Thoughts for a new year

I haven’t written anything for so long, hardly even journal entries, so it was quite a surprise today to be sitting in the car, unusually travelling in the back, and for words to come unexpectedly. I was in the back because my father in law was coming to stay and needed to be in the front with J. I was musing on how I felt at the start of this visit compared to other visits and these words came to me:

“If I let my mind stop insisting
that all will not be well,
I can feel a small sense
of peace I hear tell from others
more serene than myself”

This after I had read Mary Oliver’s powerful poem, Snow Geese

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

What gorgeous gifts to receive on New Year’s Day!

Awake August – small stones

The Writing Our Way Home people  ( http://www.writingourwayhome.com)  have begun an August project where we write and share a small stone poem for each day of August.  A small stone is described as “a few words that point to a moment” and given that I have had a dry July it feels like a way back in to writing. I will post one small stone here each day through August, and take it from there…

August 1st

Trees breeze in
as rain tickles leaves
and wind pats them dry

August 2                                                     Grapes

Small green parcels
bunching up
juicy pockets of pip and pulp.
Homegrown!

August 3

A deathly hush in the doctors’ waiting room
sharply broken
by a toddler’s shrill scream
struggling with a red toy car

August 4

Spilt soil, I stand and stare,
the back dirt sinks into the carpet
as I watch.
I clear up the earth silently
surprised by my own serenity!

August 5

Small white Apple flickers
I wait impotent as updates
with new defences are added.
Being mindful of this moment
I write a small stone.

August 6

Furious flying through the garden
a sudden silence –
birds are not twittering.

A single feather floats down.

August 7

i am trying to ignore the cat, she makes sure I hear her displeasure.

August 8

Coming from the west
our man-made moon
sails across the space above
setting silently as a star
in the east

August 9

Small green eating machineimage
Stomach on legs
Camouflaged
Except for the small black dots
Discarded on my kitchen counter
Telltale signs of my basil stowaway

August 10

Pied mischief makers
pile into the garden
bouncing across the lawn, clacking
barging and strutting
intimidating pigeons and sparrows alike.

Mealworm treats entice
more strident mobsters each day,
this morning, thirteen.
Unlucky for some!

August 11

A found poem:

How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?

To become a butterfly, a caterpillar first digests itself.
But certain groups of cells survive,
turning the soup into eyes, wings, antennae.

The story begins with a very hungry caterpillar
hatching from an egg.
The caterpillar stuffs itself with leaves,
growing plumper and longer
One day, the caterpillar stops eating,
hangs upside down from a twig or leaf
spins itself a silky cocoon

But
How does a caterpillar rearrange itself into a butterfly?

First, the caterpillar digests itself,
enzymes dissolve all of its tissues.
If you cut open a cocoon at just the right time,
caterpillar soup would ooze out.

A group of cells known as imaginal discs
survive the digestive process.
A disc for each of the adult body parts
Some caterpillars walk around with tiny rudimentary wings
tucked inside their bodies,
though you would never know it by looking at them.

Once a caterpillar has disintegrated all of its tissues
the discs use the protein-rich soup all around them
to fuel rapid cell division required to form
wings, antennae, legs, eyes,
Certain caterpillar muscles are preserved in the adult butterfly.
Moths remember what they learned
in later stages of their lives as caterpillars.

Getting a look at this metamorphosis as it happens is difficult;
disturbing a caterpillar inside its cocoon
risks botching the transformation.

A Tussah silkmoth failed to spin a cocoon
see the delicate, translucent jade wings, antennae and legs
a glimpse of what usually remains concealed.

August 12

Piles of clothing on the bed
some new, like today new,
some old and worn.
What to pack?
An enigma, quandary
and drama!

August 13

Long lunch with a lovely friend,
talk turns to sweet smelling toilet facilities
and eucalyptus.
Let’s bottle koala farts
that would do the trick!

August 14

Birds busy at the feeders;
table full of blackbirds kicking seed,
variety of tits on nuts.
And a rabbit
Where does he fit in?

August 15

Evening clouds,
shepherds delighted all across the county.

August 16image

Quiet room

cool space.
Under the stairs
a window on the world beyond
it’s hot out there!

August 17

Red juice slow dripsimage
Gin soaked raspberries
dangle
Muslin stains in its work
While I relish the results.

