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Oasis
Oasis
I rested upon some leaves of grass this morning;
Dabbling as the park drakes dipped in the rippling
Pond shimmering sunlight reflections against green:
The distant traffic as irrelevant as desert sand dunes
Beyond the screen, for all the notice the ducks took,
And us, aware of such, see what they mean
By oasis.
Escaping the City
Though the rains have returned, it’s still kinda nice enough to get out of the city these days.
And it’s so nice to do so.
The orchids are up in the Valdorba, and the thyme blooming.
Unfortunately, the rains have increased the erosion in many places where there’s not enough vegetation to hold the soil. This bunch of thyme is clinging on, but you can see the rocks breaking away from the side of the gully behind it.
And yes, that is recently burnt vegetation behind the orchid… some farmers just don’t get that scrub serves to hold their soil from washing away down to the Ebro and silt it up, which they complain about later when the farms on the floodplain… flood.
Hopefully the other plants can grow and help slow down further breaks.
Here’s a poem I wrote recently about getting into the countryside.
Birdsong Outside the City
Something calls, unseen, to me
Hidden in a willow tree of a copse
Alongside a swift river tugging
Tangled dangling fronds and
Flooding islands, a place
Providing people only invitation,
Unheard above the cars of
The city where blackbirds scream,
A small, soft, birdsong twittering
Like a signal, reverberating in
This stillness, resonating
As far as childhood; deeper,
Into bones, birth, bringing
Relief like a lost boy seeing
Family, safety, a memory.
A song saying stay, for whenever
Could one return?
The Drought Breaks
The Rains Return
The sky weeps;
Bent low,
Hills soak to refill rills.
Upon the porch, we sit still.
The rain – snow in the high ground – has finally returned to much of Spain, bringing some relief to the drought we’ve been experiencing this year.
The spring that supplies our village in the Valdorba is still flowing at a trickle, though. It will take much more rain to raise the water table and refill the reservoirs.
the spring last week above, the same spring in September below…
But everyone has been happy to see the rain, despite the need for umbrellas instead of sunglasses.
This is a photo of one of the beaches in San Sebastian, aka Donostia, taken when I was there last week.
I sat on the beach and wrote this poem.
Donostia, December 2017
On the breakwater, as tide rises,
Shielding eyes to see gleaming mountain
Snowmelt trickle by.
We shouldn’t be able to see the mountain from the beach at this time of year, for the blanket of cloud that normally shrouds the city.
But what is normal anymore?
Anyway, I wrote a few poems that afternoon. It reminded me of another poem I wrote a few weeks ago, which describes a little of why I’ve written so little recently, and posted less.
But maybe we’ll get back to normal sometime soon…
Words Come Forth
They say our words won’t be kept down;
They bubble up, under pressure, like lava
Pushing through a fissure,
Bursting forth if they can’t flow.
But instead, they are drawn
Under empty sky,
Sucked out by silence,
Pulled forth by the vacuum
Of open space,
Giving them a place to emerge
Timidly into tranquilly
Like deer from the thicket at twilight.
Leave off the Light
A little poem as we note the start of spring here.
The bats indeed did come out that night and now, a week later, there are lizards and frogs about, as well as cranes coming back north and storks reclaiming their nests.
Leave Off the Light
Leave off the lights
At least until the light leaves;
Let us feel it while it lasts,
Catch sight of birds flying to roosts, crying
As it dies, and perhaps bats will wheel past.
Let night descend inside, too, before
Filling our night with brightness,
Let the life outside touch our lives a little,
For at last there is light as twilight arrives.
First Birdsong
This is a little embarrassing to post.
As a wildlife enthusiast, I should not admit to not taking my kids out into the wild often enough that my son has heard his first birdsong only after he’s been walking for three months…
But life is hectic with a one-year-old and a five-year-old doing dance and swimming lessons in winter, and even though Pamplona is a small city with wildlife all around (including BEAVERS in the river not 200 yards from my house as the crow flies) it’s damn hard to get out of the brick and concrete on a daily basis.
We do go to village on the weekend, where there’s plenty of birdlife (kites and bee-eaters etc…) , but the evening birdsong is not something I’ve experienced with the kids recently.
First Birdsong
I consider myself privileged
To see hills at a distance from
My window over the garden,
Graced by more than mere sparrows;
But my son has just heard birdsong
Today, for the first time, I had time to
Take him to city’s edge and embrace the
Twilit twittering of tits and thrushes
Scolding one another in the gloaming,
And experience, absent the ubiquitous din,
A blackbird’s sonorous cry to spring,
And say, “listen, hear the birdies sing.”
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth; at least This Part.
Sun rises over the mountains Christmas morn,
Shreds lingering mist strings off the oak slopes.
Starlings sing across vale from barn and shed,
Sparrows flit back and forth on tree and hedge.
Windmills steady, cows still not lowing, nor
Dinging. Dew dries, roof drips, while kite
Shifts on bough, readying to take to clear skies.
Robin skips in goodwill, trilling to a lone soul
Soaking silence embracing peace on Earth;
This piece, yet in the absence of men.
