Behind him, the curses rose

as the land lay bleeding.

Behind him, one day

poppies would bloom,

but now the earth was weeping.

The sky rained metal and agony

and the earth swallowed the bones.

One day there will be no more poppies,

the fields themselves all gone,

or poisoned, or the air too dry

and brittle, or the rain will swallow

everything.

I want to light a fire

to welcome in the winter

to rekindle the warming of my hearth

but my story-tellers

are all gone beyond this land

my garden wood is wet

weeping the inclemency of this year

and my chimney has not been swept.

So I will make do

with candle flames

small essences and orange scents

and a nest of hopefulness.

~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~

image Ghost Nest

(Angela Sandwith, Durham Lumiere, 2023)

A thousand prayers

from a thousand lonely hearts

children torn from parents,

and elders dying alone,

a thousand prayers

from a thousand souls alone

who didn’t know their family

their tribe, their belonging.

Those thousand prayers

were surely heard

in the hills and across the plains.

Surely, they swam in river song.

They thousand prayers were

the beginning of us all

finding our way home.

After such an abundant harvest

I am desolate, at hacking so harshly,

taking all your growth back to the ground

And you retaliate in biting, scratching,

insinuating tiny black thorns beneath my skin,

to fester if I don’t dig them out with needles

and iodine and antiseptic wipes and cream,

and the hope you will forgive me, will grow

again next year, reclaim the fence-line

that looks so winter-bare…

…I want you there.

Come back in the spring, take over,

climb and clamber and weave your wicked

way and gift me flowers and bees,

and the thrum of crumbles-in-waiting.

What of the ordinary days that slip by

unremarked, when all our plans simply

failed, but weren't disasters,

when all we did was this and that,

all we spoke was idle chatter...

...do those days,

also matter?

The sheet metal sea
stretches, fractures
and ahead the sky breaks
in shades of bronze and steel
and gilded topaz.

There is a line of iron,
a spear of something
that might be land, between
the ocean and the sky.

Distant and uncertain
a darkness that might be
a hope.

Landfall. Nightfall.
Home.

 
Drop down to the edge
of the marsh where
city noise subsides
behind the rattle of reeds
and the wind in the trees

a golden drop
as the first leave falls
and floats downstream

A rosary isn’t something you drop
accidently, by a bus stop.

A rosary is faith in a healing,
a prayer believing

that life will continue
precisely as you...

want it to.

I am not of your faith,
and I do not believe
a mother who lost
a son, would be
so cruel

as to wish that fate
upon another one.

A rosary isn’t something
you leave in the moss
upon the wall.

Unless it’s purpose
failed, and perhaps now
your son is gone.

The trees welcomed me, to tread
upon their fallen leaves,
and breathe in their
exhalation.

The scent of woodsmoke
transported me to other places,
faraway autumn mornings
among the hills,

as the hidden sun drew light
from the earth of endings,

up and out into the sky.
      

Below a mound already ancient

when they came, their village lies in ruins.

I feel them still in that grassy lane,
the ghosts of ordinary love and work,

loss and hurt,

and happy children at their play.

The tomb above is empty now

and ferns and foxgloves grow

beside the open door.

Some call it burial space
but maybe it was just a passage way,

from island land back to the sea,

sailors heading eastwards,

from the setting sun

back towards the dawn.

 
Perspective
edged in lace
fraying with age
verdigris

horizon lines

darkening
incontinuities

the meaninglessness

of looking out to sea

toes clenching hold

sand anchoring

me

We've forgotten our teenage wisdom,

how to be idle, a whole day of gazing

at the ceiling

or the sky.

No-one told us we would forget,

nor how many years it would be

before a summer called us back again,

gave us permission...again...

to chew on grass stems,

and watch the clouds.

Idling is a skill we should cling to,

to get us through

the long hot days

of wild-fires and fear.

Whatever it is, that creature crawling through
the undergrowth, the strangling jungle of

my mind,
present thoughts are afraid of it, afraid of this
moment, which does not exist. The past
contains all that has happened, the future
accepts no prescription, the ‘now’ pales
as the shift of night into daylight.

If you could catch a breath forever, halt

the stars,
you might then know how to be in

this moment.

