Unlocking, seeking, push my fingers through the gap,
searching for a surface on the space that is emerging,
listening for a rhythm that the life beyond is turning,
Morning
Mourning
Passing in the crack that now chases round the birthing,
Straining to a place where the edges fight the blurring,
To prey
To pray
Holding to the difference of a heart beginning beating,
Rushing to embrace what may be only fleeting,
A piece
A peace
Finding is only the end,
It’s the aching arrival,
The ceasing exhale,
The stretching of never.
Feeling the blood pool,
The earth creep up tired limb,
Sit they say, sit.
But there is peace in the in-between,
In the swing between planting,
Foot after foot.
Peace in the movement,
Peace in the progress,
Peace in the stretch.
There is peace in not knowing what comes next,
Only that next is inevitable,
Next is coming.
Next is yours.
Peace is in the search not only the finding.
Stand in the gap,
When they want to force you to take up an extreme, refuse.
When they want to you to be polarised, refuse.
When they want you to ignore the complexities and conundrums of life, refuse.
Instead stand in the gap where the real people stand.
Where the people who do not want to be pushed or defined by others insecurities and obsessions stand.
Stand where the subtle colours shift and shine, where the deep and generous patterns flow.
Stand with the thinkers and dreamers, the survivors and strugglers, the lovers and yearners, the busy and distracted, the confused and the searching, the poets and the prophets.
Plant your feet in the shifting sand and stand with the ordinary and extraordinary.
Stand while the edges shout their insults and slogans, their extremism and their intransigence.
Stand whilst they shout themselves to a deafened standstill in their fear and their anger.
Stand in the place of humility and love,
Stand in the place of unknown adventure,
Stand in the place of wonder and expectation,
Stand in the place of the God of desert and river, of exile and pilgrimage, of birth and rebirth, of love and sacrifice.
Stand as an invitation to others to stand there too.
Through the pleated folded shroud,
My personal projection,
I look upon the polished crowd.
Souls with a connection.
To seek a ricochet of me,
See an image bouncing back,
to paint my picture primary,
In contrast to the black.
More richly saturated,
Not my tired and beaten frame,
No more worn or torn or faded,
By doubts I chose to name.
A dream that flutters, spins, wheels,
Blown by the mornings cast,
Try to catch it, grasp the real,
hold on and make it fast.
And if I look at them I see,
If I can only dare,
The best of who I’m made to be,
A future me we share.
(Nb. Rhyme is really not my strong point!)
Waiting day pausing,
Breathe full before breaking in,
Draw deep foundations.
Ragged raw hills of history,
bathe the patterned troughs,
Where we sew lives together.
The now,
catching it’s breath,
under raised umbilical wires.
We cluster,
clinging to each other’s places.
Black and grey slashing movement,
through the gaps.
Ways made first by feet,
wood and finally metal.
Ordered land given shape by people long lost,
carved into purposeful pieces,
bound, walled and walked.
Names and stories that have lost meaning for us,
but still, now, our place.
Here we dig our holes and raise our temples.
Here we find rhythm,
living,
love,
home.
Here we find a place,
to dream of unfettered heights.
The map on the shelf was new. It cracked like a distant storm as I pealed it open and smoothed it out on the hard floor, a seductive letter of possible adventures. I take a moment to picture it’s contours shifting, hilltops and valleys finding form. Rivers begin to flow and roads harden against the landscape forming in my mind. My attention always pulls away from the structures and habitation and instead begins to follow paths out into the empty spaces. It traces them up through concentrating lines through the black angular evidence of crags and cliffs. Out onto the lighter open plateaus and mountain tops. I can feel the wind flowing in the pale gaps between the mess of lines as the paths follow ridges and moorsides, the patches of water. The tarns and the lakes are deceptively uniform and unmoving, offering oasis amongst the detail of track and fence, rock and tree. Tiny triangles and numbers tempt the eye with challenge and vista. It’s these that draw the heart, they are the objective, they call. The lengths that cut the contours heading for these pictorial summits string together, they offer opportunity but at the same time they only show where others have already been. Before long a trip is planned, a starting place, a top to reach. But that’s all the map can show. As the map is folded back up and stowed, the journey can begin to unfold.
PICTURA POESIS 