Last Visit to Stoke Bruerne
The small not quite shuffling steps
Faintly echoing the breezy strides of just a year ago
Take him over the clipped grass
With almost tidied wrappings
Towards the steps that flank the lock
The unfamiliar effort makes him breathe deeply
The scents of summer rushing through
Bringing recollections with unremembered joy
And it is a relief not to think or dwell
On what is happening and will happen
And to feel happiness that doesn’t come from a bottle or a pill
But from the place and the company, his son, his wife
and the simple natural sounds that have reclaimed old industry
And turned it into a place apart
Absorbed into the natural cycle
as beautiful and as terrible as life has always been.
And all too quickly his strength fades and he rests
staring with brimming eyes over the sun reflecting stillness
of the pound where a moorhen tends to her chicks and
A dragonfly hunts
and rushes tremble
In time with his heart
No News Isn’t Good News
I’ve become a little addicted to Twitter, so I occasionally just don’t use it, don’t watch the news, read a newspaper or anything that might feed my feelings of despair. The thing is, whilst I’m away doing outdoory sort of things big things happen that aren’t good. Here is a list of things that happened when I have been having news breaks;
- Covid 19 (the early bits or prequel)
- Brexit (some bits)
- Killing of George Floyd
- Another rise in global warming
I could go on but won’t, things don’t stop happening if you don’t look at them BUT I do feel a bit better about myself and my fellow humans so the breaks are good even if the news isn’t
Indifference
Indifference
As the Kestrel hovers, trembling like a new leaf in the breeze
Judging the moment to abandon its efforts to defy gravity
Ready to fall as a dropped hammer
With curved knives to pierce the life
Of a mouse, stilled in its skittering
Pausing, about to chew upon cast away seeds flung from the khaki grass
That may still yet become reborn;
A friendship of lambs with heads down nibbling and chewing
Intent on consuming the sweetest and tenderest tips
Fail to notice the theatre of a life in its final moments.
On The Death of Two Ash Trees
Chalara the Destroyer
Part of the ring is broken,
Felled by chainsaw ripping through disease
Danger averted but majesty destroyed
Mysterious root of the ancient people
Provider of tools
Heater of homes
Cooker of food
Healer
Strong
Wise
Gone
No longer do you stretch to the heavens
No longer do you delve the earth depths
No longer do you connect
Oak and Hawthorn abandoned so the three are divided
Fae have flown.
A tear in the garment of the earth
A hole in the living order
Heaven un-tethered
Will the Meliae* come again?
Will the ring be made whole?
Will that living link between earth and heaven be remade?
The mighty ones have fallen
Air too dirty, soil too salted, water too foul
To resist
We must plant again
Make our soil living again
Make our water pure again
Make our air clean again
Nurture and serve our mighty Ash
Re-birth the magic
Re-connect heaven and earth
Re-make the ring.
*Meliae – Ash tree nymphs(dryads)
Jerusalem – A National Anthem
Jerusalem
And could those ancient feet of inspiration
Walk now on England’s pastures green
Or would the Lamb of God be waiting in Calais
Excluded.
Those feet would not walk on the cracked, fracked rolling hills,
That countenance divine would not be welcome in the
Satanic Mills made over to be shopping malls,
And the army of God has disappeared
With its burning gold bows for sale in retro stores
And chariots of fire traded in for 4 x4s with aircon and 0% finance,
Swords are asleep as hands are full of keyboards and phones
The arrows of desire pre packaged
And marketed for ‘only your pleasure’,
Exhausted from the mental fight and drowning in lakes of wine
The deserting army has ceased the fight
And looking around we know
That while we sang that we would build Jerusalem
We have built Babylon instead.
Who Are These Strangers?
Who are these strangers,
Threatening our way of life,
Threatening our decency
Threatening our morality
Dragging our country down
Who only care for themselves
Who are willing to do anything, anything, for money
Who are these strangers who have broken up communities
Who have thrown people out from their homes
Who have abandoned the young and the innocent
Who have turned deceit into a lifestyle?
