Gardens

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.

This Old Man

Kingsbrae 16.1
16 June 2017

This Old Man

This old man, with his bundle of memories
carried on his back like a snail carries his shell,
a broken record, he played, with the gramophone needle
stuck in a groove and the same tales repeated.

The ancient mariner who lives in his brain
stops people in the street and retells
the old story: life’s doldrums where
no winds blew and his ship just drifted,
with no wind to bring it home.

Then blew the wind of change, and suddenly
the sun was just as warm as it was in his youth.
The sea became blue again. Flowers flourished
brighter, stronger. Birds chirped in the trees.
Light grew bright and he felt beauty return to
the new-born world of his second childhood.

Comment: My journal tells me that I wrote the original version of this poem on Friday, 21 April 2017, and posted it to my blog on Sunday, 23 April 2017 . Today’s rewrite changes the structure and tone of the poem and illustrates how time and place can influence any previously generated word sequence. For time and place we can also substitute attitude and change of heart, as Ludwig Wittgenstein suggests. More important, perhaps, our attitude and outlook can change with the weather and the state of our digestion. This is the same poem, then, written by the same person, on two different days. Or was it the same person? My stay at this residency would suggest that perhaps the person has changed along with his attitude, his outlook, his digestion, and the weather.

This Fragile Light

Kingsbrae 16.1
16 June 2017

This Fragile Light

This fragile light
filtering through
the early-morning mind
filled as it still is
with night’s dark
shadowy dreams
their dance demonic
or perchance angelic
as light rises and falls
in time to the chest’s
frail tidal change
the ins and outs
of life-giving breath

Bright motes these birds
at the morning feeder
feathered friends
who visit daily
known by their song
their plumage
their ups and downs
as they dazzle and spark
breaking the day open
with their chorus of joy

Comment: According to my journal, this poem was written on Saturday, 25 March 2017, and is number 32 in the Kingsbrae Cycle that I started on 3 March 2017. I posted it to the blog on 26 March 2017 and you can view it and the earlier comments by clicking here. This Fragile Light is art of the Kingsbrae Cycle in tone and mood. It didn’t need to be rewritten in situ, and I repost it in its original form. From now on, this pattern of a repetition of earlier posts together with a rewriting of earlier poems and the creation of new ones will be the central pattern of the Kingsbrae poems. What will change are the pictures accompanying the photos.

Eyeless in Kingsbrae

Kingsbrae 15.3
15 June 2017

Eyeless in Kingsbrae

There’s warmth in a color,
and heat’s visible to the touch.
Shocking pink has a different
feel beneath the fingers,
and it has no name that you
and I, sighted, would ever know.

They push me, blindfolded,
around the garden. Gravel’s
crunch beneath the wheels
sharpens my inability to know,
to be sure of shadows and shapes
that are no longer there.

The ones who push me talk
and tell but cannot show.
How could they hold a rain
-bow before my eyes or
explain those lights that
crisp and crackle in the sky,
a visible Niagara Falls
with fairy lights
dancing up and down?

And those glorious choirs,
angel voices rising, falling,
grasping my eye-lashes,
trying to pry my eye-lids open.

Oh song of songs, and the singer
deaf to his own sublimity.
Oh dealer of false cards,
fingerless pianist, and dancer
shuffling on amputated stumps.

Y Ddraig

Kingsbrae 15.2
15 June 2017

Y Ddraig

“Here there be dragons!”
The old maps used to say.
A sea-serpent decorated those maps,
a kraken, perhaps, or another monster
drawn from the depths of the unconscious.

In Wales there used to be dragons.
Old massive bones rose to the surface,
long ago, and there were skulls
and other artefacts lurking in the coal seams
that snaked through dark mines.

The fear of dragons is still within us.
We know they can fly in from nowhere,
setting fire to the crops, burning the houses,
killing people in an unequal battle in which
one party can fly while the other
can only run and hide,
or else burn publicly in the open streets,
Guy Fawkes figures in their multiple bonfires,
flaring in those deadly white phosphor flames.

Bonfires and bone-fires:
I have also seen the Cancer Dragon
growing within the human body
and burning the poor patient alive,
from the inside out.

Y Ddraig Coch:
the Red Dragon of Wales:
long may he stay on our flag
and rule the skies from his flagpole.
Those who wish for the dragon’s return
yearn indeed for sadder, madder, darker days.

