As we make the time, so we make the weather.
Wishing you and your world a year of kindness and simplicity.
Here’s a reverse renga made from a selection of verses from the year renga I kept in 2020. It’s a good touchstone practice for days that make strange demands – a river to swim in and carry you along.
There should be a little more space between the verses which I can’t quite make happen in this format, so best take a breath as they unfold. Hope’s there’s something among or behind the lines for you to ponder and take with you into the new year.
Be well.
L
x
Le Temps
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
Albert Camus
I
*
You give me a word
for the heart’s weather
driving into Newcastle
as if we were travelling
to Samarkand
how to feel sad
without being sad
spiked with caffeine
overnight snow
dreaming yourself into existence
bars of rain
on the sitting room window
one more winter
the same larches
an untranslatable decade
the flowers don’t know
it’s November
every year
her body
remembers his birthday
nothing blowing
against nothing
out at sea
all night long
a blue moon
two hours lost
in charcoal, pencil, ink
our first visit back
to the cinema
it’s 1968, Chicago
*
light the fire
burn the day away
another Monday
uncertain
how to begin
sunlight you want
to call miraculous
filling the day from end
to end so there’s no room
for nothing
plant wallflowers
a spell for overwintering
slow Sunday afternoon
watching Casablanca
you weep on the sofa
2.30 pm around the brazier
Autumn Equinox
a moment knows
something’s almost over
but not what it is
pale lines of rain
against the ploughed field
I paint the stone rise
in the kitchen
a colour called Thunder
listening to Meredith Monk’s book of days
time stops
stay with the ragged joy
of ordinary living
and dying
*
your birthday: balancing
pebbles on a burnt tree
rain all day
the garden rises up
to meet it
the longest day
stripped back to nothing
the only yellow flower
on the gorse bush
a yellowhammer
the here and now
and the mental there and elsewhere
the yard white
a sudden shower
of sky stones
on top of the Iron Age fort
we see beyond ourselves
without water in the taps
your mind full of nothing
but water
distilling time impossible
I try anyway
good thinking always happens
at the moment of speechlessness
jellyfish swim behind her
you die
you are still here
a few seconds lag
between our chat
connects || separates
*
the first swallow
and tears come
storm moon and hailstones
I warm myself
at your fire
the rowan’s shadow
ticking clockwise
punctuated equilibrium
how earth evolves
in sudden ruptures
every day the same
every day different
Spring Equinox:
I am a tilting cup
a tremulous star
in ceremonial kimonos
they look back from the future
do not stand
in a place of danger
trusting in miracles
our molehills
are mountains
my driver knows
hardly any English but says
we need more water
a dead man’s tattoos –
fail we may, sail we must
on the windowsill
a bowl
of borrowed time
[Quotations from: Jane Hirshfield, Donna Haraway, Siri Hustvedt, Moroccan proverb, Andrew Weatherall.]
What the land says
Feathers in the Basket
Today, as part of the Northern Poetry Library Project, a small group of us gathered in Hexham Library to make a 12-verse renga sparked by our ‘food’ theme – which even after six months seems inexhaustible.
Botanical 