that petrichor emotion

why would a bluetit nest be in an abandoned bag? Why not?

We popped out when the first drops
tapped the water’s surface, ever so polite.
A glider’s wings bowed as it took its tight,
curved flight to keep the lift. The rain had stopped. 

Climbing, the glider faded into cloud.
A buzzard mewed. The church bells
pealed, though muted by the trees; the swelling
blackbirds’ song was no less loud, 

though out of time, this afternoon
so long before the dusk; they knew
what we would learn; it’s not too soon
for singing, when a storm is due. 

And then it poured; but as we dashed,
The warm earth's breath said May, at last.

Such a hot day yesterday! Everyone was out doing. A red kite drifted over. Then a thunderstorm hit. After I'd got all my pictures under cover, I tried to write a poem describing the first time this year I'd smelt that smell you get when it rains on warm roads and paths. It's been given the name petrichor, which I suppose is a composite of the greek words for stone and the blood of the gods. But I don't like it.

making a film about the lightship

Peter Brownlee sets up the opening shots

Liz Brownlee is collecting poems on the subject of 'light', in readiness for National Poetry Day, on 8th October. There's an event at Waterstones in Bristol. And Peter Brownlee has been making films of the poems, which I understand will be on show in Millennium Square.... 

...so Liz mentioned in passing that it was a pity there were no lighthouses on hand in Bristol. "But what about the lightship?" I replied. 

What indeed? The former Light Vessel 55, built for Trinity House by Charles Hill in Bristol, is now moored up in Bathurst Basin, where the Cabot Cruising Club have their headquarters on board. I was determined to write something about it because it seemed such a good thing to write about. 

And so I did. Here it is, in my previous post.

And having done so, Peter and Liz liaised with the folk at the cruising club, and we all met up down there a few days ago and made a film. Well, they did. I just stood in the background.

Sarah Allen, Stuart Lees and Jacqueline Corcoran, of the Cabot Cruising Club, prepare for an ensemble reading of the final verse.

Peter Brownlee in action

...and then we had a guided tour of the boat. Everything from the gunwales up is modern, after the fire that was intended to destroy her. (The dense timbers thwarted that plan, in the hull). Down below feels very old indeed. And rather nice. Good place for a poetry reading, I reckon...

a model of the lightship 

downstairs, or below decks as we sailors say

a stage, even!

keeping the light

The English and Welsh Grounds lightship

Some ships are bound for Newport Docks, and they pass to the west of us;

And the Sharpness and the Bristol boats sail safely to the east

And the flood tide that sometimes roars enough to fright the best of us

Uplifts us, but it will not shift our anchorage the least.

There as always is the chimney of the Uskmouth power station,

Lined up with the transporter bridge and distant Ysgyryd Fawr;

And the goods trains wind away with all the produce of the nations

While our newspapers are out of date and week-old milk’s gone sour.

Still, there’s tab nabs at smokoe, after sujieing and holystone;

And a splash of conny onny that goes nicely in the tea.

And each day in the log takes me closer still to going home-

Though when I’m home I wonder if my real home’s the sea.

Cos when dusk comes and we light the lamp, and settle down to tend for it,

I look up and down the channel, and see all the lights like ours

From Flat Holm down to Countisbury; St Brides Wentlooge; the Breaksea ship;

The beacons of the South Wales shore, of Devon and of Somerset;

The flashing lights, the steady ones, that sparkle near and far;

One great coastal constellation, and it’s we who tend the stars.

glossary and pronunciation:

tab nabs - snacks

smokoe - break 

sujieing - mopping (pronounced SOO-jee-ing)

holystone - a stone block used to scour decks

conny onny - condensed milk

Ysgyryd Fawr, otherwise the Skirrid, is a prominent mountain near Abergavenny, and pronounced UZ-grud VOW-r

putting the house in disorder

I’m scraping out a lump of paint from my watercolour tin.
Is it any real colour? You know, I think it’s not;
Grained now with age, that purply-brown
You get when washing out paint pots.
Into the bin with it; I’ll put some sepia in there instead.
Then every single section will be useful and good.

I’ve replaced like colour with like, as they wore out;
Rung a few changes too; ditched crimson for a warmer red.
Black lasts a lot longer these days, since I learned
Things were rarely black as I had painted them;
Indigo’s the perfect colour for pure still nights.

Then there’s warm ochres, indian yellow;
Two different whites; sap green, cerulean blue.
All hues I use to paint my map,
A land where there’s no footprints on the path;
This ringed compass, more true to my finger
Than the lost marriages along the way.

This was your best gift to me. No, not the paints here in my hand
But the love, belief in me that came with them. 
This day of days, I wish you were still here
To get drunk, maybe talk some shit about art,
I’m sorry, so sorry,  you aren’t.

