Night in

Through the

open window 

Mice like

Lamped up

Low light

Heaped up

Hay

Layed in loft

Owl like

Wood beams

Gentle chatter 

Pitter patter 

of rain

and paw print

Natural dreaming

Slumbering together 

Relaxing

Outwardly still, inwardly slowing 

looking on

Grateful for imagination

Reality alive in my minds eye.

The trees are standing pillars of water 

And cars moving fires 

Birds - mostly wind 

Fish - wet miracles 

who swim in rivers that are alive

Stars? 

Holes in the knotted coherence of things

like humans maybe

My friend called us all Sentient Meat 

As we looked on at the airport

I loved it, for the scale of the thought

I laughed out loud

The laughter was real

but the phrase a bit hollow

Felt like a downgrade of our bodies grace

A forgetting of the spirits flame at our core

I was told G K said

'The angels can fly because they take

themselves lightly'

Like the birds, who own nothing

I sense yet cannot express the relevance 

Not with any elegance 

Though, let us remember we are human

amongst all the fun.

Someone summed up Jesus with one word

'relaxed'

Which could just be the human version of

light 

The long way to talk about a sunset

Walking from Pewley most evenings

I’m heading out into the feathered sky

So vivid it never fails to place me present

Reds ripened around the cathedral, every blue

Those purple streaks singing

The day in ribbons

Each evening is a dialled up encounter with wonder

It is beauty and terror tumbled up in teenage longings

 

It was the security I enjoyed that allowed for the scale of these moments

 

Freedom giving parents lovingly catapulted me into the world early

Leaving from Pewley made it a squared number

A home with long lineage

Multiplied meaning

I had roots to draw love from

Nutrients all the way down into Guildford’s past

My earliest memories were grounded where I would later lay my head

Laced with an ancestral belonging older than me

 

I’d always pick up the pace on the downward slope

Reflecting on the house on the hill behind me

where, like so many others I love, I wrestled with youth and change.

Continuously witnessed by the same walls and trees

Wide hedges contained our growing

A tree house amongst the apples

Plenty of blackberries and butterflies

An ivy carpet to walk on

An ivy column to wonder about

Hammocks to sway in, tents cropping up for a while

Endless lives given hospitality around a fire, a chilli pot

Or temporary bed

So many parties

The wooden floor still dappled in thousands of tiny stiletto indentations

Belonging to feet too many to name, now dotted across the globe

That one where the hedge was fashioned into a talking giant

there were tunnels into the glade where a stage waited

More a festival than garden party

Always

A place to be creative and experiment

Later

Visits to the shed in hyper reality looking for the peace of the wild things

 

A protective factor

The memories of endless games into the night

The scent, sound and tingle of dusk when most children would have already been called in

A safe enough place outside, how lucky we were

 

Other protective factors include

Dancing together in the sitting room, all ages through the ages

Quiet Sundays, reading

Family roasts and Friday curries

Honest conversation after the hard truth of another parents evening

An old lady’s wisdom on the patio

Bathing my daughter in an orange bucket by the fire

Over 70 years, many babies bathed

These lists are probably inexhaustible

 

So the night would end

And I’d inevitably find myself on the uphill to home

(though I’d sometimes end up in the shed)

Under moonlight and under feelings of inarticulate nostalgia

Those walks where I’d be honest about my human loneliness

And I began to step a little way towards solitude

That is, the ability to be with myself

I’m grateful to have been shown that

good homes induct us into a larger home called earth

Grateful to have been given the chance to hear that call and feel such longing

 

The house housed the many universes and explosions of ordinary life

Laughter though, along with everyday kindnesses, will linger longer than even the bricks

Waiting under the foundations

It’s the same as the garden always was

Earth and ancient truth

Long older than the house

Though I perceive a link

When I pause on the fact our Grandad

Would go the long way into town

And consider the shared slower rhythm

Of connected values

That ripple out and are not yet finished permeating

A farewell poem - written 03/2024

as part of a wider family project

Pulse - Burning up

 

Traffic Poems

Heads up. Avoid bridge roads around base.

Build up of traffic due to swing bridge.

(it's at least a 4 poem wait - in time)