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'}

Seed Heads

Seed heads in their dessicated, skeletal beauty. There is something fey and otherworldly about their silent winter appearance. Today they swayed gently in the icy wind, my hand steadying them for a capture. If you teach yourself to stop and look, there is always something, even in the depths of winter within the hedgerows showing you it's simple charm. 

Where we are

It has been quiet on this blog for a while now. This year I changed jobs, a huge change for the better, and I have nearly finished the first module in a creative writing degree. The writing here on this blog started the move towards story writing for me. The writing here has been so valuable in developing me as a writer, and in me making writing a bigger part of my life. 

I've been thinking a lot recently about what makes us happy, what keeps us afloat and without a doubt for me it is making sure I do a range of things that add up to a whole, balanced individual self. I'm sure you get a sense of those things from my posts- they are varied and multiple. Some are robust and healthy like regular walks in the wood and others are off track and fragile as spider's webs. They are like a web, a complex knit together of activities, actions and things that when balanced make a little seam of happy. I'm sort of quite proud of that, that I have begun to realise I can take control of my life. And at the same time I'm desperately sad for those who through illness, sadness and pain remain without these feelings of hope. 

Writing plays a huge part in this for me. There is nothing like the small ripples in my brain when a person or a story or a feeling comes together on the page. I've always had this and I've always written, but the course has directed me to actually persevere and I can now write stories, proper stories with real people in them, with a beginning and a middle and an end. They also aren't all heartbreaking, some of them are actually quite hopeful and dare I say redemptive. 

If I am brave enough I will post one soon. 

Work Done

Celebrating writing another short story and the weekend! Also the beautiful colours around just now. 

Autumn

'Autumn leaves are brown and gold, brown and gold, brown and gold. Autumn leaves are brown and gold- in my garden'.

I have been feeling like there is a little bit of Autumn in my heart. I've avoided age and mortality for years now but all of a sudden, a single significant birthday and it's here, right inside me those brown and gold colours. I'm all of a sudden tired, everyone is always younger than me, wrinkles, becoming invisible. I could go on in the same self obsessed lamenting for hours if you would let me. But... Today in the woods, where I always seem to get an epiphany of sorts, it just clicked. I can't be me without the years. I can't be a wife, a mother to my flame haired rascals, a writer, a person trying hard to discover grace and compassion wherever she goes- I can't be that person without having lived what I have lived. It is a truth so simple and searing that I missed it entirely. I've been a 'someone' to people I have loved and still love. I've written off bad decisions (and bad men) with 'rather it happened that it didn't', I've hurt some people terribly but I have survived it all and I am sure I have always been forgiven. If not in the hearts of everyone I've touched, I know in the heart that ultimately matters. 

I'm still sad to see time spinning by and I'm always willing it to slow for one more 'squeeze cuddle', one more sticky little hand in mine. I'm still buying eye cream for the first time and I'm still lowering the length of my skirts. But there has been so much up until now, and God willing there will be so much more to come. 

Dancing With Fireweed

'When the fireweed turns to cotton summertime is forgotten'.

It's a Canadian saying but I think it works the same here. And despite my best efforts I can see Autumn will be showing itself to me in full force, that I can't ignore, in the next few weeks.

Fireweed is my favourite. It's royal purple blooms tower above me in the summer weeks. The best is yet to come when the cotton appears though- the children grab handfuls and it flys around their fiery red hair like snow flakes in the orange late evening light. We come home with a white downy covering, all the way home sowing the seeds for next summers purple beauties. 

Getting your stride

I was tired on Monday night but I had promised the boy and the dog an evening walk. I had a busy weekend and Mondays are always testing. I just struggled half way round the woods, I was grumpy and really, really wanted to sit down- just for a few minutes. But as I kept going I started to get my stride. Do you know that feeling? When a second wind takes over and your body just moves itself, at a faster pace and you feel ever so slightly revived. My son took my hand we went down his 'secret path' and I really saw the woods again. And in seeing I definitely think the change of seasons is underway. Just look at those snowberries. 

The Beach

I could post you a hundred pictures of this beach but I still don't think I could convey to you without my words what it means to me. To us I should really say - my husband's family holidayed here. A much regretted sale of a house decades ago never forgotten. That familiar feeling, a slight rush of happiness when you set a foot in sand, when you remember times past and look forward to future family times; a special place.

I am not sure much can compare to bringing your coffee cup out of the house to the beach, sat on your deck chair watching the kids build sandcastles for hours and hours. Fishing in rock pools, swimming in shallow waters with pockets of warmth, moving back to the sea wall as the tide returns in. 

It always returns in.

#100joyfulfunthings

We are trying to record the joyful poetry of everyday life and I have just set up a hashtag #100joyfulfunthings over on Instagram. You will find me on Instagram as bindsyoutome. 

My dear friend Nic has been recording 100 fun things with her boys over the summer and she has really inspired me. She always inspires me to have more fun and to be grateful for everything. As a family we thought we could combine recording the joyful poetry of everyday life with fun and have agreed on a family list! Let's see how it goes and happy summer everyone :) Jo xx