A Cautionary Tale - or, I Metamorphosis From An Antique Land

Greg Sams the cockroach once awoke
To find he'd turned into a human.
His family gathered round, and poked
Disgustedly; said "Look at you, man!
What happened to your carapace
So black and shiny? And your face!
Where's your mandibles and antennae?
Your legs? Good lord, you've hardly any!
Depart from here at once! Begone!
You don't belong under a stone!"
Poor Greg! Though we no longer see
His cockroach externality
He's still a taste for all things putrid,
And thinking he considers stupid.
Still, cockroaches are survivors- see!
He's now our UKIP MEP!

Continuing the theme of famous animals seen from the animals' perspectives. Sort of.  I'm in Bristol about to set off for Steepholm! More later, taters!

Yes, I know it's a stag beetle!

On A Northerner Who Went South And Kept On Going

I've been mistraled and sciroccoed
And sometimes by a typhoon sockoed;
Drenched drookit in a haar
When low were isobars;
Felt all wet and weary
In a dreary chirimiri;
And I got so very gritty
When once a haboob hit me
That I felt completely smothered. 

But I've never once been wuthered.

 another one from the 52 prompts....

The Roman Wolf's Song

Seventy years with me arse in the breeze
That blows up from the Levels nine days out of ten,
Endlessly suckling these lads at my knees,
And dreaming of Rome, where it’s warmer; but then
I’ve grown fond of these hills where the grass is so green
(when it isn’t obscured by the mist and the snow)
And the sheep are so plump, that I’m really quite keen
To jump down from me plinth here and give them a go.

And all that I ask is a night that is moonlit,
The farmers all snug in the Hunters Lodge Inn,
Some kind random person who’s willing to cub-sit
-and the Mendips’ Last Wolf will go wild once agin.

 Up on the Mendips is this statue of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, in a similar style to that one in the Museo Capitolino in Rome. This version was created by Gaetano Celestra, an Italian prisoner of war who was engaged in repairing bomb damage in the district during the Second World War. This was his gift to an area he'd come to appreciate.

This poem was inspired by a prompt from David Morley, who guested on Jo Bell's 52 this week;  "Choose an animal. Observe it as closely as possible in the wild or a zoo or aviary. Then become it. See it and live it. Look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself to it."

By the way, the title is a nod to Kipling's Roman Centurion's Song....

 

Bedtime Story

Here's Alana Farrell, reading her poem 'Bedtime Story'. I've added the words.

This recording was made at the launch of Inking Bitterns, at Acoustic Night, Halo, Gloucester Road, Bristol. Thank you to David Bosankoe, who recorded the event!

I See You

Here's another recording. John Terry reads his poem 'I See You', and then tells the story behind how he wrote it.

The weather vane in the picture is a gudgeon, and it's on the little jail in the middle of the bridge at Bradford on Avon. I was looking at pictures of the bridge on the BBC website yesterday; with the recent floods, great trunks of trees had become wedged against the piers, and workers were doing their best to haul them up.

Landfall

A recording of the poem, with accompanying picture.

As splash is bracing, so's the daffodil's yellow;
Salt-sharp, and waxy to the touch,
First lighthouse loom, that longed-for landfall after much
Wandering winter oceans.

Later, mellow on the Bristol train, my holdall stuffed
With Coptic crosses from Djibouti, buddhas from Colombo,
I watch the Wylye valley's willows roll
Slowly to the breeze's brush;
The roebuck stilled mid-field to watch our passing

And, on the bare bank, at last is such
A spray of primrose, petal pool of cream,
As glows against the stormcloud massing
Over the Plain, moment of grace

Warm as this sun now on my face,
Through the open window where I lean
To hear the evening-drowsy blackbird's song;
"Made it, though. Made it through another one."

round robin

Fresh from Minuteman Press comes another Christmas card! You can get it over in my Etsy shop, or if you're in Bristol, you can pick up or I can deliver....

They're blank inside. This is the poem I wrote that got me thinking of painting the round robin. Or was it the other way round?

Not slim

And far from win-

some, the round robin sings

In unmelodious tones of things familial;

Who passed what exam, did well at work, had chil-

dren of rare beauty; feathers puffed with pride; but still

Behind the seeming gasconading, someone strove

To keep the distant bonds, with time worn thin,

In place, that complicated love

That families have

Within.

(coincidentally, Lynne Truss read a series of thoughts on round robins, on the Radio 4 Today programme. A bit unkind, I thought; it's easy to poke fun at the gaucheries of family bulletins to get clever points, after all. I've always been happy to get family newsletters; these days they tend to be from people I like anyway, and even the bad ones I used to get were good for a laugh. Let us yet be merciful....)

egret triolet

So white a bird, the egret sails
Serene above the Severn mud
That smirches us, but can't assail
So white a bird; the egret sails.
Our boots sink in; we flounder, flail.
We'd rise and follow, if we could,
So white a bird. The egret sails
Serene above the Severn mud.

on the complexity of the octopus

octopus, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

The octopus, the octopus;
It has four times more arms than us
You think that's lots, as I once did?
It's still two fewer than the squid

incident on the K&A, May 1941

The word was out, and Home Defence was going frantic:

“Bismarck must not break through to the Atlantic.”

We stood to at dawn. Lock keepers were alerted.

