Category: Poems


Exhale The Old, Inhale The New

Maiella National Park, Abruzzo, Italy

2020 has been an extraordinary year. A collective shakeup, things are topsy turvey and I am not sure anymore what is good or bad – I am heartened by the words of Hamlet ‘there is nothing that is good or bad only thinking makes it so’

I am not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions – of that process of taking account of achievements, successes, failures & lapses to gird my loins against the fray and strap myself into the yoke of ‘must do better next time’.

My life is too short for that. I want to enfold all of who I am, what I am experiencing, what I have created and who I am becoming into the embrace of a life fully lived so…

As the year comes to a close
Darkness sighs submission
The sun gently stretches the days
And brightens the horizon

The playful zephyr of the future
Gently coaxes the past from my grasp
And it floats feather light and free
Into memory and remembrance

A winking luminosity of creations, lessons, learnings
A pocketful of preciousness
Without which there would be missing colours
On the tapestry of my life

I exhale
A long slow breath of reverence and honouring
A surrender
A release, a letting go and a letting be

I inhale
The fresh, earthy fragrance of new beginnings
A blank canvas
Ready for the paintbrush of my soul

Poem by: A K Scott

Stuck in Poetic Mode

I have a cold and I am not sleeping well. When I woke, I woke late, heavy, unrested and lethargic. The voice that spoke was by comparison brisk and business like

‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’. The truth cut deep, a slash of self pity and the start of the slow bleeding slide into another day of dull depression. Sweet relief just a sandman’s whisper away but my soul is stuck in poetic mode.

‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’.
 
And again
 
‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’.
 
A chipper little voice, this Jimney Cricket of a character wasn’t going to let me put my head under the pillow today. THIS was a soul baby knocking at my door. There was nothing to do but write. And so:
 
I know how you feel
I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are
How you want to rip yourself away from the flesh that is you
Raging, roaring, kicking, punching against the fibre of your being
I know how you drown, smothered, gagged, suffocated, suffocating
Writhing, clawing, tearing at the walls that are who you are
 
I know how you feel
I know the rage, spitting, livid, firey ire
Burning runways of smouldering fury through your soul
Destroying, exploding, killing love, kindness, compassion
Those mealy mouthed mother fuckers
I know how you are consumed
Inside the cage of your humanness
A twitching, flickering, putrid mass of toxic oozing pus
 
I know how you love to hate
I know how you despair
I am the evil bitch, the bully boy
Who wants to punish and obliterate all sign of milk and honey
Who wields a whip of righteousness and snuffs out unbecoming joy
I know the realness of this place
A landscape of the mind
Where goodness is a rag to the raging bull and destruction holds its sway
 
I know how real it feels
When those demons come to roost
Hideous heads and flickering tongues, devouring my flesh alive
I don’t know if I have been here before or if I never left
I don’t know if this is how it is supposed to be or if I am an aberration bereft
I don’t know if this is real, a dream, a play, a game or nought
I don’t know if I will survive, if love will save the day
I only know these words have come to grace the page and say….
 
I know

Dissolution

We are story
Ilusion
Water colour
Rememberings
Kept alive
In the framing of my mind
Invisibly etched
On someplace
I call my heart

I clutch
A painted reality
of yesterday
Making it mean tomorrow
Projecting holograms
Of you
And you
And you
On to the mirror of the future.

Blind to see
There is nothing
There
I am nothing
And you
An emptiness
Of ephemeral meanderings
In the echo chamber of
Some consciousness somewhere.

The me that is I
And the you that is you
Captured by human magic
Pressed memories
On to the ether that is the internet
Or a photo on my phone
While the we that is us
Dissolves and disappears
And we are dissolving still.

The drip dropping of these words came as I was reminded of a friend of mine who passed away almost a year ago in May 2018. The partner of a dear friend; we didnt know each other well or for very long and perhaps there was only one photo of the two of us. A selfie on my visit in 2017 – two distorted moon like faces grinning into the camera as I prepared to depart from Middle Earth. And now……all I am left with is the mystery of it all and the dissolving.

Photo by Lieselot. Dalle on Unsplash

 

Easter Rising*


Perhaps it is the emergence of Spring, the coming of Easter, perhaps it is all of us, or just my desire for new life and emergence but my radar is picking up a farrago of metaphors about the cycle of life and death.

And just in case I dont notice it in this bucolic muddy, bole of countryside that I am living in then it shows up in my mail box and my twitter feeds.

Courtesy of Sharon Blackie of The Hedge School’s newsletter today:

Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

From The Holy Longing by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated from German by Robert Bly

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

*Being Irish – the juxtaposition of the words Easter AND Rising is poignant and particular and has a singular meaning. Also known as the Easter Rebellion, it was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week, April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was heavily engaged in the First World War. It is has a personal impact too as a great uncle of mine, Walter Scott, was probably the last child to die in this struggle. This is not the topic I wanted to talk about here but it is part of the mythic struggle to reach the light.