They are not the quiet ones who spend hours and hours each week running food banks and soup kitchens
They are not the thousand upon thousand who run, cycle, swim and dance for charity,
They are not the cheerful volunteers doing their best to help the creaking schools and hospitals, parks and canals, libraries and museums
They are not the millions of parents struggling to give their children the best start in life
They are not the ones who struggle to keep a roof over their heads
They are not the truly religious who selflessly give and give and give again
They are not the huggers and laughers who brighten our days
They are not the decent majority looking out for others always willing to lend a hand
They have not got England’s dirt under their fingernails
They have not sweated for a pittance
They have not grafted for others
These strangers look like you or me
These strangers are not from abroad,
They live in our villages, towns and cities
They drive on the same streets as we do
They walk on the same pavements we do
But they are not the same as us
They are the people who would turn away a child in need
They are the people who would seek profit from your sickness
They are the people who would sell your schools
They are the people who would lie to you, cheat, you, misrepresent you
They are the people who would make war on others
They are the people who would belittle you because you care
They are the people who would take away your voice and vote, if they could,
They are the people who make me ashamed because I have to share my country with them
And they act in my name even though I did not vote for them.
These strangers, how did we let them in to our beautiful lives, how have we let them take charge of our beautiful country, how did we let it get so bad?
written the day after 297 Tory MPs voted not to take 3000 unaccompanied refugee children, the day after the Hillsborough inquest reached its verdict and on the day when doctors were striking because they cared for the NHS.
Emperor Education’s New Clothes 2018
Education in 2018 is like the Emperor with no clothes interpreted by the Orwellian nightmare of 1984.
In 2018 unclothed Education parades around embarrassingly, being flattered by political parties and their legions of willfully ignorant followers into believing that it is clothed in the rich and beautiful cloth of culture enlightenment and civilisation.
The backwards looking wealthy and powerful, myopically and rosetintedly see Education as clothed in the terrifying 1950s private school style not seeing through their self delusion the brutal nakedness it really was. Bizarrely, they seek to impose this view on everyone.
The Orwellianesque OfSTED insecurity forces stalk about seizing on the unsuspecting and bullying them. Through the ‘proof’ of carefully worded and weighted tests and measures they forcing them to agree that Education is, in fact, clothed in garments of ever increasing splendor.
The few people left who seek to make real clothes for Education using scientific research, analysis and reasoned argument are scorned and ignored whilst the sly, populist media deceive the unsuspecting general population into believing the blackwhite doublethinking drivel that clogs up their screens and newspapers.
Isn’t it time that someone pointed and laughed?
An Opportunity to Change Flavour?
It seems as though the UK General Election is gathering momentum leading up to the vote in May. Where does that leave people loving citizens?
Well it is a bit like being in an ice cream shop, you have to be in the shop, but they only seem to sell ice cream and no other food. You can have many different kinds of ice cream but they are all ice cream. You could move to another shop but almost all shops sell only ice cream. The few shops that sell something different are heavily discriminated against by the ice cream shops, some of the shops sell dangerous food that could make you sick or kill you while others seem to be OK but are beginning to sell more and more ice cream. So the choice is, what flavour of ice cream do you want?
OK a bit of an Eric Cantona ramble but it seems to me that we have no real radical choices at the election, we are locked into a monetary system that puts money as the aim rather than true prosperity. This is concerning because whilst the world and some individuals are getting richer I see many living poorer lives with less time for each other, less time to care for what is around them and less time to build strong communities. Fewer and fewer people are in power, – in the UK local democracy has been hamstrung and all power and control is in the hands of a few people in Westminster. I am really uncomfortable with this and wish to vote for change.
Maybe the only real alternative is the Green Party – radical policies and putting people and the environment first. Maybe they are the cabbage in the ice cream shop. Maybe I will vote Green as the other choices are just different flavours of the same old approach.
Spatchcock Christmas Turkey
OK, so there is no recipe here but don’t you just feel that sometimes you are that spatchcocked turkey? Sometimes it feels like you have been opened up, gutted and broken. The turkey is a great metaphor, its life controlled from birth, fed a controlled diet and had its experiences restricted. Of course the turkey, like us, isn’t too aware of these things it is just the world where it exists. Where we can be different is that it is possible to become aware of what is happening and I believe thousands and probably millions of us are becoming aware of just how turkey like our society makes us. We seek alternatives and we find them everywhere, some are diversions but I believe that the natural world and in particular plants show us the way forward.
More on this another time.
Eafitti 