Had I known eternity, still I would have
chosen to let the world spin on.

It stalks me still, that dark creature: time.

There are days to go among the trees,

the growing strong and the fallen ones,

and all that blooms among them...

and to know that is enough.

There are days when to sit in sun

and shade, listen to the bees,

to watching someone work

a thing, purely for the love

of doing it...

is enough.

There are days when the blessing

is the quietness of doing nothing,

the knowing that some kinds

of nothing

are more than enough.

Three trees stand on the rise,
bare-branched and shivering out
the end of winter. Three trees
on a hill-top.

Where all the berries and blooms,
the spider-webs and birds’ nests,
gone from the hill?

There are no mourners to mark
the uprooted miles of the missing
hawthorn, blackthorn, rose, willow.
None to weep

for all the lives that could not be lived
in those hedges that no longer exist.

first atttempt at a Sijo...and I thought Haiku were tricky...

Pebbles are shells needing longer
to incubate, and the nest is hollowed
out of flint and concrete and filled
with water, both salt and rain;
a single weed floats in memoriam
of whoever laid these eggs
and flew away on the storm, leaving
a question mark of what might be.

Or maybe it’s just a puddle and pebbles,
stones washed up by the tide and dumped
in a dip in the pavement, without magic
or meaning…but then the earth
would be just another rock,
spinning pointlessly in space.

We are more elemental
than we want to recognise.

We are just as special
as the stars in distant skies.

We are just the same
as rocks and suns and lakes.

We are more magical
than buns and fairy cakes.

We are children of the earth
and made of soil and sky.

We are born of explosive dust,
and yes, we are born to die.

But we are here, today, alive.

(after Randall Jarrell)
 

If only I could find a crystal set
in a filigree of ivory-coloured rock
somewhere deep beneath the earth
where waters fathom deep caverns
carved out before any of us were born…

if only I could find something dropped
millennia ago by visitors from another realm…

if only I could find the soul I left behind…

if only, only, only…

this were not all
there is.

I left the superheroes long ago,
except the one that rode out from
some western rodeo, the one cowboy
with his Peruvian poncho, and ice-cold
eyes, and a heart to match his spurs.

I left all the fantasies long before
I sat on sand with the sunset in my eyes,
and longed to see dust rising in the distance
a lone pale rider, maybe lonesome enough
this time to turn his heart to home.

I left all the dreams scattered in the Badlands,
beyond the buttes, in dried up riverbeds,
seeds for dusty sage that will never grow.

I left it all behind.
A very long time ago.

Time & tide wait for no man...

...but no-one says they're happy about it.

I was born under a dark blue sky
on a winter’s night where lights
exploded in all the colours
known, but I saw only
the backdrop, the sky
that shifted from midnight velvet
to the pale-grey of dawn, to the azure
midday over sunlit isles.

I swam in lakes of glacial cobalt,
and seas of sapphire, and rivers
of shimmering steel.

I walked woodland carpets
of indigo bells, gathering bouquets
of alkanet, forget-me-not and
hyacinth, while by the meadows
I saw the cornflowers reflect
your eyes and let veronica bloom
to speed me on.

So when they sang their sad songs
I never knew

why they would choose
to colour sadness blue.

It took everyone from the village
in all their strength and ingenuity
to hoist those stones

as they had promised me they would
to ensure my doorway into beyond
would be open.

Each man gave me sweat and labour,
and his woman all her tears and heart,
and children played

because it was right my passing be celebrated as well as mourned on that hill above
the crashing sea.

I feel their passing songs echoing along

the corridor, where lie tools and weapons
I will no longer need

and I feel their heart-beats fading
and resurging like the tide, grief abating,
a letting go, a setting free.

This place will endure centuries and maybe
others will rest here in ash or bone
but not me, they raised these stones
for me not as a grave but as a passageway
from my land-life out beyond into the air

above the ever-crashing sea.

I don’t believe in ghosts or undead spirits
but still the walls echo with recorded voices.

I don’t believe in the rising of souls from the deeps
but still the lake dances with shining eyes.