Spotters’ cards were issued to all local Scouts and Guides;

“Vessel, grey and rather long, and - this can’t too often be asserted-

If it’s marked ‘Kriegsmarine’, it’s probably the other side’s.”

Around mid-morning, bicycle patrols at Avoncliff

Saw a periscope, or so at least they reckoned.

Workboat Saucy Winston dropped a depth charge; then a second.

The two explosions echoed right round Sally in the Woods,

Startling the moorhens, setting rooks a-cawing; if

What Akela swore, that oil and wreckage had been seen, was true,

The convoy at Brass Knocker Basin, with its vital goods

Intended for Devizes Wharf, could now get safely through.

On Caen Flight’s WRVS refreshment stall

The woman with the tea urn sternly turned away

A chap she thought a ‘foreign-sounding bugger’

Who asked if he could kindly have a coffee and a bun:

 But when she found out he was actually a Pole,

Who normally flew Spitfires but had just popped by

To meet a lady bargee he was sweet upon,

Apologised profusely, gave him extra sugar.

A flight of mallard came back in from Semington

With nothing to report. The afternoon grew older.

The hawthorn quietly blossomed in the sun.

Sedge warblers serenaded drowsy soldiers

In pillboxes new-built along the northern shore,

Who swore there’d never been so quiet a day before.

At six o’clock we put the kettle and the radio on,

And wondered if our dinner would be any good.

Big Ben tolled. “This is London. Earlier today, HMS Hood…”

This started when we were in Devizes recently, and we saw a poster about the Kennet and Avon canal during the war, which got us riffing about the action in The Cruel Sea and Sink The Bismarck! relocated to the canal...

swifts

Swift
As seasons
Four swifts go
Screaming through the gardens
Saying “Summer soon!
Let’s go!
Yo!”

It was a chilly day yesterday, and gloomy and damp. But then I heard a familiar and long-awaited sound. Was I mistaken? I watched out of the window, and soon they reappeared; a formation of four swifts, sweeping round for another low pass, like a flight of fighters back from a successful sortie.

St George and the EDL

 When St George met the EDL
They gawped and shouted “Bloody hell!
That geezer looks a bit muslamic!”
He drew his sword and, in a panic,
They ran off, shouting “Dragon, aid us!”
The dragon, seeing these Crusaders
For Shit Britain, ate them all for tea
Then went to t'pub with St Georgie.

(illustration by Ernest Shepherd from The Reluctant Dragon, by Kenneth Grahame)

falling

Running in circles in a Preseli field,

I was holding on tight while you pedalled the bike,

Not letting go; until I finally did let go,

And you became Icarus, six years old and flying down the hill,

Finally out of sight round the green lane’s corner.

The whole afternoon held its breath. A gorse pod popped.

And there you were again, waving like a loon.

All this was ours. At night we named the stars,

Tracing Orion’s belt over Dinas Head

As the mice rustled in the hedge.

There was still magic back then,

When you first found out the world’s unfair,

But the hurt could be kissed better.

These April nights, sometimes the clouds part,

And the old familiar shapes appear,

Orion, the Pleiades glow, Cassiopeia;

And there’s the comet that I hoped to see,

Faint there over Filton, soluble aspirin of a star,

Too dim by far to warn of bloody war,

Foretell the fall of emperors.

But bloody wars there are, and emperors do fall.

And for some hurts there is no remedy.

Tonight, I look beyond the stars and see more stars,

And, further, even more, until the sky is deep enough

To fall into for ever.

But we have shared the stars, and just for now

I tell myself that that’s enough, and wonder if it’s true.

a lovely day out

DSC_1671, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

Why were we at Severn Beach with our brollies,
Splashing so much and so much?
Folk must’ve thought we were off our trollies,
Battered by westerly gales, by golly,
That blotted out bridges and such.
Oh, why were we at Severn Beach with our brollies,
Splashing so much and so much?

quantifiable welsh poem

 

I early learned that brontosauruses
Are long as three red London buses
And all the folk in China’ll quite
Fit upon the Isle of Wight.

Rare indeed's the object which is

Not compared with football pitches
But other places try and fail
To be as close a fit to Wales as Wales.

...inspired by this on the radio....

The Oxen

 The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
   "Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
   By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
   They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
   To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
   In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
   "Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
   Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
   Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy

I love this poem; it fits my own feelings at Christmas quite well. I remember the sense of magic about the Christmas story, and feel its absence now I am both older and a lapsed Anglican (ex-Anglican? post-Anglican?); magic, for me, is now far more elusive, though still there sometimes in the corner of my eye.

So I wanted to do a picture to go with it. It was a bit of a rush to get it finished in time for Christmas Eve! We had a good day; House Teenager was busily either painting at her desk or learning Fairytale Of New York on the ukulele, and I was doing this.  The gold paint for the detailing on the dressing gown was a bit of an experiment, and I quite like it- you can't see the glow of the paint on this image, but it's there! House Teenager posed for the picture, as did Ted, Deborah's lively galoot of a collie.