Realization

Dear Reader,

Easter is the most important date in the Christian calender, and we have just gone through Holy Week.  I have various emotions, but mostly sadness, during Good Friday when Christ was crucified,  and Easter Sunday when He rose again.  I always find the Saturday when he was buried in a cave, the most difficult to get through.  Where was He then, and who moved the stone so He could walk out the next morning?  I have an explanation from my daughter Tiffany who helped me yesterday with Bible references, showing that He was just asleep.  Well whatever the explanation I am always very glad when Easter Sunday dawns and He is resurrected. Alleluia.

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This is a piece from Gilbert White's journal (1771) in Hampshire.

"The face of the earth naked to a surprising degree.  Wheat hardly to be seen, and no signs of any grass: turnips all gone, and sheep in a starving way.  All provisions rising in price.  Farmers cannot sow for want of rain'.


Not quite like here then, when it seems to me that it has rained for about a month without stopping.

                                                                        *

Realization

I am
part of the whole.

I am
in the first light,
the bird's first song,
the sun's first dart
through the curtain crack,
in the music of the trees.

I am
part of the alpha,
the birth,
the awakening,
the growing and spreading,
the throbbing of life.

I am part of all suffering
hands blood-stained.
Part of love
humanity shares and
of all good things.

I am
part of the omega,
the closing, the last light,
the call back from the dark
to the bright, eternal night.


                                                                    *

Happy Easter and Very best wishes, Patricia

England Dear to Me

 Dear Reader,

                                                                             Scones and strawberry jam

                                                                                        Foxgloves

                                                                                        Foxgloves

 I have tried very hard over the years to grow foxgloves but sadly it has not been a very successful venture,  I have had very little luck with growing them. But the sight of foxgloves growing in a wood make my heart leap up, spring has sprung and there are signs of new beginnings everywhere.  The foxglove, also called Digitalis purpurea is a common garden plant that contains, digitoxin, digoxin and other cardiac glycosides.  These are chemicals that affect the heart.  Foxgloves are poisonous and can be fatal even in small doses.  Digoxin is derived from the leaves of a digistalis plant. It makes the heart beat faster and with a more regular rhythm.  It is also used to treat atrial fibrillation and heart rhythm disorder of the atria (the upper chambers of the heart that allow blood flow into the heart).

Foxglove flowers are clusters of tubular shaped blooms in colours of white,lavender, yellow, pink, red and purple.  They are biennial which means that plants establish and grow leaves in the first year then flower and produce seeds in the second.


                                                                            *

England Dear to Me

It is the robins, blackbirds, blue tits,
hopping and grubbing in the garden
that lurch my heart
make England dear to me.
It is the velvet of green moss,
oak trees, old with history,
the first cowslips,
hedgerows filled with dog rose, foxgloves
and shy sweetpeas in china bowls.
It is finding tea rooms in small market towns,
enticing with homemade scones and strawberry jam,
or suddenly glimpsing church spires
inching their way to heaven,
It is finding a Norman church,
full with a thousand years of prayer,
and a quiet churchyard mothering its dead.
It is small country lanes, high hedged,
views of mauve hills stretching skywards,
sheep and lambs dotting the green,
and bleached Norfolk beaches,
silence only broken with a seagull's cry.
It is the people,
their sense of humour,
their way of saying "sorry" when you bump into them,
their fairness, and once or twice a year
their "letting go",
singing "Jerusalem" with tears and passion,

It is these things
that lurch my heart
make England dear to me.

                                                                                 *

With very best wishes, Patricia

Quickening

                                                                                     The Thrush

Dear Reader,

I thought this week I would let you into the way my mind works when writing a poem.  Thinking about what William Wordsworth said about poetry:  'that it was emotion recollected in tranquility', I have always tried to find ways of remembering my emotions about whatever, and then writing a
short poem from my research.  Someone once said my poems were like "watercolours" just small stories giving a glimpse of something that we can all recognise.  So I have always tried to paint a picture of something I know about.  But, and I apologise for it,  I am sorry to say that last week's poem was certainly not up to my own standards.  This was because I was leaving my comfort zone and trying something different.  I had been reading a book about a man, a barrister, whose wife had left him.  He seemed to be a dual personality both generous and kind, and mean and vicious.  Obviously we are all made up of different parts and what I was trying to do in that poem was to show the two sides of this man.  But I don't think it worked from some of the correspondence I have had, and my new resolution is to stay in my comfort zone and take the advice from knowledgeable people to :  'write what you know', and paint my own pictures from self knowledge.