I don’t believe in rebirth as other things
but still the woodland trails

shine with fallen stars,

and white feathers tell me I’m watched over by angels
and hagstones are hung to ward off the evil ones
and I knock on wood to remind them all

that I amgrateful for how things are.

I don’t believe in many things
that don’t rely on my belief to be.

I am not haunted by the past,
but I believe the future is still out there
hunting me.

but if I had to be something else,
then let me be a thing with wings,
a feathered thing, that could lift up
and be anchored to the sky, or tilt
and let the earth fall away beneath
my feet;

or let me be a thing with fins,
a deep-sea thing, that could dive down
and not drown, but fly through waters
beneath a distant flickering heaven
where wave-caps break, to where

the earth breaks itself in two

and spumes quick-cooling fire

and black smoke plumes
and sulphur-breathing
creatures live.

(After “Bad Co” // Mick Ralphs & Paul Rodgers)

I sat on the shingle on that May morning,
with ashes floating towards the horizon,
going away from where you were from.

I was a woman at the end of her questions,
knowing that the world would go on…
and watching the waters take you away.

I watched the morning mourn its hours
waiting the turning of clocks and seasons…
and sat on the shingle at the end of days.

I watched the sea gull that tipped his wings
and flew westerly towards the setting of sun…
and I knew that you were gone.

Between the gusts, a hidden warble.
Silver reeds, emerging from dark waters.
Low-flying geese, chasing and calling.

Wind directly from the north
spitting arctic ice.
A swan high and silent against the cloud
almost unnoticed.
Flash of headlights down by the beach,
brave souls going down to the sea.

Weather gods playing fast and loose,
brightening skies, telling lies.
Take a moment – pretend – calm.
Watch the patterns on the water.

I am who you allowed me to be.

Pure white
elegance,
and a stare
that would drop you dead
at 20 paces.

Sometimes life

just isn’t
fair.

~

(image from @stampsbot)

I remember you huddled in the hall,
"It wasn’t meant to be this way,"
you said.

I remember walking into the ward,
"Are you ok?" you asked.
I was not.

I remember me and the cats not sleeping,
"What’s going on?" Claws and curiosity,
hacking at your bed.

I remember the consultant telling me.
"Not ready - no-one ever is," he said.
I was not.

I remember how the sun was setting
and the field was silent, and I walked home alone.

I called your best friend
and then my brother
and neither of them
picked up

the phone.

I remember telling Dodge and Felix,
and I remember how we slept together

in your scent

and all of us alone.

Please don’t ask to walk with me
along the quiet roads, where soft
Venus hums among the comfreys.

Don’t distract me from the bee
as she settles to drinking,
in the shade of nettle leaves:

let me fall, enthralled, to the waiting,
the aching, the shrinking myself so small
that I might also taste such sweetness;

let me hear the silence that hums
its consent to my not doing any thing,
any busy-ness, messy, living thing;

let me cling to a white flower,
and for a lifetime, be for a moment, still.

I have no tall tales to tell,
only stories of the places I have been
that made me feel so very small.

Arid places, in the high hills,
where flags pray in elemental tones,
and the land is shades of grey.

Liminal spaces, almost in the sky,
where snow-peaks meet the clouds
and there are temples in the caves.

Places where oxen skulls keep out devils,
and young monks wear track suits
and drink from plastic bottles…

and cafés with no running water
offer free wifi, and Italian coffee,
and prayer wheels still turn.

I have no tall tales to tell,
only stories of where I have walked

and watched the world shrinking.

Not rotting, just resting,

waiting patiently for the tide.

The cottage is still there
and the river churns beneath
the bridge, racing to no purpose.

It tumbles, and froths, and foams
in frustration at the absence of a wheel
upon which to ride.

In summer, there are swimmers
braving the unnatural cold to feel
the pull of the current, imagining
being carried all the way to the sea
on a primordial tide.

But this is April: wind and drizzle.

No-one’s minded to wade in
through the squelch of mud,
more bog than bank, dreary
with winter brash, but then:
a note of hope: the wren sings
its quiet overture to spring.

Is it only me that takes such pleasure
in this agglomeration of wooden planks
and rusting bolts? I confess a penchant
for the humble groyne, whose very name
speaks of pain, of withstanding,
groaning in its attempt to hold back
the tide-wash, to stop the beach
from running away to sea.

