The Kittiwake

                              

Unknown

The Kittiwake

With blistered heels and bones that ache,
Marching through pitchy ways and blind,
The miry track is hard to make;
Yet, ever hovering in my mind,
Above red crags a kittiwake
Hangs motionless against the wind—
Grey-winged, white-breasted and black-eyed,
Against red crags of porphyry
That pillar from a sapphire tide
A sapphire sky. . . . Indifferently
The raw lad limping at my side
Blasphemes his boots, the world, and me. . . .
Still keen, unwavering and alert,
Within my aching empty mind
The bright bird hovers—and the dirt
Of bottomless black ways and blind,
And all the hundred things that hurt
Past healing, seem to drop behind.

 

 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

 "Yet ever hovering in my mind" - what do you call that? An image within an image? The bird in the sky and the bird in the mind? I love the inner/outer exploration Gibson show us. Is this what everyone does? Do we all see something in nature and within ourselves simultaneously? Is there an almost unconscious relating ourselves to another form of life? Is there something about us that is tree-like, for instance? 

There must be hundreds of poems in which a person, at a low moment, looks at the landscape, the trees, or the creatures around them and says something like, "That leaf with the blotches and dried edges, that is how I am inside", or "If only I could be like that grass-blade I just stepped on - it springs up again after I'm gone." 

We seem to be in a conversation with our world. "Kittiwake" is a particularly beautiful expression of that. The image of the bird is like the action of the mind, rising up, leaving the trouble behind, letting it go. There's comfort in that thought, even when the trouble must be gone through.

 

(last post)

         

Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe

Shorebird-Watching

For S.

 
To more than give names
to these random arrivals--
teeterings and dawdlings
of dunlin and turnstone,
black-bellied or golden
plover, all bound for

what may be construed as
a kind of avian Althing,
out on the Thingstead,

the unroofed synagogue
of the tundra--is already
to have begun to go wrong.

What calculus, what
tuning, what unparsed
telemetry within the
retina, what oversdrive
of hunger for the nightlong
daylight of the arctic,

are we voyeurs of? Our
bearings gone, we fumble
a welter of appearance,
of seasonal plumages
that go dim in winter:
these bright backs'

tweeded saffron, dark
underparts the relic
of what sibylline
descents, what harrowings?
Idiot savants, we've
brought into focus

But Adam, drawn toward
that dark underside,
its mesmerizing
circumstantial thumbprint,
would already have
been aware of this.

 

 

Amy Clampitt 

 

It's not just the question of what the birds think (last post), but how can we think of the birds? The sheer numbers of them! The kinds - "dunlin and turnstone, black-bellied or golden plover", the bewildering migrations- "all bound for what may be construed as a kind of avian Allthing", and gatherings - "out on the Thingstead, the unroofed synagogue of the tundra". What are all these? What pattern are we witness to? What instinct? What marvels are these indicative of?

No one has expressed this consternation quite like Amy Clampitt. 

 

Shadows

Linda Bennett

Shadows

And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

And if, as weeks go round, in the dark of the moon
my spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom
pervades my movements and my thoughts and words
then I shall know that I am walking still
with God, we are close together now the moon’s in shadow.

And if, as autumn deepens and darkens
I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms
and trouble and dissolution and distress
and then the softness of deep shadows folding,
folding around my soul and spirit, around my lips
so sweet, like a swoon, or more like the drowse of a low, sad song
singing darker than the nightingale, on, on to the solstice
and the silence of short days, the silence of the year, the shadow,
then I shall know that my life is moving still
with the dark earth, and drenched
with the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal.

And if, in the changing phases of man’s life
I fall in sickness and in misery
my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead
and strength is gone, and my life
is only the leavings of a life:

and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought forth before, new blossoms of me

then I must know that still
I am in the hands of the unknown God,
he is breaking me down to his own oblivion
to send me forth on a new morning, a new man.

 

D.H. Lawrence

 

 "...then I shall know that I am walking still/ with God we are close together now.."

There are so many distractions and stresses, there always have been - coming in from in so many directions. These days I look for the constants, the things that don't change. I find so much comfort there. Like the speaker in this poem, I go to sleep at night committing my existence into the hands of the God I trust with everything. The God who remains Himself no matter what dark cloud I find myself under, no matter what I don't know and can't control. The God who knows me fully and loves me entirely and who is able (and willing) to re-create me, transform me, lift me up beyond cloud or circumstance. The God with whom all good things are possible. "

"New blossoms of me." for instance, 

"strange flowers such as my life has not brought forth before."

 

 

Summer Farm

Henry Mosler

Summer Farm 


Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass
And hang zigzag on hedges. Green as glass
The water in the horse-trough shines.
Nine ducks go wobbling by in two straight lines.
A hen stares at nothing with one eye,
Then picks it up. Out of an empty sky
A swallow falls and, flickering through
The barn, dives up again into the dizzy blue.
I lie, not thinking, in the cool, soft grass,
Afraid of where a thought might take me – as
This grasshopper with plated face
Unfolds his legs and finds himself in space.
Self under self, a pile of selves I stand
Threaded on time, and with metaphysic hand
Lift the farm like a lid and see
Farm within farm, and in the centre, me.

