits, and waits.

Bees

/ andreaskevington / 1 Comment

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Hot and thundery, the English summer arrives – it’s too much all at once, at least for me.
Here is a small poem written watching the bees through my window, on the powerful, vivid, lavender.
It is also a poem touching on transformation, something that is beginning to emerge as a theme, although I am not quite sure where it is taking me……. which is perhaps, the point.

Bees

I watch them on the lavender,
each purple flowerstem a pendulum of bees,
keeping time with its humming weight,
White and red tailed, bumble and carder.

A few honeybees come, too,
so few, and already yellow
with sweetness.
And butterflies – cabbage whites,
bright as paper – unfolding
in the scent of flowers.

When the summer storms come,
when storm-rain falls in drops
as big as bumblebees, and
hail clatters against the glass,
they rise, as one, and fly
between the drops, too fast
for me to know where they shelter.

They return to rainwashed flowers
one by one as I gather a few new stems
bright, fragrant, and roll them
slowly in a jar of sugar,
ready, in the time to come,
for delicate sweet biscuits,
icing for dainty cakes.

I do not have the alchemy of bees,
but I have my own, under this roof.

Three Days

/ andreaskevington / 3 Comments

 

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Photo from Flickr, photographer unknown

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I have been transplanting buttercups into the verge at the front of our house, where there is no pavement, and have been thinking about boundaries – in particular the contrast between the rather wild garden, full of life, and the fast road outside.  This poem, written a few years ago, came about as I watched a female blackbird mourn the death of her mate.  She kept vigil for three days, and then she went.  I did not see her again.  It made me think about not only the intensity, the reality of each creature’s experience, but how often we live in our own enclosed worlds, isolated from each other, and how hard it can be to cross those boundaries.   How hard to credit and acknowledge the fullness of the lives around us. To begin to do so, to begin to see and understand another,  seems to me an important step to take.

 

Three Days

She stayed by the side of the road,
her brown feathers ragged,
stayed by the place where her mate lay,
black against the tar,
one wing lifted,
catching the breeze –
the passing of many cars.

Startled, sometimes,
she scuttered away into
the green growth,
then returned,
holding her head on one side,
but always she was there,
for three long days
and, for all I knew, nights.

What was the quality of her grief,
of the bond that tied her there?
We know so little of each other,
the unknown world folded
inside each being.
I walked humbly then,
knowing only to be kind.

 

Glad

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It’s easy to see why the English  discuss the weather – on Monday, I lit a fire, and today is warm enough to throw open the doors.  A day when you can slow, and breathe, and see.

I am typing this looking out of the window you see in the picture below, looking to the place you are looking from.  The gardeners among you may notice it is a picture taken a little further into the summer, when the hollyhocks, which are babies now, grow tall.  It’s all there, waiting.

Below are a few small lines I hope will cheer your day, wherever you are.

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Glad

How little, some days,
it takes to make the heart glad.

A line full of dry washing,
a mother blackbird’s beak,
heavy with worms,
sweetness rising in the grass,
a breeze shot through
with the scent of flowers,

these are enough,
yes, enough.

 

 

 

Pulling up trees

/ andreaskevington / 6 Comments

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I am sure that all of us who are have responsibility for a little bit of land know what it is to turn your back for a while, then find  it is growing with such glorious, irrepressible speed that you have no hope of getting it back to whatever plan you had.  If, like me, you have a secret preference for wildflowers and woods, it can be hard to pull things up.  I keep the runaway primroses and bluebells – but runaway trees!  Much as I love a wood, I have to remove them. The tension, wanting but not wanting order, is something I explore in this small poem.  I also touch on the more-than-reality of fairy tales, so often expressing some of the deeper workings of our spirits.

 

Pulling up trees

How quickly this place becomes a wood!
Last year, while I was sleeping,
seeds fell and grew, fell and grew, and now
as the year wakes, these small brown sticks
are all topped with leaves –
miniature sycamore, tiny ash.

How easily they pull up from the damp earth –
one long strong root, going deep,
and side filaments that resist, then
give, satisfyingly.
Such destruction –
I am the giant of my fairy tale.

Open lawns of grass, clusters of flowers –
bluebells and primroses – would be
swallowed up in a dense picket of saplings,
so close the squirrel and the bird
would find it hard to move,
the deer’s path would
no longer be straight –
my garden a wood
that grew while
I was sleeping.

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