Comment: Another ‘raw’ poem, but one that I have been thinking about for some time. It was driven from the back to the front of my mind by Carlos’s photo of the dragon in Kingsbrae Gardens. Carlos is my photographer and travels far and wide, taking photos that he then shares with me. I am very grateful to him for this sharing. I usually work my photos on the IMac, but here I am working with a PC that I am only just beginning to understand. There are so many new things happening that it is difficult to keep pace with them all. Oh yes, and this poem is an allegory [a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another, definition from dictionary. com], but I am not sure that I know what the hidden meaning actually is.

Kingsbrae Creations

Chaos

Kingsbrae 14.4
14 June 2017

Kingsbrae Creations

Carlos Carty has recorded me as I sat reading some of my poems out loud. He has also put some of them to music. I think of it as mood music, because he captures meaning from tone and voice and then adds a music he has created to match the emotions expressed in the poem. We have recorded six poems so far and I list them below. Just clink on the links and turn your volume up. Carlos and I hope you enjoy these Kingsbrae Creations, one of the many results of our collaboration here at Kingsbrae and KIRA. Here are the poems, click on their titles to access to voice readings and musical accompaniment.

Giving Back

Word Blooms

Scent & Touch

Small Corner

Yellow Bird

Love

Peace

Kingsbrae 14.3
14 June 2017

Peace

Everywhere I go, distractions.
I-phones bleep, fingers touch
screens, instant news breaks
sound waves on an endless
shore, noise, more noise, car
radios, heavy metal, hard rock.

I must flee now to the gardens.
I must seek out the robin’s song,
find the liquid notes of the water
thrush, search for the oriole’s
magic voice, the cardinal’s
colorful chorus. Not for me the
cheap tweet of the twitter-verse:
better by far the soulful summer
sounds of the natural universe.

Wordless Wednesday

Kingsbrae 14.2
14 June 2017

Wordless Wednesday

All sound has run dry in my
song-sparrow throat.
Words and music no longer flow.
They need eaux de vie,
the waters of life.

Water from a bucket, perhaps,
though I cannot stoop to fill,
nor carry it, without spilling.

A hosepipe, then, though I need
to bend to make the connections
and turn the tap on, and alas,
I am too old and stiff to bend.

Rain, perhaps, though today
it must fall from a cloudless sky.
Who could pray for rain on a day
like today, with sun warming earth
and flowers and my old bones
basking, wordless in the warmth.

I long for the word drought to end.
Silent I shall sit and wait for the word
-well to fill itself with those spiritual
waters flowering and flowing deep within.

Chronotopos

IMG_0066 (2)

Kingsbrae 13.1
13 June 2017

Chronotopos

plant a plant
deep its roots
rooted in fine soil
potting soil in a pot
firm the fingers
the spot well-chosen
in a flower bed
in a pattern
in an empty space
in a growing garden
within a larger garden
in an old estate
in a small town by the sea

Russian doll puzzle
garden after garden

(one a secret
with its birds and voices
lost in the hedgerow
and the echoes
of secret meetings
watched only by the guardian
the robin that watches)

planted and replanted
unfolding flowers
in a sunshine world
in a state of grace
hope and handicraft
hand in hand
with faith and belief
and everything planned
to take advantage
of this time and this space

these words so simple
these thoughts so complex

Comment: I began this poem on 10 March 2017. It formed part of my initial poetry sequence with Kingsbrae unseen, save for videos and photos of the gardens and their history, viewed on the Kingsbrae website. As I have grown into the KIRA experience, or perhaps I should write ‘as the Kingsbrae experience has blossomed within me’, so I have found these words prophetic, yet strangely inadequate, in the way all words are inadequate when tides flow, days flourish, and ideas blossom, sometimes in that formless world between sleep and dream where reality is something for which the writer reaches out but finds it is beyond the fingertips and just out of reach. As my Judo instructor told me, a long time ago:

“The more you strive,
you cannot reach it.
The hand cannot grasp it,
nor the mind exceed it.
When you no longer seek it,
it is with you.”

Giving Back

Kingsbrae 11.4
11 June 2017

Giving Back

In the beginning was the wind,
and the wind created waves,
whitecaps on wild waters
with sunlight dancing a tiptoe
hornpipe, heel and toe, landwards
towards the headland where the
lighthouse grows from rough and
ready rock, its light cast on water
and returned fourfold in the yellow
moon path, step after stepping stone,
golden from sea to gardens with
their marigold path leading to
house and home and the banquet
spread before them, so solemn the altar,
this day of all days, when we celebrate
our lost and loved ones with bread
cast, like light, out upon the waters
and tenfold always our love returned.