Deeper in the Forest

I Will Wade Out

2010-06-24T06:40:00.004+01:00

i will wade out

till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers

I will take the sun in my mouth

and leap into the ripe air

Alive

with closed eyes

to dash against darkness

in the sleeping curves of my body

Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery

with chasteness of sea-girls

Will i complete the mystery

of my flesh

I will rise

After a thousand years

lipping

flowers

And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

e.e.cummings

XVII (I do not love you...)

2010-06-20T00:13:00.001+01:00

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

Conholt Hill

2010-02-08T12:21:00.005Z

Lean over the fence and
bend legs up on mesh-moss stile
and I’m there on hawthorn slope
and the cold air melts like
chocolate on my face.

And I slip down the rabbit’s path
to a space where five hundred
centuries elapsed below,
curved in the winter wheat and
water-bent valley.
Rhythms of trees, black webs with
black crows like fat commas
leak into the sky.

And I ask, I always ask,
hold my palms up and say
“Help me, what shall I do?”
to the passing air.

And you’re there,
sliding down a wind above.
Rust splashed wings rigid,
finger feathers spread.
You hold your perfect course,
draw energy from the sky,
and I wonder if the universe is
telling me to know
what you know.

JJ February 2010

Loving, Writing

2010-02-06T19:12:00.003Z

If your love was true
and you lose it, what have you lost?
Not the act of loving. That's yours.

If your words were true
and you lose them, what have you lost?
Not the act of writing. That's yours too.

In loving, in writing, how can you
hold onto a finished thing? Whether
you lose it or put it beneath glass,

it is the act itself you must cherish.
For what's left when the moment has passed,
the wind will carry. Despite you.

Tom Pow

(I was fortunate indeed to spend a week on a writing course being tutored by Tom and Maggie Gee some years ago. A thoughtful and gentle man, and a fine writer, I got in touch with him again recently and filled him in on the story of my life in the thirteen years since that course. He was generous and supportive.

I vividly recall him sharing this poem with us on that course)

Windermere at night

2010-01-17T16:38:00.010Z

wears ebony, all stretching

and creased upon the other side

in a pile ofhills.

Secret, asmall Pacific.

Here, inglaring Bowness,

the waterthins

glides toa stop,

by acardiganed, leathery man;

bready handoutstretched

to sleepyduck with lazy quack.

He talks backwith noises

made bypressed lips like kisses,

like theducks are cats.

Under thesliced moon
these cool cheap girls

peel out of taxis,

bandaged inbright and tiny dresses,

arms huggedacross their breasts.

They giggletowards an early club,

(and tensiontwinkles on
the boys’wall outside),

as they pickalong in heels

they’re not yetused to.

And others,in plastic bombers,

run down themiddle of the street

shouting -because they can’t

not shout - to claim a bench.

The old menand women from the north

look on, andin, at shops

with nice woolliesin the windows.

Beyond themplatoons of Japanese,

here forPeter Rabbit,

unseen lake nomore than bonus.

I wonder whatthey think

of the slateblack water,

and all thepinpoint stars?

JJ Bowness-on-WindermereSeptember 1997

Paddington

2010-01-17T16:20:00.016Z

I'll phone you.
You're not dead.
You left some things -
you'll see, I'll ring
you'll speak.

You're not dead.
You filled our car
I smelled your face
fine, unprofound
and, swinging round,
I pushed against a
press of traffic,
unaware, about to drown,
be broken down.
And left, like you,
just ash.

You're not dead.
My life has left its track -
it's all on fire with pain
again, again.

JJ October 1999

(Afterthe Ladbroke Grove train disaster. rescuers on the scene reportedhearing mobile phones ringing, unanswered, from within the wreckage)

Martin Wilson won’t remember me

2010-01-17T16:13:00.010Z

not now anyway,

I’m unrecognisable

though resemble like a cousin

he who stood there years ago

armed with useless reason

on a fragile, frozen lake -

always about to fall though.

Hunted in the cross hairs

Of his ego.

You’re the
worst

fucking

account executive

I’ve ever known,

he’d say.

Fuck off.

He wrote ads.

Not always bullshit – not always.

Merely pursuit of feeling, crippled.

So many poets locked up

hating themselves because

they’re being paid, because they eat.

The risk they wake with.

It’s taken years to stand back there.

To see the narrow pencils

as they rolled towards the table’s edge.

