March Hare

Wonderful up on the moor this morning. Sun, at first a pale disc, emerging from chilly high cloud. Six lapwings whooping and dancing, one in particular puts on an amazing display of aerobatics, swooping and diving and fluttering. And a hare, big as a dog, racing away through the heather and bilberry, the white backs if its long ears disappearing over the top of the hill. Meadow pippits and grouse, jackdaws, ewes with lambs, and not one single human soul my entire hour-long walk. I love this.

I've decided to set myself a little April challenge - to post something here every day. A small stone or a larger pebble, we'll see.

A Piece of the Storm
(for Sharon Horvath)

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's all
There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
'It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.'

Mark Strand

Brussels

And there was Brussels. Where my brother, sister-in-law and her son live. They are safe, and my dear nephew A, who was due to travel the next day home on Eurostar, sent me an email around 12 yesterday saying simply 'I made it'. They will all be together for Easter. I grieve for the families who will not.

What's Going On

Seemingly interminable waiting for our solicitor to complete, conclude, finalise, finish all matters relating to my mother's estate. Probate having been granted some six weeks ago, after what had already felt by the time it was applied for an interminable process, it is a strangely tortuous process to continue to wait when everything appears to be set for 'distribution'. Now our solicitor's secretary is off work as her husband is seriously ill (some might argue this is too much information from one's £205 an hour legal representative) and so a letter explaining where we are up to is 'out for dictation' with apparently no one to whom she can dictate. It's not so much the money at this point, though goodness knows we shall be happy enough to pay off the mortgage, and I count my blessings daily to have been left an undoubtedly useful sum of money by my Mum. But the whole thing now seems so laden with feelings of finality. This last piece of admin to be concluded, money distributed, and then - all done and dusted. As I write I remember the one other thing still to be done - the stone for my mother's grave. I guess that will be the final final moment of 'nothing left to be done'. It's hard to describe how unsettling this waiting is for me, because it isn't that I think about it constantly. It's more a background tension. A sense of something pending, something not being where it ought to be, but getting nearer, nearer.

Cold weather - still out in woolly hat, mittens and umpteen layers of clothing for my daily walks. Sullen grey skies. When the sun gets a look in it does warm up, for a while.

Drawing - been doing some.

Writing - been doing some.

A deepening understanding that everything is included. Everything internal and external. The sullen skies and the struggle with waiting, the writing and the drawing, the awful moods of loss and yearning, anxiety and unsafety, and hypochondriacal tendencies, and the times of joy in small everyday aspects of my life. Acceptance of it all. Nothing that has to be got rid of or avoided. All can take their place at the great table of my life.

Underneath

Tell the hand that holds the pen
not to listen to the voice that shuts you up
shut up shut up shut up
this feather sensitivity this desire to be comfortable
give it up, shut it down, make do
and pretend to be fine.

Tell the hand that holds the pen
not to believe it not to pretend, not ever
keep looking for the source
this other voice the quiet one
underneath the earthquake
the one that won't stop
even when you won't listen
that inhabits a quivering body,
knows the light, has stolen all it knows
from the source -
toes, knees, hips, ribs
awkwardly
a body knowing itself
by its discomforts
between the shoulder blades
in the throat,
this burning along the collarbone.

Time

There's never been a better time to say
now is the time
to know that it's now not then
to let the scrapping ghosts quieten down
to walk in my own shoes

Cold Spring

A poem, from 2007, this season of winter-spring keeps reminding me of. Ice crackly and thick on the tops on my early walk, and I'm sitting here with the heating on, the door a crack open, the sun warming me through the window... and suddenly the sun has gone, and I must close the door.

An earlier draft featured the line
confusion of climates
which I'm rather sorry to find gone now I revisit the piece.
Anyhoo.....

March 14^th

White blossom emerges like snow oozing

from dark branches. Spring wades out of Winter,

the warmth held inside a cold envelope.

A tractor gets to work

and my mother has the painters in.

But this morning the pale dust of snow again

as I set out early in heavy coat and muffler.

Wordless Wednesday