Painting The Future

photo: Anne K. Scott (c) 2018 Carrapateria, Algarve, Portugal

Painting The Future

I can’t see
I can wield
I can’t know
But I am sure
In my lostness
I am found
And in the hum of the Universe
My intentions
Are subtle brushstrokes
On the canvas of tomorrow

Testament To Spirit

Crumpled parchment
Brittle translucent
Silently compliant and dissolving into death
The breathe of life blowing dandelion seeds into the wind
Tumbling lightly on this earth with carefree abandon
The delight of tenacious spirit holding on to the joy of being alive
Of being human.

A spiritual light housed in a skeleton lamp of sinew, bone and a little flesh
The eternal spark burning more brightly as the body slips away
Leaving the indomitable spirit
Naked in its brightness
A defiance to death’s puny grasp
A giggle into its inevitable embrace.

A light that isn’t doused but rather wends its merry way
Into the memory of our mind
Daisy chained to those who have gone before
And those who are still behind
Dancing fairy lights into the glade of night
A glided teasing invitation to join Immortality
And snuff goodbye to Time.

Icarus Freedom

IMAG0919

Kite Surfing Tramore, Co. Waterford, Ireland December 2014

Icarus Freedom
Is a place to be
Icarus Freedom
Appeals to me

Lifting from earth
With a heart so strong
Open and empty
Knowing nothing is wrong

Energy coursing
Through energy’s veins
Breathing and heaving
Holding life’s reins

Roaring vibration
Drowning out sound
Pumping the pistons
Leaving the ground

Becoming a bird
Is a God-like feat
The rush of creation
A feeling so sweet

Remembering the myth
And the folly of man
The sun is a decoy
Not the end of the plan

The waxing and waning
Is life’s ebb and flow
Holding and hovering
The goal of the show

Icarus freedom
Is each moment in life
That I lift my vibration
And soar like a kite

To glide on the thermals
Between heaven and earth
Claiming the space
Where wisdom unfurls

The Wishing Thorn: Spring Awakening in West London

IMAG3292The Wishing Thorn

Moody, muddy day under foot
Scudding clouds trailing dark tendrils
Of dirty mist, moist and mournful
Over this February afternoon
Scraggy daws and silly seagulls
A cacophony of scavengers
Lording it over this fallow field
Sadly shredded plastic bags and crumpled cans
Forlorn and loitering, typical blackthorn winter
Its darkness heralding incipient Spring
Skittish skirts of delicate blossom
Mark out an aisle down Wormwood Scrubs
The bride to be nervously giggling in the wings
Watching slow motion awakening
Of early catkins in the wind
And fur soft budding on bare branches
One by one the guests appear
Patiently waiting nature’s unfolding
And the wedding of life and death.

This poem was inspired by a walk on Wormwood Scrubs on February 23rd where splashs of white flowering bushes remind me that Spring is not far away.  A little research seems to indicate that the blossom is that of the blackthorn bush or coll

The Wishing Thorn is a deciduous, thorny shrub native to Britian. It is the ancestor of the cultivated plum and it’s blue-black berries are the sloes of sloe-gin. Typically it flowers March – April but flowerings have been sighted since January this year according to the wonderful Nature’s Calendar website

The blackthorn stem was used to make traditional Irish shillelaghs – walking stick weapons, magical and divining wands.  Symbolically it is considered a sign of life and death together as the flowers appear when the stems are bare and there is an old superstion that to bring blackthorn into the home was a harbringer of death.  The spell of bad weather that often coincides with blackthorn flowering is known as a ‘blackthorn winter’

Land Of Anne: I Am I

IMG_2886
I am I
And you are you
Drops in the ocean
Of infinite goo
My essence of me
A distillation
Of life and IT
Pungent, intense
A unique cuppa tea.
Irish and British
City and sea
A nomadic explorer
One squinty knee
Daughter and sister
FGM* and aunty
(Marriage and mothering
I leave to the end!)
Technician, coder
And hunter of bugs
Analyser, author
Late nights are my drugs
The floodlights of London
The glimmer of sea
Cruising the Amazon
The drunken banshee
Tramping the Camino
Or sporting acne
Eclectic and curious
Ditzy and free
Whatever it is
All of it is me
And what do I do?
Besides ditties and poems
And act the yahoo?
I seek out the Visions
Of what to create
Shine light
On the darkness
Of all that frustrates
Then envisage the pathway
That acts as a gate
To the Garden of Eden
And my Destiny to make
The art of our heart
Is what sets us apart
Unlocking our secrets
Our individuality
Intuitive mastery
Is the ultimate key
To the journey
That matters
The one of being we
For when I am I
And you are you
We are better connected
In this Universal goo
And that is when
We create magic synergy!

*FGM – Fairy God Mother

The Art Of Be-Keeping

bekeeping

It is a busy week
I like that it is a busy week
I get to dive into the minutae of my projects
To walk along the cracks between the disjointed pieces of life’s puzzle
To teeter on the edge of fast appearing crevices
Heart stretched across the yawning divide of chaotic icy waters
Head butting against stubborn realities
Learning to gently herd unruly beasts
Through the bucolic landscape of my soul
Calibrating to the whispering caress of divine breathe
And mastering the art of be-keeping