Garden Of Light

////Like black crows they move around me - in a garden of light. Forever there, neither comforting or alarming; just an unwanted prescence, black means death and mourning////

Verse JS // image Pinterest 

Family Holidays

Always a challenge - family holidays. And especially when you plan for beaches and sun and you get wood burners, rain and waterproofs. Let me tell you about my hatred of sports/weather specific gear and outward bound kit. All part of my strong dislike of 'doing what I'm told' or 'what I should'. I'll admit to leggings for the gym but always black and normal vest tops. A few years ago I finally gave in to the Scottish weather and bought a Didriksons jacket- stylish and bloody warm - made for Swedish winters- I had to rest my case on that one. But this holiday I was totally caught out and a long walk to see standing stones and abandoned villages, left me chilled to the bone when the rain came on half way through. Oh the ignominy of having to buy light weight waterproofs in Bute in July. Remember I was born in Scotland - I should know better....

......But it is magical and beautiful here so we will make the best of it. Another walk (this time in my waterproofs) to a ruined church at the tip of Bute in the poaring rain- at this point it had been raining incessantly all day held a perfect moment. An elderly woman parked front of us and walked up slowly behind us, no doubt tutting at our children's bickering, or so I thought. As the children careered around the newly mown grass avoiding standing on the flattened tombs (their reverential wet weather church yard game- believe me they have visited a lot of ruined churches.....) I came across her lighting a candle in a prayer nook. We spoke and she told me this place was her husband's favourite and the family had sprinkled his ashes here. She told me that she comes back every year 'and will do so as long as she can walk up the hill' in order to remember him. At that moment I felt my heart swell with the love she had known and the love I have, despite all the difficulties. Life, family life is hard but it is worth every previous second💖

Summer Days

There is a face in that tree - can you see it? Well I can and I know it's a very kind spirit. These woods are here for us and I never come out of them feeling anything but 'better'. Good times with friends on a summer day. 

Sands That Change

Beach life is good. Unaccustomed to it as we are, still we manage. And UK, well Scottish beaches are a thing apart. They are all sand and shingle, rock pools and crabs. Sunburn and wind caused goose flesh. Always a mix of extremes- just the way I like it. 

But this year our beach was much changed- swathes of missing sand and newly appeared long, flat rock formations and clusters of boulders like a family of trolls hunkering together in what remained. 

'But it hasn't changed for years', I kept saying to locals. Some looked at me sympathetically, others tried to tell me that the beach changed, subtly, EVERY day. What they were trying to tell me was that you can't keep perfect memories about something that lives and changes, that is in itself a force of nature. Best to embrace the ever changing coastline, to see it for what it is - a metaphor for life. 

//Poems//The Forest Book//

Forest Girl

With eyes deep as owls and my

Flagrant denials of self.

With the faint spoor of the forgotten.

Deep green winter cowls.

 

Aspects of stars in blackness

And the precious night will show me

Departed people as metaphors.

 

Silence reverberates through

The indigo coolness.

Walking with the shadows of the trees

Casting inky blue pools at my feet. 

 

Red Hair

I’m half hidden beneath the hawthorn tree

I vouch my life they won’t ever see me.

My incarnation is wispy and winnowed

I’m barely here on my own terms.

 

I march through my wooded groves of violent

terrain.

My home is hard and unyielding but it is all I have

Ever known. All I've ever known. It is all I've ever known.

 

Blood stains and iron scent that I perfume myself 

With. I’m expert at killing for nourishment.

 

Black serge dress and windings of wool

Raise steam as I walk for miles.

Hunks of elbow and ungainly movements

Borne of nights on forest floors with

Rocks beneath my head.

Flame red hair flowing behind me

Wound with acorns and cloves that I’ve saved.

Dusty hearts of puffballs explode brown smoke

That wreaths around my ankles.

I disappear into an ancient hedgerow. 

 

Ice Heart

 

Its beating stopped long ago

With jagged uncertainty I meander through what’s left.

Ice scrunched under booted feet, I stamp and I stamp

What’s left of life and of civility in me.

 

Like piss yellow snow I’m rank and pale

The boughs of winter willow scrag and catch my hair.

Bed of boughs bent into shelter. 

 

Yearning for heat and consumed by the primary of blood. Weekend prayers and Craving will forever conclude in tears.

There isn’t a hand can touch me now or spirit me away.

Anger holds me here and protects me from my fears.

 

Mine

Overhanging birch roof on my bothy's walls

Dripping diamond rain drops when it storms.

I curl up warm in hides, fire licking my nose. 

 

Moss and ivy adorn my walls, tiny orchids burst in spring.

Despite harrowing winds my tindered fires keep me warm.

 

Fallow deer sniff round the door and kick their tiny hooves.

I’ve a moratorium on killing them

I like their company.