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Seagull news:  Apparently a giant owl has been hired to stop seagulls threatening alfresco diners in a Welsh shopping street. Elsa the eagle owl which has a six foot wingspan, has been employed by fed-up business owners to patrol the streets of Caernafon for the next six weeks in a bid to deter the gulls,
which they say have become a "menace".  John Islwyn, who handles Elsa, said the owl ensured a "humane way to deal with the seagulls".

                                                                                 *


Quickening

I want the pulse of life that has been asleep
to wake, embrace me, put on the light.
To hear the thrush, song-repeat, to keep
my trust in God to hurry icy winter's flight.
I want to glimpse, under sodden leaves, green shoots
to announce life's circle, its beginnings, have begun
I want to run barefoot, abandon boots,
to walk through primrose paths, savour the sun.
I want to take off winter's dress, change its season,
to see the coloured petticoats of spring, bloom
and show us mortals nature's reason
to start afresh, admire the peacock's plume.
Cellar the coal, brush ashes from the fire,
I want to intertwine, my love, quicken, feel desire.

                                                                                  *

Very best wishes, Patricia

The Ragbag of a Human Heart

Dear Reader,

                                                                                       Young women



An entry from Francis Kilvert's diary : Saturday, 8th March, 1872.

At eleven o'clock the dog-cart came for me with the chestnut old Rocket, and I returned to Clyro.
Amelia Meredith tells me that at Llanhollantine people used to to to the church door at midnight to hear the saints within call over the names of those who were to die within the year.  Also they heard the sound of the pew doors opening and shutting though no one was in the church.

                                                                          *

I used to live in a very haunted manor house near Beaulieu in Hampshire.  The house was supposed to have been visited by Judge Jeffreys, 1645-1689, The Hanging Judge, known for his cruelty and corruption.   He was one of the judges at the Bloody Assizes which were a series of trials started at Winchester on August 25th, in the aftermath of the Battle of Sedgemoor which ended the Monmouth Rebellion in England.  At these trials a woman called Elizabeth Gaunt had the gruesome distinction of being the last woman burnt alive in England for political crimes.  After the Glorious Revolution Jeffreys was incarcerated in the Tower of London where he died in 1689.

In the panelled room where he would have slept my Alsatian dog always growled when he went in there, and I always hated the room and felt very cold in it.

                                                                             *

The Ragbag of a Human Heart


He saw the girl
young, beautiful, innocent,
inflamed her with clever words,
caught her
seduced her
smiled, walked away.


At the bus stop
he saw an old lady
waiting in the rain,
offered her a lift,
drove her back to her house,
made her a cup of tea,
hugged her,
smiled, walked away.

                                                                             *

With very best wishes, Patricia

Sea-Fever

Dear Reader,

                                                                                Sandymouth Bay, Cornwall


'Everyone loves Cornwall" I heard someone say on Radio 4 this morning.  As I am going there on holiday in May, and know very little about it, I decided to do a little research.  It seems the history of Cornwall begins with the pre-Roman inhabitants, including speakers of a Celtic language, Common Brittonic, that developed into Southwestern language and then the Cornish language.  By the middle of the ninth century, Cornwall had fallen under the control of Wessex, but kept its own culture.

To the north of Cornwall is the Celtic Sea and to the south the English channel.  It is Great Britain's most southerly point, with The Lizard and the southern mainland's most westerly point,  Land'sEnd.   In 1337, the title, The Duke of Cornwall, was created by the English monarchy, to be held by the king's eldest son and heir.

Cornwall, along with the neighbouring county of Devon, maintained Stannery institutions that granted some local control over its most important product: tin.  By the time of Henry VIII most vestiges of Cornish autonomy had been removed as England became an increasingly  centralized state under the Tudor dynasty.  In the 18th century the decline in mining saw mass emigration overseas and the Cornish diaspora, as well as the start of the Civic Revival and Cornish revival, which resulted in the beginnings of Cornish nationalism in the late 20th century.

Cornwall today is famous for its pasties, saffron buns, Cornish Heavy (Hevva) cake, Cornish fairings (biscuits), Cornish fudge and Cornish ice cream.  And, of course, for its cream teas, scones and Cornish Clotted cream.

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Not one of my poems this week, but one of my favourites.



Sea- Fever           by John Masefield, 1878-1967

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's
shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call than may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and blown spume, and the sea-gulls
crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and whale's way where the wind's like
a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's
over.
                                                                                  

                                                                                 *

Very best wishes, Patricia

Photographed by Kaye Leggett (www.bertiethebus.wordpress.com)