21st February Breath

13th December 2015

Bee's words and photos

Ivy

Bushy, transforming bare tree into giant prowling armadillo
Woody arteries rivuletting up and round tree trunks

18th October 2015

Clare's words

damp dew on leaf reaches my hand

I take moisture from you 

leaf, with your eye looking at water from the bridge

finger -touch rain on

each leaf, bramble, rose, bracken, beech

moisture, like source, like that

oh tall fizzled oak I watch your brown leaf fall and come to ground and bring it as one more

deer races silently across our path, intake of breath

messenger guide

soundless joy touched by light

we animal to earth under us and breathe the same air and moment

swift beauty

 I saw the deer slide by and be with us  a mutual reckoning and acceptance

I lie down where deer crossed to be in the air of its feet sliding though, sharing

a de-lived deer carcass goes by red and headless on a quad bike

life and death of a deer

 wildness, a funeral march then after the birth of light

cars go by like strange mourners

now keen, bend with sway as I think of lying in the tear grass, sky tear, tongue tear forehead sea, eyelids wetten

my face is covered in ground tears, my eyes carry my sea out

I lay my hand on soil

a mole’s earth

 it is warm as heated skin 

I sigh with surprise 

I trip on the shape of a horseshoe and feel the horse in my body 

birds, imagine your eyes on me as I sway

flower of purple I take you with gratitude to crown what is missing

a double leaf from the long open crossing of the flower meadow empathy embodied in their mutual hold

I lie on the road to get close to a puddle place my fingers in the cool water watch crows high up in the reflection, place the mud on my clothing, hands earthed now, carrying their skin too

one bindweed lifeless and one pure white a n offering of the present moment

I saw a leaf falling caught by another held in a simple rocking

horsetails now I know they are prehistoric and a tiny dinosaur land rises to my left

when I walk like this I see every bird that crosses my path

and my breath flutters with them 

are they always there and I not able to see them

thank you seeing warriors accompanying me, you comrades 

open all my eyes, sharing this is as simple as a shared instance

or as wide as the world 

open cracking  crosses borders even the borders we don’t share or understand

Bee's Words

the others are rubbing their waterproof clothing and I hear the flapping of birds wing

I rub my own palms and my skin turns to fabric

Early morning wednesday 30th September

Jo at Mwnt, Pembrokeshire

Plodding lightly up the steep slope, fuelled with an inner smile of anticipation, we rose with the sun.

1.

Mwnt. Backbone to a massive beached sea creature, resting. On your ridge I sink between vertebrae, my spine joins yours, enlivened in our up-side down surveying of the circular horizon. 

Spines send limbs in all directions.

To follow the moon's course over horizon's edge. Joining the parallel horizontals of cirrocumulus receding.

To follow the rough toothsome bite of rock up into salt water depths. Down over undulating hills, both wild wooded and bare sheep-shaven. This fine cornucopian skin of The Earth. My home.

Furry in my coat I am wrapped in rock, sky and my precarious tango with gravity. 

My spread limbs appear as some kind of compass clock, belonging. Precise.

To be witnessed with such embodied sensitivity brings a purr to my form as I softly pad towards her, smiling from plait to plait.

2.

From an edge below I watch. There is a gentle singing rock creature, embedded into this close by craggy silhouette. Behind her, wide blue emptiness, beneath her, a secret life of belonging. I watch til the only visible sign of her is a gentle hand releasing its grasp of the rock.

I move up and limpet-like, I discover her embrace of our world on the sea edge with gypsy permanence: grounded, wild beauty.

Laura at Mwnt, Pembrokeshire

wonderful morning

spine limpets and sunshine

swam afterwards on an uncoming tide, so natureful

Bee at Devils Dyke, E. Sussex

soft dappled greengolden curve of the Down brings me into my belly

Clare at Bunces, E. Sussex

6th Sept Migration

MIGRATION

A change in the landscape 

moving from place to place 

into pausing … 

a  boundary.

Transition into the next  

Shaping the backbone of foraging 

leaving trails of seeds 

to be grown into new plants  

creating new land 

by Sophia

Migration 

The journey to the barn
familiar, inevitable
the others I pass and am passed by them, then alone
The Barn I hold in my heart and mind - a vision of cream and thatch in a wild green garden
I am drawn to pressing myself against the barriers to the meadows -  the warm wood of gates and springy touch of barbed wire.
I see a flock of black cows taking off following the largest in front, gradually slowing to all graze again.  The one at the back is white - does it know?
An abandoned black boot at a foot gate. Forensic
I see a family sitting in ‘our’ meadow and I am indignant. I stop dancing and walk
Eventually arriving at The Barn.  It has man-made grey rubble newly laid down for cars leaching away my vision.

By Bee

DIL Sept 7 2015

DIL September 7 2015

Clare, Bee, Yumino, Sophia

theme   migration

cat horse dog human car plane tractor
dead rabbit
bird feather dragonfly
mushroom blackberry
everything needs a migration
leaves trees fallen trees open apples
shadow blaze light
trudge of walking
crossing borders boundaries
limping ground shifting
roll a stone with foot
throw crab apples
a field of yellow
so few birds
smell of horse pooh & garden flowers
children on horses picnickers
cars going and parked
wires taking power and framing
post box, letter box
rubbish glass
nettles seeds
each touch is a migration
sound of birdsong
cry of buzzard
water under bridge puddle
stream going onwards
gate open and closing
hope and death
CW

14th June 2015

Rhythms within us, in movement around us and in the patterns in nature..
&
Wild flowers..
Poem: Perspective without any point in which it might vanish
by Jane Hirshfield from her book The Beauty.
Each dil picked one flower as long as there were many, to bring to the Barn after our hour amongst the flowers. Flowers chosen were common sorrel (male & female), yellow rattle, red campion, oxeye daisy. Using The Observer Book of Wild Flowers 1965