Sitting on the shingle, my back supported
by your sturdiness, I feel not only held
but warmed…the morning’s sun leaches
back out of you, albeit damply, through
my pale winter skin.

The sea is wise to your attempt
to disrupt its purpose and sets about
filling the spaces between the sleepers
with pebbles, small and twisting, loose
mortar to make the bulwark more fast,
but in doing so weakening your ability
to hold the most by letting the small away.

Pretty pebbles, shining strata, against
the dullness of your brownish grey,
but we both know them for what they
are: mere stop-gaps that one strong wave
will winkle out and wash well away.

So far from your tunnels,
black velvet fades to grey,
like some mad-dog
Englishman at noon,
what were you doing out?

Scrabbling on the footpath,
drought-dry gravel blunting
claws and yielding nothing
to flesh-pink paws.

Wide-eyed despite
the harsh, gritty, light,
you kept your snout
to the grinding stone,
kept trying to dig
your way back in.

I went again down to the shore,
where we used to walk, and tried to read
the calligraphy upon the water.

But I’ve lost the language
we used to share, and cannot find
the words, the ink bleeding
at the edges of the frame.
                          

I miss you. Us. How it was.

I guess today was just another day.

Only when I took the photo for this post did I notice that one of the thre'penny bits my granddad kept was of Australian origin...now there's another untold story...how did that end up thirty years later in the pay-packet of a south Wales' miner. Oh, if only the coins could speak.

I am thankful said the house,
that you removed all the trees
so that I can see the sky
and I can breathe,
and that my own roots
feel a certain sense of ease.

I am thankful said the page,
for thoughts spilled in coloured ink
so that you can see the why
and you can breathe,
and that your own wings
stretch themselves to fly.

I am thankful said the tree,
that my pear-white flowers

pearl out from this soil memory
of the orchard where
it all began and we
can do whatever it is we need.

Invisible under ground,
self-perpetuating,
with a thousand eyes,
they weave a lacework
of tunnels, that stretch
and stretch,

and in the silence
when we have gone
to our own ground,
their jungle symphonies
will soar up the sapways,
the undisturbed songways,
of all the mighty trees.

And the sound of colour

will bleed back into the world.

The gathering daffodil scent of loneliness fades along the lane of dreaming cherry trees, where the lost geese are calling back to crows. Two and fro, the arguments between the call of the wild and the harsh bliss of being home. Meanwhile, on the other side of the hedge the raven sits on his favourite headstone, supervising the cutters of grass and diggers of new graves and ignoring the mourners of last-year’s dead who wait for the peace to ooze from plastic sandwiches, the same consistency of cheese
as melted tar. The jets screaming overhead rain down promises, like umbrellas, or horse-shoes, or severed rabbits’ feet clutching clover, promises of holidays or holy days, or maybe just a few more, like, you know, ordinary days…without the lonely scent of cloudy daffodils.

From the kitchen window,
beyond the fence, I see it,
the pale green security light,
on the church wall…

and I imagine the lawn
as water, the wall as a pier.

I can almost hear the music
and laughter, its unreality,
its shame.

I can see the light
across the water.

I can feel the pain.

~

 Artwork from the cover of the BCA edition of collected works of Fitzgerald...uncredited in the book.

An imagined space
in which we can pretend
that things happened
and, what is worse,
that they may have been
important things.

What is this old-blood sand,
trapped between iron and rust and chocolate?

What’s with this tempestuous sky,
running between opal and lead and tourmaline?

What is this quicksilver sea,
calmly fading all the colours to ‘old blue jeans’?

And will I find the answers in the razor clams,
or must I untie the ropes that hold the breakwater planks in place, and count every single stone or limpet shell?

Or shall I just keep walking…and let the wind & waves carry all my idle thoughts away?

Fierceness swaddling tears,
a togetherness, listening
to the murmurs

Despite the hope and solitude
of emotions, there is focussed
the mystic.

(words from writers & non-writers at a Cley reading)

Roses are red, but they do not bleed
nor drown. Tossed into the water they swim
and wait to wash back up upon the sand,
among the stones of forgotten valentines,
all the lost love of granular heartbreak,
waiting out the waves, desiccating, fading,
only half-preserved in salt.

