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The fifth season

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‘Three white butterflies to know you’re near…’

‘Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing’ – Lana Del Rey, Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd (2023)

I try to

smile sweetly

at April,

but my teeth

hurt.

I force myself

to consider

the miracle

of primroses

that scatter

the churchyard

wantonly;

but I hanker

for the crows

and their inky capes.

I grab T.S Eliot

in the morning;

pick my skin;

mangle my words;

then accidently

smashed the

almond blossoms

on the floor and

cried.

A month begins

with the

interplay

of shadow and darkness

under relentless

grey; the new

Del Rey album

knows.

I asked to

see, hear and know;

all I received

was the same old puppet

show and I

feel all the

ways I don’t

live up to the sun.

Today, I keep it small:

there’s nothing

much to do

except to give thanks

that I have a plot

safe enough

soft enough

to wait this out;

let woundedness have her moment,

her head between her paws,

her sighs reverberating

off the wardrobe;

compassion whispering reminders

through the blinds,

of the hallowed blue sky

as the wheel

it turns, it turns.

*

Then,

there we were

singing

‘Under the Bridge’

in murmured

unison.

Magnolia! Magnolia!

And our laughter

recalled the

sunbeams.

We sat down

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We sat down

to breakfast

on beans and eggs

and I gazed

at the blue

sky, shyly

peeping

through tendrils

and coverlets

of grey.

I thought of the

sweetness of

slow, cold,

void-full

January,

and how

she is

time-dishonoured.

The tentative and loving

bite in her beauty

and patience is

lost

when we

are forced

to rise in

the darkness,

beating our

way though the

shadows and furies

when our bodies,

our souls

ache to awaken

with her.

No wonder

we struggle,

when the

rhythms of

cogs are

venerated, ghosts

of deeper

more sacred

practice,

woefully ignored,

rendering us

ghosts in our

turn.

So I do only

that which is needed,

to suit the

naked limbs

of the trees.

I allow poetry to

pull me

down slowly,

kindly and

passionately

and –

of course! –

there is so much

lusciousness

in January.

She was never

barren,

her darkness

prismatic,

her kisses sent

in hellebore.

With huge love and gratitude to Nikki McKinney at The Bell Jar Flowers for her generous permission to use this photograph as the featured image for this poem. Nikki arranged, designed and provided flowers for my wedding and I never realised how much I cared about these beautiful creations until I met her. She is a true artist. Her work can be found at https://www.thebelljarflowers.co.uk/

Beauty’s beyond

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‘My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it’

Henry James Thoreau

And I cried

in the kitchen,

for Beauty’s beyond

me.

I know it

should not

matter

but it

does.

That when

I write and

dance and sing

and feel

that I am

being shut

out of realms

of divinity:

the glassy plains

of the transcendent.

I am Earth-bound,

with a soul

that yearns

to unite with airy loftiness

but stumbles

and mumbles

in the clunk

and failure,

whilst other

gossamer souls

soar and delve

mining and mirroring

the riches of

abundant plenty.

*

He held me

and looked me

straight in the eye.

I realised

that my

art is in

my living:

the bounding

of my heart;

the alchemy

of my emotions;

the boundaries

of my bones;

the glory of

my joyous, shining

belief in the

brilliance and radiance

of connection.

My laughter.

My fury.

My dreams.

My choices.

My desires.

A living breathing

Mythology.

I may not

leave behind

masterpieces,

as I fumble and float forward,

but maybe even

simply

the attempt

is something mythic

something magic

something uncontained.

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

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

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

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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

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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.