Summer

Summer Visitors

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Kingsbrae 20.2
20 June 2017

Summer Visitors

Wind-blown birds,
songsters, passerines,
carried up from the south
on the wind’s wings.

Myths become facts:
hummingbirds on
eagles’ backs, warm,
clinging, feather-nested.

The following wind
drives carrier and
passenger onwards
and upwards to our land.

Look to the Mountain Ash
with its Indigo Bunting,
rare passerines flourish,
too, new, sudden and
unexpected visitors, drawn
north by our sun’s magnet
and our short summer
season with its wealth:
swarming northern insects
(never forget
those migrant butterflies)
and pestilential flies.

This Fragile Light

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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.

 

Whitecaps

 

15 May 2002 Pre-Rimouski 277

Kingsbrae 12.2
12 June 2017

Whitecaps

… white-capped the waves,
pushed inland by a strong,
warmth-bearing wind, and hazy
the crazy paving sky, with its
cloud figments floating,
lazy, the heat, with summer’s
heavy hand now sudden upon
sea and land, wave upon wave,
this heat wave, holding us now,
as wind-tied, the tide, strives to flee
but cannot free itself from wind
-grip, and bit between teeth, white
horses cap the waves, leave seaweed
stranded high and dry in fierce sun
-glow, Irish Moss and Madcap Dulce,
their iodine tang fulfilled on chance
winds that blow us willy-nilly, this way,
that way, any way the wind blows …

Dawn

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Kingsbrae 12.1
12 June 2017

Dawn

… early morning sunshine
creepy-crawly spider leg rays
climbing over window and wall
my bed-nest alive to light
not night’s star twinkle
but the sun’s egg breaking
its golden yolk
gilding sheet and pillow
billowing day dreams
through my still sleepy head …

… the word feast festering
gathering its inner glimpses
interior life of wind and wave
the elements laid out before us
our banquet of festivities
white the table cloth
golden the woodwork’s glow
mind and matter polished
and the sun show shimmering
its morning glory on garden and porch …

Sea Gull

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Kingsbrae 11.3
11 June 2017

Seagull

… slipping sideways on the wind,
wing tip tilted for maximum lift,
wheeling up and away, magnificent
his movement, the gull-wing sway
as he climbs his celestial staircase,
that blue vault, high in the sky,
upwards, in a rush of indigo air
brushing his black back, fine
his feathers and broad and firm,
cousin to the distant dinosaurs,
those hollow bird bones, built
to bear their enormous bulk,
yet light his flight steps, this cloud
ballerina, treading on tipped wings,
dancing to sky music, white
bones herded by the wind, crisp
their notes, across cerulean pastures,
the wind whistle sharp over bay
and beach, oh watch the gull go
with a waggle of his wings,
a butt of his red-ringed beak
and his bird-tail tagging …

Therapy Garden

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Kingsbrae 10.3
10 June 2017

Therapy Garden

Sitting, absent-minded, empty,
waiting for the sunlight to heal
my old bones and fill my fragile form
with light so that I may shine,
a lighthouse on the land,
light pouring out from me,
light enough to enlighten
the unenlightened
in their soul’s dark endless
night, no moon, no stars,
and me, walking unafraid,
knowing I need fear nothing,
even in terminal darkness,
for my body now overflows
with therapeutic light
that floats its boat on an inner
sea of tranquility.

Journal: Wandering the gardens on a warm sunny day, just taking in the fresh air and the sunshine. I stopped in the tranquility Garden and sat  a bench in the shade and wrote these words. They again very “raw” and I may well revisit them. Comments gratefully accepted.

Word Blooms

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Kingsbrae 10.1
10 June 2017

Word Blooms

Snow
a blank page
below it
dormant bulbs
paint box colors
waiting to awake

Watchful
the gardener’s eyes
eager her helping hands
rainbows the flowers
pushing into bloom

Words
also wait for the sun
to warm them
to pluck them
from their word beds
and give them shape

Light
and delightful
the word seeds
blown across the world
implanted their ideas

Words
taking root
their blossoms
blooming sudden
in the reader’s mind

 

Word Blooms Voice Only

Word Blooms Music

Labyrinth

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King’sbrae 9.3
9 June 2017

Labyrinth

What thread will lead
blind Theseus
this labyrinth through?

Light the ladybird sun
caressing his one cheek
the other in shadow.

Fanciful the bumble bee,
heard but not seen
its miracle of ponderous,
heavier-than-air flight

Sight-blessed,
life’s obstacle course:
a flat track frolic
for all those confident
of foot and touch.

Listen to the ladybird:
she cracks her wings
and launches upwards
to join her companion,
the bee, twin specks
together now in the sky.

Dawn at Kingsbrae

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Kingsbrae 3.1
3 June 2017

Dawn @ Kingsbrae

1

A fiery wedge fierce beneath
black-capped clouds, alive
the firmament with light,
breaking its waves over woods,
waters, tranquil the bay, grey,
yellow streaked, then blue,
the new day dawning,
driving night away,
false shadows fleeing.

2

To rock this new born babe,
to swaddle it in a cloak of cloud,
disguised for a moment its promise,
nature nurturing heart and mind,
filling the flesh with memory’s
instantaneous flash breaking its light
into the dark where no light shone,
fearful, the dream world,
gone now, dwindling as day light
shafts its arrowed flight.

3

How thoughtful My Lady
who placed me here,
at this desk,
at this window,
at this moment of time.

Glorious the day-break,
words no justice can do
to peace and light,
this early morning,
filtering sunlight
through the waking mind,
relighting the fires within the heart,
and glory striped on the horizon
just a word’s throw away.

 

Kingsbrae 2.2

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Kingsbrae 2.2
2 June 2017

The Red Room

Carlos makes music on his flute.
He lives in the Green Room,
an open door opposite mine.

He creates the highest note of all
and it floats before me in the air,
a trapeze artist caught in a sunbeam,
suspended between the hands
that fling and those that catch.

His musical rhythms are different.
I try to follow his fingering.

In the space between notes,
hummingbirds flash their ruby
throats as they flit between flowers.

With a whirring of wings, all music
stops, save for the robin’s song
refreshing the early summer
with the sound of his eternal joy.

Journal: As I unpack my bags and start to settle in and arrange the room to my own liking, Carlos who will stay in the room opposite mine, starts to play his flute. I listen to the notes and, as I am listening, a robin joins in the song. I rest for a moment and sit at the small writing desk by one of the windows. From here I can see white clouds floating their ice-berg shapes across a sea-blue sky. Beneath them, Passamaquoddy Bay sparkles and crackles with filtered sunshine.

My mind goes back to another, more desperate time, two years ago, when I sat by the hospice window in Moncton and looked out at the car park. My car sat out there, abandoned, lonely, waiting to take me home for the welcome respite of a weekend free from radiation and treatments. Now, looking out of the window towards Minister Island, I feel as if I belong, as if this place had been waiting a long time for me to arrive and bear witness to it. I feel deep inside me the joy I feel when I walk in the door and enter the warmth of my own family and home.