Wordless Wednesday
Creativity
Coming Together
Coming Together
A coming together of cultures,
these three statues,
placed equidistant,
forming an equilateral triangle,
all things being equal.
Three founding cultures:
English, French, Indigenous,
in alphabetical order.
They stand face to face to face,
a triangulation,
silhouetted in profile,
sharing positive and negative space.
At the center of their union,
at the still point where nothing moves,
a living, breathing space,
that takes away your breath.
When you breathe again,
you take in air
and light and sun and
hope renewed.
Faith runs tingling round your body,
hand in hand with joy and life
and love reborn.
Middens by Jarea
Kingsbrae 25.4
25 June 2017
Middens by Jarea
Garbage dumps they are to us,
filled with childhood treasures,
shaped flints, arrowheads, spear
tips, scrapers for deer hide,
so many castaway items.
Garbage dumps to us, maybe,
but for the Passamaquoddy
who first settled this area
and lived on this shore,
these precious middens
are anything but dumps.
They are guide posts,
lighthouses in the moonlight,
signposts to point the way
for wayfarers and wanderers,
at high tide, low tide,
and especially when the mudflats
bathe beneath sun and moon
and the channels twist and turn,
serpentine labyrinths in their wanderings.
Garbage: we dig up what they have left,
expose past lives to scientific theories,
and destroy their navigational knowledge,
the science they left behind.
Jarea
Kingsbrae 25.1
25 June 2017
Jarea
This is a glimpse of
how it might be.
Surrounded by paintings,
snapshots and memories,
all we have ever done
hanging on the walls
as if we were visiting
a gallery of our lives.
Impressions from our childhood
line up beside
expressions of our adolescence
and
abstracts extracted
from our more mature years.
Time,
we are running out of time,
and our here and now is
a quality of deafness leading us
into the next dimension.
We will see our whole life,
in that blink of an eye.
Then there will be farewells,
a sudden silence,
and we will be gone.
Trinity
Kingsbrae 22.4
22 June 2017
Trinity
A coming together of cultures,
these three statues, placed
equidistant, an equilateral
triangle, all things being
equal and none more equal
than others; three brothers;
mother, father, child; father,
son, and holy ghost: no women
there; perhaps three founding
cultures: English, French, and
Indigenous, in alphabetical
order; and there they stand,
face to face to face,
a triangulation, in profile,
silhouetted, sharing positive
and negative space; and, at the dead
center of their union, at the spot
where all is still and nothing moves,
a living space, that takes away
your breath when you breathe
in air and light and sun and
a renewed hope; then faith runs
tingling round your body with
joy and life and love reborn.
Old Sow
Kingsbrae 22.3
22 June 2017
Old Sow
The good luck ship
flies its Jolly Roger
and all is well with the world.
No pirates now
bury their treasure
on Oak Island,
nor skirt the Old Sow
as she sucks away
at the ocean depths..
Porpoise and whale
come to her feeding grounds,
milking the maelstrom
she churns up from her seas.
Warm is her welcome
to travelers brave
who test their courage
on her swirling waves.
Lupins
Kingsbrae 22.2
22 June 2017
Lupins
To dwell here
is to build
cloud castles
or castles
in Spain.
High-ramparted,
the clouds,
sky-sheep
wind-driven
across a blue field.
Here,
no sound but the breeze
rippling the pond,
leaving soft footsteps
as its cat’s paw
bats at trailing branches.
Lupins,
in bank and ditch,
sway to the wind’s soft voice.
Toe-tapping, head tossing,
they play a jazz and blues concert
to a chorus of yellow bells.
Standing Stones
Kingsbrae 21.4
21 June 2017
Standing Stones
Standing in a stone circle,
surrounded by standing stones,
listening to their voices.
The reverberation of their uprooted rock
remembers its birthplace,
recalls the sculptor’s toil,
the polishing of granite and grain.
I’ll never forget those other stones:
bluestones at Stonehenge,
the Bronze Age tomb in Wick,
the toros de Guisando,
the danzantes at Monte Alban,
Hengistbury’s double-ditch and wall,
stone circles in Singleton
the Gorsedd ring in Caer Dydd.
Nor will I forget the deep-voiced
song of stone, here at the solstice,
standing in the middle
of three powerful granite statues,
their energies released
at this afternoon’s unveiling.
When I closed my eyes
I opened my mind and heart
to the deep earth-soul song
strummed in tune with the sunshine.
I breathed it in, retained it,
then allowed it to shine out
through the lantern of my heart.
Wollemi
Kingsbrae 21.3
21 June 2017
Wollemi Nobilis
To see you on this day,
the summer solstice,
when time and the sun
stand still,
is to recall you as relictus,
then to acclaim you
as Lazarus,
risen from the dead.
Your fossil footprints
walked for so long,
two hundred million years,
and you walked with them,
unknown, unrecognized,
lost in the wilderness.
What poverty in language:
we either describe you
in impossible scientific Latin
or else we reduce you
to a chocolate coco pops
breakfast cereal.
Hand-cuffed, chained,
your feet rooted within
this immobile crockery pot,
you will never leave us now.
You are your own solstice,
a stationary seed,
growing to adulthood,
sown in a circle
of never-ending time.
Comment: I have been trying since Sunday, 5 March 2017, to write this poem. But what are four months in the life of a seventy-three year old poet or a pine tree that was thought to have become extinct 200 million years ago. I do not have the words to express how I feel looking at this throwback to the time of the Dinosaurs. And maybe that is how this poem should start for it is, after all, Wordless Wednesday … “I do not have the words …” and thoughts, too, jam in the brain and refuse to cycle, let alone re-cycle. So, I’ll leave this poem for now. That said, I will probably come back to it. Meanwhile, do I ever feel so absolutely, totally, and completely inadequate.
Carpe Diem
Kingsbrae 21.2
21 June 2017
Carpe Diem
Leos love this longest day.
Their sunshine manes
just swell and ripple
with a lion’s pride.
They lick their lips with joy
at the thought of sun,
and yet more sun;
finger-licking good,
this ice-cream warmth
spilling over from sugar cones
that march past in their memories.
Carpe diem
seize the day, indeed:
for tomorrow brings less sun,
and every day thereafter
sunlight grows less and less
until the frosty stars appear,
Orion thrusts his stormy
sword above the horizon,
and snow men
with their yellow feet
stand stock steady
on the lawn.
