from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Saturday 20 June 2015

poem for the summer solstice 2015


Last night I stood outside
where the wind had loosened the oaks back into their own quietude
watched Venus Jupiter and the moon slide over the western horizon –

benevolent planets conjunct in the rinsed-blue sky of a midsummer night.
We’re always travelling east following the path of the sun
always seeking new beginnings

I lose track of days    time seems so irrelevant –
is it two years or three since we last walked the sacred stones together?
How your smile used to break my heart

as the fullness of summer lanes does now and always –
astringency of meadowsweet enigmatic bells of foxglove
hidden lives of trefoil vetch wild strawberry

What is there to say that is not already being said by the trees to the wind
by the blossom to the light    by the animals
burrowing in their intimate darkness in the earth’s skin?

And us – how we spend our days skyjumping out of the paradise
that is here now immanent
then the rest of our lives like Icarus flying towards the sun.



© Roselle Angwin

Please note that all creative work on this blog is copyright and needs my permission to be reproduced


2 comments:

  1. A very lovely, tender, poignant poem, Roselle, which seems to reflect so much of my own feelings: of wonder and celebration mingled with grief, the need to lose the awareness of time's passing, the need to find new words when the landscape around speaks for itself and us.
    I particularly like that 5th stanza where you answer the question – 'What is there to say that is not already said by the trees to the wind' –with the imagery that follows.
    But it needs no analysis, it breathes on its own. I think you'll always find the words, Roselle.
    It reminds me of the mood I was in after I'd written a farewell poem to my father in summer 2012 just a year after he'd died and a few months after my first Iona, which I associate strongly with him though he never visited as far as I know.
    It's hard when the last parent dies. I guess you must be feeling it too, or something like it?
    Miriam x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi dear Miriam

    Thank you for those kind and affirmative words on my blog. It's always lovely to know when they resonate!

    I'm just back from my Exmoor weekend facilitating work with horses - extraordinary, and what a privilege.

    Hope all's well with you.

    Rx

    ReplyDelete

Blog Archive