Creative Writing

6

/ eharpingon / 1 Comment

The heat

of a winged lion

bearing down

on an artist

selling his oil

paintings

in the piazza.

Classic

and expression,

his humble godly wares

speaking this town

and his heart.

I see in his

gently trembling gait

the withdrawal

from the soul realm

at home with

his paints

and his pencil

relaying the work

on its underside,

as people

swamp

him and his makeshift

table,

still bearing his palate

and paints,

thick with oil.

I see in him

the care of the waiters

working so hard

at dinner,

with kindness

pushing down

their personalities

with smiles and

gentle platitudes

and bending

over backwards,

and watched

from afar

under moonlight

I felt a sadness

for their selflessness,

their toil and stamina

doing what they can

all they can

casting this most

beautiful of veneers.

Tuesday 2nd August 2022

5

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I heard

that today

is Lammas:

peak summer.

I knew

and did not

that the abundant

crux of the season

was washing over me

with its fresh

transitional clarity

as I bounded

joyfully

reverently

into the waves

who insatiably

held me and helped

me to dance

in holy play:

the water

wild and home.

I had felt the gears

slip

when I greeted

the yellow

waxing crescent

last night.

‘I am sure

glad to see you’

I told her

whilst she winked

through the boughs

of cedar,

cresting her merry way

over the mountaintops.

The joy

has not abated:

my lips and heart

ripe

like the olives

burgeoning in

the heat.

Monday 1st August 2022

4

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Gentle boat

out on the Lake.

The bully in my head

told me today

that I was a

‘blot on the earth’.

It is still hard

to deal with this.

I felt refuge

in the shades and pines

of Monte Baldo,

the pagan mysteries

revealing themselves

in evergreen familiars:

needles, lizards and moths.

Feeling the bodily descent

keeping adrift with

the slopes of the trees.

It’s hard.

Like the mule tracks

scrabbled and rough,

bearing heavy loads,

cut with the footholds

of gentle

more-than-human

loves,

patient, unrelenting.

The boat

with its sails

up,

pauses amongst the

tides, currents,

glimmerings and lappings.

The mountains

in their haze

hold their breath.

The flowers and crickets

sing love,

the sun

a ball of amber

gifting luscious depth,

and I do not flinch

at the sweet wasp

coveting nectar’s beer

and I am caught

by the honey river

charting its course

across the Lake

straight to me.

Sunday 31st July 2022

3

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Lake Garda,

Mother,

gentle and ferocious

holding me

witnessing the tears

unravelling

and maybe I am

a mother

of sorts

already

and this is acknowledgement

as such.

I feel

the quickening

of a desire to

create

nurture

tend

love

the slowness

of being

begotten

by the Lake,

modelled by her

sitting in the pause

and words

are nothing

just being

awash with sanctity

like when the

water

licked my wrists

at the edge of Malcesine

like a puppy

endearing, tentative

and we met

and loved each other

and the lake

runs into the deep

shadowy, unknown

with the reach

of mountains

never to be truly

understood

outside of poetry.

Saturday 30th July 2022

2

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Seeming silly,

scanning the mountains

and the Lake,

glittering harmonically,

waiting for the spiritual experience

to begin.

Where is it?

The belly full of awe

the butterflies and

eyes brimming with tears

and why am I not feeling

like Goethe yet?

Sweet baby.

And it feels

like no coincidence

that my tired

adolescent clamouring

for a feeling of

infatuation

coincides

with a latent realisation

that my vocabulary

isn’t as expansive

as I had wished

and I need to

look up many words

at the moment

and it is thrilling

and it is humbling.

Mind and language

scattering.

And the storm descends,

cheerful with potency

over the mountaintops,

it’s been clearing

its throat

all day long,

the pine trees

bowing in the wind,

the lightning,

scintillating.

Then the stillness

of the

rain lashing;

the Lake patiently

rippling and receiving

as the storm

roars itself

with delight.

Friday 29th July 2022

1

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If I am nothing

but a ball of consciousness

then

why does my soul

seem to want to know me?

Why does spirit want to

experience this life

through the unquenchable

being of this body

this heart?