To look up at the walls -

no old awards here, just

lumpen Golden Lions, glinting, new.

Stood there in fear of empty shelves -

enquiries in the eyes.

I read of him sometimes, even now,

railing against some new assault

upon his status
and his fine mind.

JJ London,July 1997

(Some names have been changed to protect the guilty)

Ordinary Calls (WTC, Sept 11th 2001)

2010-01-16T02:17:00.008Z

I want the bricks and steel

to go back up.

Simply that, and all the glass

flow up to sky floor by floor.

The flying paper to re-nest

white bird like; and all the flesh,

the pumping blood-filled,

blood-loved flesh to live,

to die another, private, day,

not this.

I want the atoms in the dust remade

unburned, unlost.

I want time forced back.

foot jammed in its closing door,

so time re-opens, a chance to leave.

I want the traffic snarled, a breakfast fight -

or broken clock, the power out,

to let them sleep, wake dazed

andanxious for their lateness.

I want the early errand, tiresome,

then meeting missed.

And no first days,

and no new starts,

no lookings forward, nor up,

no sunshine-hopeful outlooks.

I want September snow

from that blue sky -

sweep in to fill the city,

ground the planes,

the sun turn black,

or freeze,a flood,

or anything that God

could dofor pause...

to give a moment’s notice

I want the Towers up.

To play my video backwards.

Unpack, unpancake.

And for the phones to ring

with ordinary calls.

Not human space of silence.

JJ Wiltshire September 24th 2001

Nest

2010-01-16T02:00:00.005Z

Stuffed up under an eve

they’re crammed,

beeping to their mumwho

swoops and hovers,

aerobatics like a jump jet,

every twenty seconds.

They’re too big now.

Bulbous, wobbling,

silly flapping,awkward

spiky feet kicking bitsof

nest out,exercising muscles.

Why don’t they go?

Each day we think

they will but still they’re

packed inside -

a burstingfragile parcel,

not knowing to.

We suspect thatif they do

it won’t be judged -

but falling, urgent,

accidental adulthood.

A second to decide,

which way to go,

before they hit the path

and meet the dog.

JJ Casa Vin Santo, Tuscany, July 1997

Real World

2010-01-16T01:56:00.001Z

All the way there in the cab

I had burst to writeabout

the days of quiet.

Of candles, hills, gorse

flowersand skies that

never darkened,

with simple observation,

claritylike the air.

We would not have met.

But there, our strange lives

came close and overlapped.

Made sharp the things

we knewbefore

but needed freshening.

And in the airport

a man who built the place,

in bronze.

White concrete, windsock,

shouting papers and pictures

of another planet lined upto

re-impose their noise and shape

on me.

But there’s a tiny baby too,

waving his arms about,

going on his first flight.

JJ Inverness Airport July 1997

Moniack Mhor (“M’nee-ak Vor”)

2010-01-16T01:46:00.006Z

The birds fly at different heights here.

Invisibly high and yet I saw

a wagtail bounce, stalling,

drunkover seed heads.

How can a skylark sing so much?

Or have so much to say?

They sing like water running

or distant radios

with their call signs.

This place has overflowed,

grass changed colour,

grey to green.

There’s a view,

a chair outside,

some pioneering mushrooms -

settlers in a lazy ring.

And smells which tell stories

on their way somewhere.

JJ Moniack Mhor, July 1997

Glancing

2010-01-16T01:41:00.004Z

If I were there again

would I have noticed that silly face

with crossed eyes on the Central Line?

Would I have let him walk out in his suit

into the Serpentine, to fetch a boat?

Would I have said yes right then, not hedged

by the hedge, outside my flat -

knowing greater thoughts were hatching -

and had him in, right then

and found another toothbrush

then in the morning, said goodbye?

Should I have bought a book

about this stuff?

Or gone to Brittany on a ferry?

Or maybe seen some art?

Or fixed my car?

All these questions and their friends

still run shouting round my playground.

They won’t line up nicely

and go inside.

JJ MoniackMhor July 1997

Full Moon and Little Freida

2009-12-09T13:10:00.002Z

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.

Ted Hughes

The finding of me

2009-12-01T20:02:00.003Z

The finding of me began

in hills the colour of bruises

and minor chords,

in summer's sunlit night...

as I wrote poems

in Moniack Mhor.

