10 lines. That’s all I’m setting myself to write each day.
I’ve been blocked and not blocked. Fearful and not. Holding back and remaining silent. Setting myself a little structure, and the minimum, hopefully will free me up to write.
10 lines a day. I plan to post one of these 10 line poems/ prose here every Friday for the next few months or so.
Let’s see how I go.
A taster from a new podcast coming your way – Poetry From The Heart. Starting soon the Poetry From The Heart podcast will be a time for you to relax and listen as I read to you a selection of my poetry.
thirst
when the rains come there will be sweetness
when the rains come i will be ready
i am the creature who must survive
without water
my coat and ears and kidneys adapt
to the lack
while blood vessels close to my skin
remain sensitive to sound
during the scorching heat of day
i am underground bent double with grief
every cell of my body calls
out for that healing salve – water
my creamy coat dims
as fur upon my soles cushion
sharp sand pains coursing
through my heart
at night when i should emerge
to hunt i burrow deeper
using my bushy tail to keep hidden
sweeping and protecting my solitude
i wait out the waters keeping cool
slowing my heart beat
some might say i am dead
but i will pad again under the full moon
bark at the moon sing to the moon
once again
once my cracked skin heals
once my parched soul refreshes
as the rains enters and fills my empty pores
with the welcomed sweetness of being enough
The symbiosis of a fungus and a green alga, lichen is the first plant to colonise a hardened lava field. Versatile and hardy, it thrives to survive under harsh, volatile conditions. She marvels at its tenacity, wishing she was as hardy. Wishing she was as robust. Clinging to rocks, tree trunks and wire, lichen grows and glows, sexually producing spores in sacs. Branching and shrubby, once upon a time she would have been too afraid to look so closely, to distinguish life amongst the dark holes of decay. Now she does not look away. Now she sees the beauty.
Coppery red flat tops
curl in towards
soft shiny centres
at night lit up
like a beacon
of salvation
A nation divided. At the point of civil war.
A heathen Priest, who everyone trusted and respected who was called upon to decide. After hours of meditation, he proclaimed that we should believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And we should to keep our pagan sacrifices and the eating of horseflesh private. It was agreed. People were baptised and the Priest throw his statues of the Norse gods into the waterfall, now know as Godafoss.
Closed to air plane traffic, cracks in the asphalt house dandelions and buttercups. Radio silence. Zero fumes. Thingeyri airport ceases to welcome travellers.
And yet drop by on a Tuesday night, and you will hear music. The last accordion men in the hanger play as if the traditional dances of Iceland are in full swing still. Grey haired, stooping, hoarse men of age put their arms and fingers and memories through their paces. Their beautiful youth moves through each moaning note. No music is written down. Unless a boy is amongst them this merry-go-round music will die with the last accordion man.
Over the roar of the engines
and the thumbing of the wheels
the wheezing heart of old switches
The worship of fish, for subsistence and profit, declines in response to the fishing quota system. Villages hugging the shoreline struggle with time and the departure of the young. At Thingeyri, out there in the fjords are three massive green nets holding artificially reared super fish. Trout. Not native to the area along with the multinational< company owning them.
One day, a hole is found in one net. How many fish escape, no one knows. How the fish survive in open water, if any, no one knows. If the escapees mate with the other fish, no one knows. It’s not the companies problem. It’s not an issue worth investigation. The hole is mended. The trout continue to be farmed to yield their optimum value. White white flesh to satisfy the foreign customer’s tastes.
red headscarf tied tight
bent and slow
she walks to harbour
The sun moves west. You walk the road out of town to meet it. Your progress is slow as you keep stopping to hold the moment. To wonder as the pinky peach light. In awe you question this reality. As the water lights up from within a golden glow that draws you closer. Close enough to touch. Something stirs inside you, deep within that sings in tune with this present.
A lonely concrete hut
rusty roof taste
metallic mixed with fear
Surrounded by white upon white. Cold biting at all exposed flesh. Eyes search for some familiar sign even though this is my first visit to the Westfjords. Something, anything to anchor the self in place as I float unhinged from all that I know and all that I feel. Fear swims into this pause. Into this solitude. What happens if I don’t like what I find in this time and space alone? What if I don’t like who I am?
on one of lampposts
along the slushy street
a raven grates out kraaa
I’ve been on a journey. Some days it feels like to hell and back. Other days, it seems like I went dark. I ventured into the underworld to the Dark Goddess. I’m not sure what or who the Dark Goddess is but I do know she is within me. She has always been within me, but I have failed to acknowledge her, or feared to spend time with her.
Over the past year or so, I haven’t had a choice but spend time with the dark Goddess. Associated with death and avoided, She also holds the power for life, and transformation. Before this can occur there has to be death. The natural cycle of every thing is life, death, life cycle.
Anyway, I’m working through things at the moment, working to become more empowered from within and part of this journey does include embrace the Dark Goddess, my Dark Goddess. I chose to document this process and share my practices through poetry. The Dark Goddess is the focus of my next full collection of poetry. What shape this will take is left up in the air. I jut know in my core that this is the path I must take.
Here’s a poem that I think will fit well within this collection.
Forecast
I had a friend once, Fresh, who could talk to the weather.
She tuned into their energies or something.
She could persuade a seafret to stray away from the Scottish coast,
turn back a storm before its even thought about which Caribbean isle to hit next.
She had a certain way when she looked at you,
numbed you to the core,
yet when she smiled it was like the sun glistened
through her pores.
When it rained, she’d be out there for hours arguing
about which was the best colour of the rainbow.
And when a wind blew she came into her element.
She grew in size, raised her arms in welcome
blustered through the cracks of light and disappeared.
Living Wild Studios 