Intelligent eyes. Sad small hearts that keep away the lies.

 

Skins and hides line my nook.

Beneath them lies my heavy locked chest.

Dried baby’s breath and marigolds disintegrate inside.

Far away from earthly things I smile and tend my fires. 

The Tales

They tell the bairns the fairy tales 

To make them bend and comply.

They dinna tell them properly

In mine the woman has victory.

 

You sink your man’s head in

A pot plant and you keep a

Mouthful of blood. 'The jessamine will flower

And the truth will out'.

 

Bloody knives cut on her every step

That’s a real fairy tale for you.

Nothing in exchange for nothing

A mermaid’s tale for blood tears.

 

Like the wraith snow child

Dreams of a life will melt and waste.

You can pretend a family bower

But it ends in weeping and scarlet rage.

 

Forest Anaesthesia 

Forest memories and arcs of sparkling yellow light.

Foxes' eyes florescent fluorescent in headlights.

Cool set of moss beneath, tiny droplets surface and tickle my toes. 

Tap, tap on the window, spinning on my heels

Blur of grey alerts me to the tiny visitor.

So set are his visits, someone fed him before me.

  

Exchanging one prison for another has been my life

Forest, marriage, motherhood and now a locked ward.

 

My way was always blocked

A foot in the door jamb.

Another baby, another move,

another congregation of fools

To be ministered to.

 

My animals still know me.

Doctors never work out what I need. 

My secrets are in a fairy pool

Stowed deep beneath the black water.  

Not for me therapy or fixing.

Nothing can bring back my fire coloured hair. 

Poems//The Autumn Queen//

The Autumn Queen

A crown of gourds and acorns

As orange as pumpkin juice.

I uncurl and trace my fingers

Through bark carved curlicues. 

 

Acorn cups to hold my blood 

I raise a glass and drink to you.

Bark free initials that will leave

An indented sign or two.

 

Curled so tight I bend in ways

My heart won't recover.

White limbs like forced narcissus

My pale nakedness received forever. 

 

Seed head bones click clack

In the space between my ears.

I roll and turn in leaf mulch

Black as tar my frigid fears. 

 

Droplet sparkles of summer rain 

Stowed inside green tonic wine glass.

I drip the diamonds on my finger tips

I tell the spiders 'this pain will pass'.

 

Mallow orbs of snowberries

Make me shiver and ache.

Their stringent woody taste  

Quiets the fretting for everyone's sake.

{This is the first of a series of seven linked poems called The Forest Book. I think I will publish them altogether in the next few days. They focus on my interest in forests, in gender and in power.}

{Image from Pinterest}

 

Some Things

I've been spending time in my head with all the things going on. In other words the winter brain fog where I let my mind run around and around in concentric circles. Despite this my sporadic productivity has still managed to produce a set of 8 poems I am 'tears in eyes' proud off. I have spent hours listening to that misanthrope Josh Tillman. I've concluded he must see in my head or we are cut from the same bit of dishevelled black velvet. I am still wayward and difficult, which are not necessarily the bad things they can be. 

I have been thankful for the fact that it's all still holding together. It is in part that I can see the beauty wherever I turn. It's like a magic trick I keep thinking I will lose the power to conjure up - this ability to see and to find value in everyday life. There are a million threads of narrative in one turn of the head, a vast world with a spin and a click of your heels. And I do 'feel it all' and sometimes it hurts but sometimes it helps.

Things keep going

It's good to smile, and it is good to see shafts of sunlight on the greenest moss in the woods. So often I see things in nature that I can hardly believe are accidental. Every day there is so much beauty. 

'Sometimes if you look you see'. 

Love

That is what love looks like. That's my childrens uncle, my brother in law, and my two love him to pieces. And for years I have tried to rise above and ignore the vindictive words and actions directed at me and my little family from another, but I am now fighting back with love and kindness because that is the only way. It's not a story for here, or for public over sharing but how we respond to adversity and those that try to hurt and wound us is worth sharing. You keep on going and you keep the love at the fore front. So for anyone also going through hard times, who is hurting, aggrieved and wounded please keep on going. Nothing is made worse by forgiveness and love, of that I am absolutely sure. 

Meanwhile

There is something intrinsic to a certain type of spiritual, naturalistic poetry that makes it touch so many people. And I am pretty certain that it is the same thing I find myself in the woods, and I can best describe it as the beautiful impermanence of nature. I can look at a patch of ivy covered in snow and it comforts me so much to know that at some point tomorrow that crackling white mantle will drip, drip away and the ivy leaves will dry and shine again in the winter sun. 

No matter how overwhelming life is there is always something in the green that springs from the earth that brings me back to a balanced perspective. 

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

Are moving across the landscapes,

Over the prairies and the deep trees,

The mountains and the rivers. 

{Mary Oliver 'Wild Geese'}