I can run my fingertip -

run it along a line
I eyes-closed made -

back to those purple-quiet clouds

and the gentleness of others

who saw beneath the rough terrain

and saw inside,
and opened me.

JJ

(PS Moniack Mhor is here)

Chesterfied Road

2009-12-01T00:21:00.012Z

Swollen eyed, I'll round the corner

loving, hating, shoes I chose -

girlish, so well priced - they smart.

We rub along.
Two hundred yards of hope,
arriving at a door once different
in my mind, and in a dream,
and purpose.

My breath I've held for months,
I cannot tell to let it go
for fear I'll fill my lungs and drown.
Or maybe air surrounds me now?
I might not choke on
vivid years, erased?
My muscles ache,
from picking up and
putting down the days.

I walk past homes like those

I knew and starred in, like a film.

Tried to make them real;

real shape, a voice I'd try to feel.

And windows filled with breathy

children's faces, backlit by lamps

on tables full of family.

At doorstep now,

an awkward key I never cut,

I hold, by jasmine that I did -

push inwards into quiet

pallid, airborne dust.

Beattie is Three

2009-11-30T23:32:00.003Z

At the top of the stairs
I ask for her hand. O.K.
She gives it to me.
How her fist fits my palm,
A bunch of consolation.
We take our time
Down the steep carpetway
As I wish silently
That the stairs were endless.

Adrian Mitchell

For a Five Year Old

2009-11-30T23:29:00.004Z

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
It might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
four closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.

Fleur Adcock

Without them

2009-11-30T22:55:00.000Z

I am in a second autumn

as leaves surrender

honey tinted sap to

piles of rotten yellow

like pointed, gilded, litter.

We drift together,

leaves and I, while

carbon trees, stiff shouldered,

square up against

the coming cold.

And they believe

the worldwill turn,

in equinox’s rhythm.

You know it in their roots.

Spring will come

for them, and I.

The birds I see each year

tell me so.

I can tell your life in a language of flowers

2009-11-30T22:43:00.003Z

I can tell your life in a language of flowers

First given you as blossom

Their vivid scent of growth matched your

Courage to have colour.

Later I imagined them pressed on you.

White memories from both

ground and cradle -

we drew them out then

gently placed them back,

though bright with life.

As we buried you,
in the rain filled wind.

JJ

(For AW)

From 'Clearances'

2009-11-30T22:05:00.001Z

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives --

Never closer the whole rest of our lives

Seamus Heaney

(I read this poem at my Mum's funeral...it captures for me the essence of the last day I spent with her)

My heart's gone all outside

2009-11-30T21:48:00.001Z

My heart’s gone all outside, not in.

On display, swum down a sleeve

It sits, perched,

Humid with feelings.

A jarless specimen from some jar.

Coronal refugee.

The wind and salt hit it there

And little painful pinches

Make it shrink or flinch.

I could put it back -

Nail it away in the timber of my chest.

Not wanted on voyage.

Where it would toughen,

Going blind, from the dark

And the hollow quiet.

JJ

Sonnet XIV (Songs from the Portuguese)

2009-11-30T21:40:00.002Z

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of ease on such a day--
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheek dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Autumn Sonnets: 2

2009-11-30T21:29:00.001Z

If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure - if I can let you go.

May Sarton

Wild Geese

2009-11-30T21:25:00.001Z

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

A Child's Sleep

2009-11-30T00:56:00.002Z

I stood at the edge of my child's sleep

hearing her breathe;

although I could not enter there,

I could not leave.

Her sleep was a small wood,

perfumed with flowers;

dark, peaceful, sacred,

acred in hours.

And she was the spirit that lives

in the heart of such woods;

without time, without history,

wordlessly good.

I spoke her name, a pebble dropped

in the still night,

and saw her stir, both open palms

cupping their soft light;

then went to the window. The greater dark

outside the room

gazed back, maternal, wise,

with its face of moon.

Carol Ann Duffy

Hands

2009-11-29T23:18:00.000Z

We first recognised each other as if we were siblings,
and when we held hands your touch
made me stupidly happy.

Hold my hand, you said in the hospital.

You had big hands, strong hands, gentle
as those of a Mediterranean father
caressing the head of a child.

Hold my hand, you said. I feel
I won't die while you are here.

You took my hand on our first aeroplane
and in opera houses, or watching
a video you wanted me to share.

Hold my hand, you said. I'll fall asleep
and won't even know you're not there.

Elaine Feinstein