Lockdown3

 It is foolish to sit here and say I am unaffected by the lockdown.   I have worked at home since March 23rd 2020,  I have gone in to a place of work perhaps 7 times since.   Fiona works in a school and has been busy apart from the summer term 2020.  We have continued to get paid.  We managed two weeks of hols last summer, ok we lost a cottage this coming Feb but we have got all our money back.   We have a had a full house with two of our three children staying with us and we have a loving busy and active Springer.   We have good broadband so it’s easy to talk with family and friends.  We can buy in a takeaway each week, we are all good cooks.   We are too all intents safe and secure.  We are not folk for going out and partying, but actually managed to get out for a meal for our anniversary.   We are safe, our eldest who lives away and his partner tested positive for the virus but were completely unaffected.    

Why then should we feel stressed - but why wouldn’t we be.  Our world is in the grip of a terrible pandemic and it seems that we are merely pawns of a government who want to make political points and so few true comprehensive statements alas!

It appears that the virus crossed from a bat species via an unknown (possibly pangolin) intermediate host species in a “wet” market in Wuhan China.  The pangolin, if it was the intermediate host,  should not have been there as it is both pa protected species and wrongly believed to have health benefits  (pangolin scales and rhino horn both made out of the same thing as our fingernails are oddly believed to possess mystic healing properties).  However now, the authorities there,  are trying to deny this to their population. The ex-president of the USA kept calling it the Chinese disease so is it a surprise they push back at this foolishness and truth lies bleeding in the crossfire along with the hope we can stop this again.

Other fantasists like the pangolin eaters, think it is caused by radio masts for 5g phones, others believe the vaccine is full of nanobots.   Governments are so distrusted that no-one follows the rules – except in a few places of either extreme despotism, or rarer still, good trusted governments.

So we see a world slowly fragmenting into distrust and sadness and we can’t hug our loved ones, the next generation who give us hope, the previous generations who remind us of the hygge of Home.   Instead we all have to stand alone, tired and sad, finding some joy where we can, each person or family on their own sandcastle.   Waiting for the isolation to end.  So we all suffer, we  all ache in this time.  

Winter

 Grey clouds touch the earth, mist and damp 

The planet seems to be weeping.

In this time in the pandemic,  

the time when we have a vaccine, 

why is the earth weeping?

She weeps for those who have died

And for those who are yet to die.

Tears for those who death was too soon.

How many have passed into the night

Because of our desire for pleasure,  

our false economic equality of a human soul 

and a business selling beer and fags.

Broken hearts join their tears to the skies.

Broken plans litter the years past 

and the time till the spring.

Those who died without the virus 

Passed from our lives all to quietly

We lost our chance to say goodbye

The darkness of winter is on our hearts,  

we lost our Easter, our Eid, our Diwali.

The earth keeps moving – keeps on turning

The endless dance of gravity brings it  al 

 round and round again and again 

The earth is turning 

The snow has melted away and left the drops of white behind

Spikes of green break the frozen the earth

Soon the celandine will capture the sun on the woodland floor

Easter will come again.

And we will walk in the greening woods, our hearts will find healing

And maybe our feet will join the dance of life anew.       

Rainbow

Suddenly in the sky of rushing clouds

Grey and white in some strange dance,  

sometimes they part for a moment

and then there is patch of blue so transcendent.

Then a rainbow spans the sky

It fades there and brightens here, never the same,  

fluid colours flowing over the heavens arch

The very light itself cracked apart into 

This frail river of every colour and shade in the universe 

Reaching over our autumn valley 

Blessing those who travel 

Those who sit and marvel  

A promise of hope, of fellowship  

High on Lewes is a circle of stone

High on Lewes is a circle of stone,
Giants dancing and turned to rock
On the ridgeway, an ancient tomb,
Wayland smithy - Mythic metal worker
Overlooking a motorway, Trefignath
Three tombs changing as faith changed
St Tsylio’s tiny church under
The shadow of Telford’s bridge  
 
Places that were and are holy to us,
Can God be found in Bryn Celli Ddu
As well as Seriol’s well?
Can the divine be discerned in
Bhudda’s face, the calligraphy of a mosque?
Is it to be found beneath an ancient wood
Or in the stones of Durham cathedral?