Where the water washes
and a wooden altar stands,
we will gather stones and hope

that beauty still has meaning
that will make us think on more
than wood and water and stone.

Woke to a midnight moon,
and didn't sleep for the rest of the night,
listening to the wind.

Walked in the rain,
to stand in a simple, white-painted church,
outside of myself,

waiting to see what I have learned.

Old rope and weed,

woven into the beach,

in a lovers’ knot

of forgotten stories
and the undersea.

There are wide skies
aflame with the coming
of a new day.

There are wide seas
roseate with the dawn
rolling waves.

And always small and high
is a single gull,
just flying.

What if we could be baubles and mittens,
snowmen and reindeer?
What if we could be robins and yuletide trees?

What if we could be winter birds and Christmas stockings,
cartoon penguins and snow globes?
What if we could be evergreen wreaths and children on sledges?

What if we could be more moon and stars, more way-shine,
simply remember and dance in snow?
What if we could be more candle, and accept the dark & sweet?

What if we could be a sparrow, or more like hot chocolate,
more gingerbread man, more polar bear?
What if we could be more sparkling, more tree-top singing?

What if we could be the peaceful season, the tidings of joy,
more giving and forgiving?
What if we could be everyday acts of loving?

I wake at three in the morning beneath the stars.

Have you ever strayed from a dream into a fantasy,
loved how the one merged into the other, the wonder,
the unreality of all that depth of sky and
stars close enough to touch?

Too beautiful a night to waste in sleep, I remember
fondly my father’s arms around me as he pointed
to Orion and the Plough and Cassiopea’s Chair.

Be silent, he said, and hear the song of eternity.

Fearful folk have cowered before the immensity
of our ancestral pathways through the sky, but
the truth is written there for all to see and know.

Night is when the vaults are opened.

We stood on the edge of the marsh
and one of our voices said,
“I wanted to be part of a flock today,
- thank you.”

We huddle and skein
and all our voices rise
to the autumn skies.

And I know that I am home.

September's ending,

I should be cutting back

the sage, but look to wasps

and bees still sipping, drinking up

the last of summer's sweetness.

I can wait awhile, forgetful of

calendar dates on pages,

while the season lives out its fulness.

Summer waits on the shore,
in bright waters and the green
of subterranean weeds, while
Autumn floats down to meet her
on the first fallen leaf.

A single feather
floats: an abandoned staysail
catching the west wind.

A snatch of seaweed,
a mermaid’s blood-red wishbone,
touches, swims away.

Beneath the ripples,
a blue eyed god lies waiting
his time to be born.

Oh, I needed that! Just being on the beach
with the sea in full fury, the noise and the hypnotic churn
both telling me “Don’t think. Just sit. Shut up. Open up.”

That balance between attraction and fear.
I really wanted to go stand in those waves,
and I am not stupid enough to do so.

Always the sea washes through my soul,
but when it’s wild it scours me clean.

Wildflowers – ok, call them weeds,
- and a bistro table set, rusty shades of blue,
tattered curtains hide whatever arguments
inside are keeping me from being out there
on the waves, the surf, the ocean, living out
my dream, but people pass and maybe one
or two, will understand how it feels, the having tried and failed...

…to ride beyond the sunset into
a something beyond the windows,

reflections and salt-wrecked patios…

May we always have a steal-away space,

where light is dappled through limes and

and oak and ash,

May we always have a sacred place,

where ferns unfold,

May we always know where the wood

awaits us,

And may we keep our promise

to return.

The beach wave gentles along
the rolling cliffs, settling souls
stirred by crashing waters.

Dusky hued cliff clover,
clambers along the edge,
muting tumult.

Heugh daisies cushioning
ladies, surviving on the wild
edge of unstable land.

Thrifting, thriving, being
wild in quiet ways,
heads held high,

strong spined,

and silent,

unassuming.

Sapphire and diamonds

are traditional promissary rings

but I don't need gemstones.

Weave me instead a coronet

of bluebell and stitchwort

and emerald leaves of oak.

I will wear a veil of Queen Anne's

lace and bear a spring of hawthorn

for a poesy.