Norman McCaig 


“Threaded on time…” A pile of selves. Ha! Interesting. Also the idea of lifting a lid and looking down into the scene. Maybe we should be afraid of where our thoughts might take us! Or maybe we just need more practice at it.

After Rain

Geri Waddington

After Rain

The snails have made a garden of green lace:
broderie anglaise from the cabbages,
chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils-
I see already that I lift the blind
upon a woman's wardrobe of the mind.

Such female whimsy floats about me like
a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh,
while feet in gumboots pace the rectangles-
garden abstracted, geometry awash-
an unknown theorem argued in green ink,
dropped in the bath.
Euclid in glorious chlorophyll, half drunk.

I none too sober slipping in the mud
where rigged with guys of rain
the clothes-reel gauche
as the rangy skeleton of some
gaunt delicate spidery mute
is pitched as if
listening;
while hung from one thin rib
a silver web-
its infant, skeletal, diminutive,
now sagged with sequins, pulled ellipsoid,
glistening.

I suffer shame in all these images.
The garden is primeval, Giovanni
in soggy denim squelches by my hub,
over his ruin
shakes a doleful head.
But he so beautiful and diademed,
his long Italian hands so wrung with rain
I find his ache exists beyond my rim
and almost weep to see a broken man
made subject to my whim.

O choir him, birds, and let him come to rest
within this beauty as one rests in love,
till pears upon the bough
encrusted with
small snails as pale as pearls
hang golden in
a heart that know tears are a part of love.

And choir me too to keep my heart a size
larger than seeing, unseduced by each
bright glimpse of beauty striking like a bell,
so that the whole may toll,
its meaning shine
clear of the myriad images that still-
do what I will-encumber its pure line.

P.K. Page

Look how she does it. Broderie anglaise, chantilly, tulle, chlorophyl, sequins, ellisoid, theorum, encrusted, diademmed, pearls. From these she makes lace out of cabbages, geometry out of garden steps, silver webs out of clothes-lines, a king out of a gardener, jewels out of raindrops. The images she casts on our mind's eye are extraordinary. I see old mythological gardens  - "pears upon the bough/ encrusted with/ small snails as pale as pearls/ hang golden" - is this the Garden of the Hesperides where Hercules travels to find the golden fruit? Is this an enchanted garden? Or a pest-ridden, soggy cabbage patch worked by gum-booted and discouraged gardener? And then that "O choir him, birds," - and "Keep my heart a size larger than seeing." reminds me of Dylan Thomas - and really, isn't that the key line?

"Keep my heart a size larger than seeing."

when faces called flowers

Catrin Welz-Stein

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-

but keeping is downward and doubting and never

-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!

yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly

yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be

(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound

and wishing is having and having is giving-

but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense

-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!

now the pretty birds hover so she and so he

now the little fish quiver so you and so i

now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found

and having is giving and giving is living-

but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing

-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!

all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky

all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea

all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

e.e. cummings

I've been waiting forever to post this poem – but April's here, so the time is right. The mountains are dancing - ! That's so funny – it makes me think of Tolkien's Ents, the trees in their dance. It would be pretty glib to say that mountains don't dance, though – I mean, how do you know? The Bible says they clap their hands, so why couldn't they dance, too? Cummings says the birds and fish are frolicing and gamboling – and I think he's right. Isn't it possible that they enjoy themselves? I remember spring on the farm when the cows were let into the newly-green meadow for the first time. You've never seen such a hootenany! Tails in the air, gawky leaps and jumps, thunderingly disorganized stampedes in no particular direction... happy cows! If cows, why not birds and fish, why not mountains – why not us?

And then that line – that amazing line -

“when more than was lost has been found has been found” - I could say that over and over. More than was lost. More than was lost! Is that possible? It would take a lot of faith, to believe that. Dancing mountain faith.

Snowstorm

E. Balfour Browne

Snowstorm

What a night! The wind howls, hisses, and but stops

To howl more loud, while the snow volley keeps

Incessant batter at the window pane,

Making our comfort feel as sweet again;

And in the morning, when the tempest drops,

At every cottage door mountainous heaps

Of snow lie drifted, that all entrance stops

Until the beesom and the shovel gain

The path, and leave a wall on either side.

The shepherd rambling valleys white and wide

With new sensations his old memory fills,

When hedges left at night, no more descried,

Are turned to one white sweep of curving hills,

And trees turned bushes half their bodies hide.

The boy that goes to fodder with surprise

Walks oer the gate he opened yesternight.

The hedges all have vanished from his eyes;

Een some tree tops the sheep could reach to bite.

The novel scene emboldens new delight,

And, though with cautious steps his sports begin,

He bolder shuffles the huge hills of snow,

Till down he drops and plunges to the chin,

And struggles much and oft escape to win--

Then turns and laughs but dare not further go;

For deep the grass and bushes lie below,

Where little birds that soon at eve went in

With heads tucked in their wings now pine for day

And little feel boys oer their heads can stray.

John Clare

John Clare is a master scene-setter. Reading this poem slowly, each detail appears vividly on my inner eye, and I come away with the sense of having experienced the poem’s world. I wonder, could a person who had never seen snow, have any true sort of understanding of it after having read this poem?