poem

7

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Lime, olive

cedar

breath

when will

goodbye

not be tinged

with the forlorn?

It rumbles

like the rocks

and pebbles

as I left

the Lake for the

last time

this time

every footstep

a grinding

presence,

a remembrance,

no hope

of leaving

unconsciously.

We are leaving

the Timeless;

the seagull

on the

telegraph pole

sat in meditation

only moving

to stretch;

the recline

of lounging

so often denied

as books,

music, podcasts,

birdsong

and mountain view

incorporate

into rest.

Tomorrow

will be back to

trains,

timetables,

schedules

but for today

you rubbed suncream

into my back;

we drank beer;

laughed;

revelled in

and repelled the

future,

as I cried

tears I didn’t

know I had

into your shoulder.

You helped me down

the stairs,

we talked about

the moon and the

stars,

we kissed

wet kisses

in the shower

and the marble

floor

greeted our reflections

beaming

burnt

brilliant.

Wednesday 3rd August 2022

6

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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

I dreamt

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‘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.

For a few weeks

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For a few weeks

a question has

beckoned me,

fluttering around my

ears;

I have tried

to tease out

the answer,

sought insight.

There have been

many fleeting

intoxicating clues,

echoes deep

of my soul’s search,

but nothing concrete.

Slowly, I slipped

into a sort of

despair

as the outside world howled

at my door.

I so hate to

squander even

one second of

dearest mythical June;

yet, I was there,

consumed by

whispered relentless

fatigue

with thoughts

tending towards

darkness:

mine but not me.

I forgot

at the threshold

of transformation

that creation is

coupled

intimately

with destruction.

Whilst I still

linger in the quiet

of not knowing in

which direction

my paintbrush tends,

it is unequivocal:

I am reaching an end.

And I have an inkling

that there is much to learn

from early summer evenings;

pink, beaming,

stretching luxuriously

like a puppy belly,

and the quiet, the calm

only broken

by sweet blackbirds at dusk

gifting us to the

beauty of song

and the unmistakable

peals of poignancy.

Before the sweet spring rain

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In the shower

before the sweet spring rain,

my body embraced me

today.

And surely

this is something of God?

My addled work-spun brain

tries to explain, explain, explain,

but there is nothing

that can compare

to the rich full-hearted subtlety

of body reclaiming you,

with only my whimpers and tears

as songs of the reunion.

*

This time,

of light and shadow,

played out

in feathers of

ivory and jet

each

that found me in the garden

and the bed;

poised are we,

before what we know

and know not what yet.

*

Moonlight streaks my hair

as I begin to heed

Old Saturn’s teachings;

and though

I am sure world

will ensure I forget,

casting me into rosy sleep,

as it must:

I know.

My body is Great Mother.

She does not need to

only be sought in woods,

creeks and beaches,

although in these she

resides and is embodied too.

She is me.

Neck down,

canyons of hips and thighs,

loving me, gently yearning for me

to remember and know

and receive her secret wild, bloody wisdom.

And so I know the Earth,

And so the Earth knows me.