Nature

Consider

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Last week, I shared with you a poem about daily walks through   Fen Meadow  .
Here is another.  As it is the time for buttercups, buttercups creep into this one, too!

I often find walking the best time for praying, and thinking.  There is something about the rhythm of your body, of your feet in contact with the earth, that quiets the mind and makes prayer easier – at least for me.  As I was walking and turning over my worries/prayers before God, I felt that I was being reminded to pay attention instead to where I was.  In particular, the phrase “consider the lilies of the field” came into my mind.  Now, the lilies of this particular meadows are these beautiful buttercups that grow tall among the grasses, splashed with orchids and clover and birdsfoot trefoil. So, I spent a while considering them, and it was impossible not to feel my heart lift at the sight of so much beauty.

The next day, I approached my walk more enthusiastically – looking forward to seeing the buttercups again.  The sun was shining, they would be perfect.  When I arrived, a large sit-on mower was being driven up and down over the long grass, noisily spraying all that was left of the wild flowers behind it. It felt as if I had just begun to notice something good, when it was mown down.  The poem tells what happened next – if “happened” is the right word!

 

CONSIDER

I walked behind as he
mowed buttercups down –
scattering gold through
the cut grass –
I gleaned the shattered stems
to carry home.

But, as they wilted in a jar,
they darkened, and drew
to themselves the thought
of other things cut short –
of life, and joy, and hope,
of beauty crushed,
of anger that narrows to
silence –

And yet, today, I came back,
saw the ground  newly
hallowed by many
small shining flowers –
open, nodding to the blowing wind,
running over with saffron light.

Cut down, we flower again, again.
How it all murmurs constantly,
as the shuttle flies across
the loom, and bare feet
are dusted with gold.
And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,  yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.   
Matthew 6:27-29

Fen Meadow – June. The power of memory.

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As we draw closer to the end of an academic year, as children begin to think of doing things for the last time – the last time in this class, this school, with these people, I have been thinking of the poignancy of repeated things coming to an end.   Every day you do something, and then you don’t. In this case, it was the walk to school – now itself a memory.  We passed through a piece of common land within our market town.  It was the nearest place we could go to run, roll down hills, sledge if the snow was right.  Each day, if it is your time for walking through it,  you can see some change in the growth of the plants, hear the birdsong, notice the way the path dusts your shoes, or muddies them. Sometimes it felt as if we were part of the place, and certainly the place is part of me. Each time you walk a familiar path, you can bring the experience of the previous times with you most strongly, it seems. Memory can be vivid, and overlay your experience of the now, as if you are in two times at once.  I try to explore that strange, split-second sensation in this poem.

I have some photos of the Fen Meadow buttercups, and orchids, but none of the willow trees yet.  Dry weather is necessary for the mounds of seeds the poem describes, and that has been hard to find so far this summer!  If I can find a dry moment with my camera, I shall share the pictures with you.  For now, I hope the poem helps you “see” the beauty of the place.

I hope you enjoy.

 

FEN MEADOW  – JUNE

We have been here so many times
before – this very spot – where
white clouds of seeds drift down
from willow trees, and fill our path.

You smile, and gather mounds of
whiteness – heaping the downy
seeds like warm snow.  What if
it stays till winter? You ask

And suddenly green grass
vanishes in a blaze of white
ice: bare trees, a low sun.
Our screams and laughter are

muffled by scarves as the old sledge
tips – I run my fingers over the scar
we left on the bark – and we shiver
in the warm sun. The very spot.

The breeze trembles again in full
leaves, and all around us buttercups
shine, and dandelion stems shudder.
You pick the clocks and blow

till bedtime, counting the hours:
lunchtime, morning, soft evening.
Your breath floats high, and
hangs in the air. Waiting

 

 

Three Days

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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.

 

 

 

Wind, and weather

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This is my second response to the wonderful Quiet Day at Otley Hall with Malcolm Guite.
While  Trying to listen to God grew out of the day’s content, this next came from the distractions. While we were listening, and looking out at the garden full of delicate spring flowers, the weather had an agenda of its own, bringing swift and sudden bursts of snow and hail.  With the north wind came this very small verse.

 

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Wind

Who knows what the wind brings?
These clouds cross the blue sky
full of rain
and hail
and snow,
as the birds sing,
as the flowers grow.
They come if I say yes
or no –
can I say Yes to the wind?

 

 

 

 

Trying to listen to God

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This week, I had the great privilege of spending a day at Otley Hall listening to some of Malcolm Guite’s most recent poems, to be published soon in Parable and Paradox  .  This collection on the sayings of Jesus is full of personal response and deep scholarship.  Those of us who were there had time to reflect on all the wisdom and beauty outside, which always helps my thinking!  It was an astonishingly good experience, and several new poems ended up among my jottings – they still feel quite tentative.

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Here is the first.

 

Trying to listen to God

There is all this that speaks –
the electric green grass,
the cowslips and fritillary lilies –
I know I am to consider them,
consider it all.
The song the trees sing today –
their tender beauty
like the beauty of a child –
will not be repeated tomorrow.
Today is the day to hear it.

There is all this
and stories too –
The Kingdom is like this, like that –
slipping past the guard of ego
and reason
they work their slow growth
Seeds that crack the
dark tarmac,
the grey concrete,
soften the callouses our own
stories have worked.

For there is all that too –
the stony weights,
the things that choke.
How does good soil get to be
good?
I wonder, as I am shaken,
as my ground is cleared.

 

 

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Pulling up trees

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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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