We will walk the old drovers way

to the hidden stream, and there

yellow iris will bear witness

to our vows, and cups of butter

will drink our health, and water

lights will dance our dream.

The ferns will soften us to our rest,

and the stars will send their brightest

merriest jest, and we will sleep where

cattle breath once blessed the

newly-wed.

The artwork is by Gertrude Abercromie & my thanks to Sue Burge's "Poetry Gym" for the prompt.

I can yield no more;
all my inner ghosts drowned at Arwen’s Ford.

They’re always singing,
always such a deafening, a wrangling, and a ringing.

Your clouds, are they Cirrus?
Or cumulus tumbled and flown from wedlock?

Taffeta, glass, and truth gone by.
I am enough of silver, all day blue, and defenders do not win.

Nothing worth the stating
in this world, where newly murdered lie in the marram,

and greater sins
offer the sun excuses from this newly smelted morning.
 

Contentment is a quiet sky,
and greenery, and the water
that flows along the field;

it is knowing where the grass
grows at its most lush and how
to rest easily to chew the cud.

Contentment is accepting the field
with all its weeds, and finding our
own way to the river’s edge.

She sits quietly and smiles, and

hides the constant pain she refuses

to talk about, but is there behind her eyes
when she nods a silent yes.

She laughs about her penguin-waddle
which means, something else is going
oddly wrong, and that too is pushed aside

to speak of my week or my day on the marsh and how the rainbows rise and larks sing,

and geese come and go.

She would rather share how much
she loves the way dew alights on grass
on summer mornings. She would rather
laugh through her memories of romance
with the man still by her side, and let the
candles dance where she can no longer.

She loves a lantern, sparkles, and living
light. She loves green things.

She buys me elephants.

And lays fires in the room where I will
sleep and watch the moon cross the sky.

I am all the red-gold colours, white-hearted
with the heat of every love there ever was.

I welcome the rest of evening, the sinking into to the molten leaden sea at nightfall.

The clouds that veil my undressing soften
and pull my shades, stretching evanescence,
allowing me fingers, tendrils to paint a path
across tide, and harvest fields in the sky,
and spin mysteries that reach toward
you on the shore.

Above the dark waters,
above the fiery phoenix feathers,
a simple gull flies towards morning.

You may find the promise of spring
in hedgerows, snowdrops, crocus,
in budding leaves and birdsong,
but I know that winter’s tiring
when first the beach bows
to an arching sky and sea
calls for discarded shoes
and brave toes to be
caressed by cold. 

Talking
about all the
xenophobia
in our
destructive
existence,
reminds
me of all that
is still here,
still to pray for,
to be reprieved.

Translucence rises from logs and leaves,
pearlescent, alabaster, sepia memories of
the aging and the birthing, the quietude
of autumn: woodland decaying into life.

We think of famous places,
natural untainted spaces, or those
magnificent castles and country piles
of bricks, and gentry lives, but whose
landmarks are those?

What relevance to your growth
and being who you are becoming
registers in that earth, or those walls?

Make your own marks on the land!
Create your true points of reference, and
raise the smallest statues to your beliefs.

Or plant – or maybe save – a tree, to
shine golden in the evening against
life’s stormy sky.

I would sit and weep for being
made to choose, between the paling
of the sky at dawn, and the fading
of the earth at dusk.

And in my tears I would find the
answer, if I could only photograph
one thing, I would choose
“reflections”.

I would picture the distorted world,
rounded in a raindrop, gilded
in an office window, impressionist
river paintings.

Low tide would gift me light,
clouds and cliffs in the shimmers
of the still-wet sands, and gulls
upside-down.

In puddles I would find the autumn
leaves, the wellington joy of children,
and in the dark of the mountain tarn,
I’d find the echo of miracles.

Heat on the river path has me slowing
to the pace of swans, languid and diving
beneath the water, seeking shade; has
me retreating to the few trees
and the breath of leaves.

A swing has been strung on a branch,
seemingly grown specifically horizontal
for that purpose

and looking as though it has been
there forever,

waiting for childhood to return.

I regret just walking on.

Impatience flutters,
alights on the perfect bloom,
folds wings, disappears.