Wrote this on Christmas morning, sitting in that sun – it’s a remarkably relaxed time in Amatriain, where mass was the day before, and, dinner was very late, and lunch has usually been taken care of already (and doesn’t consist of turkey).
Hope everyone has had a nice holiday season and that we will have some peace in 2017.
I’m about to start edits of Silver Nights Part 2, Leading the Pack…. almost as excited as a kid at Christmas!
Real life keeping me from writing.
Haven’t posted in a while because real life is keeping me from any sort of writing.
I am back to work – the day-job stuff. Since I haven’t been flooded with movie option offers, or thousands in royalties, I’ve still got this nine-to-five teaching stuff to do.
And getting time to write fiction is very complicated; it’s hard to get some intellectual space to enter any imaginary realms.
This year I have increased my hours in the school so that I don’t have to do the evening classes I have been doing. This doesn’t give me more time to write. In fact, it gives me less.
I used to have a chance to get a few hundred words done in the spare hours between classes. Instead, the new schedule gives me time to do the things people do with their kids – collect them from school, go to the park, take them to swimming and dance class. Then there’s going home to have baths and prepare dinner. The six hours between 3pm and 9 go by faster than the six between 9am and 3pm!
Collecting conkers in the park…
It hasn’t helped that my daughter broke her arm two weeks ago, and so can’t cycle her own bike, among many other inconveniences and incapacities. That means I spend more time commuting back and forth, to collect push chairs and catch buses.
I have had a chance to read a few pages of novels while the kids play or take the bus, but I haven’t written anything other than a shopping list in the last two weeks. I am one of the last letter writers left, and I love to write and receive them, but I just sent a birthday card to my sister and I didn’t include a handwritten latter – for the first time in the sixteen years I’ve been away from home.
Not only have I not had a chance to write letters, but I can’t keep up with my emails. I usually read or delete the mails in my inbox within a day or two. Sometimes I leave one or two pending – longer mails or links to articles. At the moment I have four hundred to get through. Many of them with links to longer texts. I open my mail each morning hoping that I can delete as many as possible without even opening them. Much of these would be interesting if I had time, but my priorities don’t include reading mails.
I have also been busy living life. I’ve been out collecting mushrooms in the beech forests north of Pamplona. I am not much into mushrooms myself, but any excuse to get into the woods is good, even at dawn. And foraging is my second favourite food collection method after hunting!
Pickin’ mushrooms with the lads.
I’ve been collecting veggies and making tomato sauces for jarring, roasting and preserving peppers, and I have prepared my patxaran, a local liqueur like sloe gin but with anis. These are all excellent ways to spent time, both in terms of healthy eating and zero-kilometre food, and in the simple manual labour tasks that are communal and relaxing.
not a big fan of this myself, but friends and family love them, and it’s foraging – second only to hunting in my favourite food collection methods!
My tomato sauce stash, made from fruits picked off the village veggie plot. Should keep me for the year.
And while such activities don’t remove the urge, and need, to write, they are therapeutic in their own way – better than colouring books, in my humble opinion, in reducing stress. Which reminds me of a poem I wrote back in August, when I had time to think. Apologies to my friends who are fans of adult colouring books!
Colouring Books for Adults
I know someone who bought a book
To colour in, in her spare time.
It’s the new trend in stress relief,
She says; takes her mind off thinking,
Relaxes in its repetitive actions,
Easy, simpleminded tasks that pass
The time of a dark evening
Much more calming than movies
Or reality TV.
I think it’s akin to knitting;
If you didn’t have a niece who needed a scarf,
Or whittling sticks; since who wants to hoover
Up the shavings off their sitting room floor?
Or darning socks that are too darned thin to bother nowadays,
Or jarring jam, or bottling sloe gin, or
Washing up; which filled in time, once upon a time,
As we talked between dinner and sleep.
Springtime, I think…
As the mild winter ends, we’re still getting some snow, which is a sting for the bees and their blossoms…
But a few signs make me think of things, and remind me embrace the environment.
Spring Should be Here.
The blackbird has deemed
It propitious this St. Pat’s
To screw the snow and sing.
Serenity
Sometimes when the traffic signal stops us
Those sixty seconds
Bring the most serenity to our day.
Taking Time
Too often taking a few minutes
To scribble down some new words,
Staring at the screen and soaring
In our imagination, but not taking
Time to just sit and watch the world;
Interacting with the environment,
Embracing our ecology.
January poems
These were written mainly over the last couple of weeks and seemed appropriate for
the weather and the midpoint of the month…
Lived or not
If we don’t stop to watch the sunset,
How do we know we’ve really lived that day?
Listening to the Birds and Bees
Perhaps people no longer
Stop to listen to the birdsong
Because they’ve taken all the birds away
And only sparrows in the traffic stay.
They Doth Protest Too Much
Pensioners protest;
They did their bit and are owed.
What have they left us?
Tea Leaves
Tea, thinking each leaf
Left China for Ireland, then
Here, I use bags twice.
On the Death of Bowie
For some, no matter how old they go,
They’re gone too young, too soon.
And all we have left to hold is a song
That we can’t help but sing out of tune.
