Feel the breeze through the trees. Even the leaves strive
to stay alive. The energy is flowing through you, my love.
Pause and feel its spinning. The way of this world , freedom
is for the taking with every breath, linger
in the outside, the black outside while still enclosed within,
for now.
The aim this month was to turn up here everyday and post something; words, images. Anything. Anything that would be used as evidence of my presence. Of my joy and my gratitude.
And now I look and see I’ve missed the last 7 days. And for now I don’t have the energy to go back over this week and pull out the good parts. Or maybe even the bad.
I just know that time is fleeting and speeding. Before we know it, we’ll be in 2024. And I’m not sure I want to waste any more time living in the past.
I’m wanting more and more to live in the present. This is what I’m grateful for; the time and means and ability to live in the present. Live/ love with each day as it comes.
dark morels
clustering
against roots
of ash trees
moist
in gathering dark
night air leaning
into a textured silence
well-earned through
a receding wall of trees
I have a little series of poems inspired by fungi: mushrooms, toadstools and the like.
I’ve always enjoyed looking at pictures of fungi. I’d draw them from books and colour then in with coloured pencils. I started a collection of them, when a child. In real life, I’m not too sure, I like fungi up close. I think something the way they feel puts me off. And that they are alive!
Also the idea of spores frighten me. Obviously, the fear comes from a lack of understanding and knowledge about them.
What I do know is that they are vital to life. And that whole underground system they have going on of passing nutrients and messages between plants and ecosystems and other organisms is truly remarkable. And has to be respected.
Anyway, I was thinking of pulling these fungi poems together into a mushroom zine. I do love my zines. What do you think?
Of course I have to find the time to create it. But now I’ve stated it here, it lends some kind of accountability to completing the task.
Anyway, above is a brief extract from one of the poems. I think I have about 5 or 6 of them. So I’ll keep working on them and start thinking of some cool design to go with them.
Of course being here now, saying all this, is me thinking out loud. Making some kind of commitment to a dream and making steps to seeing it through.
I’l share some more of the poem in the next post.
I see you, white blossom.
I feel your softness and gentle caress-petals.
Hanging, heavy bell-like clusters of white,
delicate to the touch as well as to the nose.
I taste your thirst for life, to cling on,
as your prime is short-lived, ephemeral
but no less spectacular. Thank you,
sweet one, for blazing white-bright
in my line of sight, that my heartswells
with awe and wonder and love. For you.
For this world. For we share this glory
through our true nature.
I’m not sure when my love affair with cherry blossom came into being. I’m not sure where I was when my heart began to swell at the mere beginning buds of cherry blossom on the trees. Bradford, where I was born and stayed until I was 10? Or Newcastle, where I enjoyed my formative years before escaping to London for my degree?
I’m not really sure when or where my deep appreciation and joy at seeing these puff balls of pinks or white or cerise came to be part of my being. I just know that I experience a child-like delight when I come across a tree in full cherry blossom bloom. My heart skips a beat and I’m jumping with glee, inside and outside, when cherry blossom comes into view. And the blossom is never here long enough for my liking.
Using the delicate pinks of cherry blossom, collaging with the images of cherry blossom in my visual journal, is my way of keeping the blooms alive, in my eyes and in my heart. Not just the sight of cherry blossom in my journal keeps these fragile blooms alive, but the feelings of joy and delight that they bring to my heart is kept alive too.
I created a special spread of cherry blossom for the BALTIC commission last year, that ended up being blown up from an A3 spread in a journal to an A0 poster size on a gallery space wall. In the middle of that spread is a Black woman smiling, almost dancing between the blossom, exuberating lush joy. This is me sharing my jubilation and love of cherry blossom with others.
This is my love letter to cherry blossom as well as giving thanks for the beauty of nature and how we are connected. How we are one.
Living Wild Studios 