 

August 18

Today’s work is pulling thistles
Feels like I am pulling up my roots
Scotland is far far away

August 19

Builders’ hammering.
Nail guns sound
like shotguns.

I need to beat a retreat.

August 20

In the dying daylight I go out
in the dusk to put hedgehog food
in the bowl, the rustling wind
In the trees reminds me I am
in the moment, listening.

August 21

Sunday morning
casually read the news
a growing sense of abhorrence.
Above the line all gold medals
honour and smiles.
Below, horror, rape and terror
relegated into silver.

August 22

A box is opened today
packed in a previous life
revealing lost treasures
suddenly it is 1991
and I am marrying
for the first time

August 23

Cloud watching from the hammock
on this humid afternoon
a cheetah running
followed by an ice skate
just one…
more swirling and it turns
into a suit of armour

August 24

Green fields
speeding train
a bolt of black and white
the sheepdog bounds
chasing the carriages

August 25

Summer rain
beats on the windows
of my glass house
Summer feels like autumn
days are colder, shorter
Mist clouds
my vision

August 26

Busy days but not much present
I stop to breathe and catch the time
standing still
waiting for me to notice

August 27

The neatness of my packed suitcase
contradicts the chaos in my head.

August 28

Yesterday all about travelling,
stop, start, stop, stop
mostly stop on the M25

Overnight we have turned French
And we are stopped again
much happier this time!

August 29

Ruth must know something!

The healing power of waves
and a family rift is flowing closed
I will return from this time on the water
A sister once again

August 30

The murmuring shush of the sea
softens the burbling banter
of the biddies
as we await the ferry

August 31

Me: I went into the ladies and there was a male steward handling an orchid.

Husband: That’s a small stone right there!

The Alchemy of Poetry

The next few months look like they will hot up in the writing life stakes. I have joined a local writing group where the majority of members seem to be poets, and I am attending a local (different) group where, at the January meeting, I am due to read my own work to the unsuspecting public (which is really other, very sympathetic, poets!) I have also signed up for a four-month course to learn the craft of poetry creation more formally, and I am looking forward to this very much indeed.  It has a well-known poet as the tutor and only a small group of students so I should get some good feedback and learn lots.

This exposition takes care of what is happening out in the external world to feed the soul with new inputs and to create threads to hold me to the work that I need to do, but that is only half the story. Recently I have been thinking about the alchemy of poetry and the connection it has to my heart and soul. The ability for what look like ordinary words on the page to take on this magical property when in the right order and turn into an exquisite masterpiece of language and meaning – to make something opaque appear transparent, (or even something always thought of as clear look opaque!)

Through the work of David Whyte and Oriah MD, plus many other more, I have seen poetry work on a soulful level. The books by Roger Housden  in the series “Ten poems  to…”,  particularly the first one “Ten Poems to Change Your Life” are full of such work, and essays about how they have done just that. These writers make for inspirational reading. Sometimes though it is hard to see what it is that is being said – there is a certain way to look at poetry, a bit of an art to reading and absorbing a poem (like the art needed when looking at Magic Eye 3D pictures from my younger days!).

Kim Rosen says the following in her book “Saved by a Poem: The transformative power of words”:

In order to enter poetry’s language, your grip on habitual, left-brained ways of processing information needs to soften. Somehow we know how to do this with music and art. You probably wouldn’t try to figure out the exact meaning of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Ella Fitzgerald’s scat singing. Nor are you likely to do a pragmatic analysis of an abstract painting by Georgia O’Keeffe or Jackson Pollock. You feel these art forms. You allow associations to play through your awareness. You let your linear mind relax and go for the ride.

As you read poems, listen to them, and speak them aloud, try meeting them as you would a piece of music. Allow your rational, linear brain to relax. Dare to not understand, to lose your grip on making sense of the words. Let the images, like musical notes, pour over you. The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard writes that poetry “comes before thought . . . [R]ather than being a phenomenology of the mind, [poetry] is a phenomenology of the soul.”

This is beginning to make sense to me; the alchemy of turning words into poetry and the language of the soul. I hope to be doing more of this in my own work and finding the soul food in others’ poetry as I really start to understand and appreciate the magic in making of verse.