High above the raging sea - a church half buried
A chancel decorated with Islamic tiles
Does God rage about Patrick’s church?
Do the heavens roar at the sheel-na-gig at Kilpeck?
Does he cry when a mosque is made in the old church,
Or when  the synagogue is rebuilt by gentiles? 
 
Now I believe in God revealed in Jesus, 
I preach Christ risen from the dead.
But why should I want to destroy 
To de-story our world by denying
Any holy place, the places where we,
For a moment can see the face of God,
hear his heart beating alongside ours  
 
The holy places are the liminal places,
Where the veil is thin, a place where earth 
and heaven can touch in the dance of life.
In each generation we find new places, but need the old,
Every place of touching, or we lose the chance to learn
From the very heart of God

September sunshine

This September for a moment is as bright as this April
skies are blue, the sun is shining, the trees are still green  
but now the green is an old green of leaves aged by a summer of rainy days
and there and here, a hint of summers colour shows instead of green. 
The rowan berry’s are turned red, the hawthorn’s too 
As we walk the paths - rich ripe blackberries call us to pluck them 
The perfect sky is empty of the swifts, a few young swallows gather on the telephone wires
Waiting for that moment to set off.
Peacocks and Red admirals flutter at my window?
After a silence, the Robins begin to sing again, carving out new territories.
This equinox is day of Indian summer, a vagrant warmth in the Sun    

   
The last shavings of the grass fields for winter feed has left the tops looking a patchwork
The lapwings and curlews have left those high fields now 
Now the meadow pipits and stonechat hunt the last of the insects
There is an elegiac feel to these last few days of summer light,  
a time when the mist hangs in the valley in the morning and the spiders
hang in their jewelled traps,  diamonds  hang  in the air 
An elegy for a world we once knew, a world where we had control 
now we face a winter of challenge finally aware that we are partners 
in the common destiny of our planet not the master.

Northumberland

 

Silver Sand beneath my feet, held by grey Marram grass
Blue Hare Bells, purple clovers and yellow daisies
in two great crests of dunes as you approach the sea 
The sand is gilded by the seawater,  
A broad ribbon of gold that leads from the southern harbour
to the northern bays
Here and there low black rocks, full of pools 
Slippery with bladder wrack, cut the golden sand like runes
Above me rises the great Castle of Bamburgh,  
far to the south the cracked teeth of Dustanborough
to the north the castle of Lindisfarne
and a half mile  south is a broken eggshell of a pillbox 
A precious land to be so fortified 
Now the defences ring to the sound of the sea birds 
Swirling high the terns screech 
The gulls call the wildness from the harebell blue sky
Out on the wild sea a white star of a gannet, 
the roman nosed Eider, cuddys ducks, bounce in the surf 
hurtling over the sand so light of foot till she turns, 
our Kaya, one of many happy dogs running 
where Oswald and Aidan walked, 
where Norse raiders drew up their boats
Now a place of peace, gentle colours rest the eye
Silver, gold, warm stones, a blue of blue in the sky,  
The rich warm colours of the Turnstone,  
the wintry shades of the early Sanderlings
This is worth defending, this is worth keeping

Gift

I am being given a gift sitting here on the rock,
The falling tide here at Cemlyn is gifting such joy
Just offshore is Craig yr Iwrch
Here the grey seals haul out, haul is too energetic a word
Simply find a ledge and wait to the tide to do the work, slowly
There will be twenty or thirty seals, grey bananas on the black rock
By the time the tide turns again
It the end of summer and the terns are getting ready to disperse,
But just now, just at this moment the tide streams are carrying a host of little fish
And the Morwennol are diving and shrieking between me and the Craig
Sea Swallow, the welsh call, the graceful and raucous terns that crash in the sea
and return with a sand eel perhaps for the adult chicks resting on the rocks round the headland
As the tide falls the Cormorants set off for their fishing grounds  
Almost as if chips of the black Craig yr Iwrch take wing
Here are the dinosaurs
The day moves on and slowly it seems the reverse happens and I
become more attached to my rocky seat, but I still catch the call of an oyster catcher
The flickering movement of the rock that is a ringed plover
The small flock of redshank that flit across the sea
I am home again at last, the wind carries a softness, my broken spirit begins to heal.