I am myself

nothing

everything

the whole world

and also the

shimmering emptiness

of possibility and space

Thursday 28th July 2022

Beauty came to me

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Beauty came

to me

at the kiss

of day meets night meets day.

The moon,

a rosy bulb

hung playfully,

dimpled and laughing

as the sky heralded

shift.

For a second,

Fear hit;

then I heard

ever so many

hundred years past,

leaves of

ecstasy,

caught in a

breeze

chill-bent

delicious,

my huddled

warm body

yearning for the

season’s clear,

fresh cutting

through the

doldrums and dog days.

Cat-like

I writhe and

paw

at the

tantalising promise

of a dream;

the strength it

has given me.

A golden roof,

glittering ascendant spires

that make

me want to

scream and

dance in the

city’s story,

however temporary.

Still I feel

the gaze of

lustful hope

cast through time,

the dear soul

landing in the

hence, the

hereafter,

finding me.

And it was bodily;

it was beauty.

I dreamt

/ eharpingon / Leave a comment

‘I get that on a spiritual level it’s about all of us becoming kings and queens […] the timing is kind of exquisite […] there’s something really beautiful about the whole thing’ – Marianne Williamson, Instagram Live, 8th September 2022

I dreamt

that I stood

on the sandstones

by the lakeside,

the water

livelong green;

the Avalonian

mother mists seemed

to swirl and

beckon,

dimming the

sun gently,

muting the noise

creating a vista

warmed and serene.

And the mists

felt like old

friends, old

veils of

thresholds then

and now.

I felt such

joy to behold

them,

such gratitude

that I could see,

that I could receive

their whispers

of richness,

and I have felt

settled in me

ever since.

I danced back

along the path

breathing into

the fruitful

and although

outside the

dream world

we have sat

through

charged humidity,

were drenched

and sodden in

storms

and initiated

collectively,

I feel a sacred call

for celebration.

As sombre as

the skies are grey, yet –

we are in a

Mystery;

and its pulsation,

as clear as mist,

hums with vitality,

with our regality.

The inching

breathless question:

will we claim it?

For it is,

electrically,

ours.

Featured image by Jen Buckley Art

Heat fear

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Heat fear

hits hard.

It

feels like

initiation.

As if no

other clues

were needed:

webs have

been cast,

coating and covering,

capturing the dusty

careworn

messages of the season;

the snakes, too,

are abroad,

surfacing,

cutting a break,

running their

bellies across

the scorched ground

whispering their

secrets.

And I am once

again

faced

with my

frightened tendencies

to abdicate

all sense of

capability:

body, mind, soul.

Calm arrives

in the song of

grasshoppers,

sentinels of relief,

humming with

the heat;

their tune

repeating, loving

like a heartbeat.

And most of all,

I revere the crone

decked in

cryptic black,

fan in hand,

resting under the awning:

smiling sardonically

at the ants

desperately

heaving

keeping the

machine

turning.

She beckons us

to draw into her shade;

to close the shutters

with soft force;

recline behind

the blinds;

to sample the

waters of siesta

and allow cool

showers of rain

to cast radically

soothing shawls

of reprieve.

Loving the peonies

/ eharpingon / 4 Comments

Loving the peonies,

I held myself

in question:

how can I be so scared,

when they have

such daring?

The audacity

to bloom in

such beauty

and self-possession.

No delicacy or

diminution,

but a full

chorus revelling

in the ephemeral.

And yet, not without

wisdom –

there is nothing

hedonistic or

indulgent

about them.

Foliage of forest green

holds the memory

both ancient and

ever-present

that to choose life

is to befriend

the poetry of its

completion.

That these loving

emissaries,

boundless for a

fleeting moment,

are bound towards

an ending.

And they teach

in their being:

what is more

grievous than death

is to hide in

life’s shadow,

sitting in foreboding,

for fear that endless, ashen

sorrow is safer

than the oceanic fantasia

of living and losing.

And as the

peonies crest,

and their

petals begin to fall,

I sit with my fears,

holding them

in my palms

for as long as

I can bear,

before gently dedicating them

to the pearlescence

of the clouds passing by.