Monday 26 January 2015

I've updated my poem Raven Steals the Light

I'm going to be performing the poem I posted on 8th January- Raven steals the light.

It's a retelling in voice and movement of a tale from the North-west coast people of Canada and America of how Raven accidentally finds all the light of all the world hidden inside a series of boxes by the Old Man of the Woods and his daughter. 
At first I thought I would have a recording of me saying this poem, before I began the dance. But I realize it really only works to have it told live - a recorded telling detracts from the whole thing. I have a fear of my mind going blank and not being able to remember the words. Even though I am a live story teller - as opposed to someone who reads stories aloud from books -  I only remember the outline of the story and tell it each time in the words that come in the moment.  Learning something word-for-word is a very different way of using the memory. But the effort of reciting the poem again and again has made me think again about some of it, so I have slightly re-worked it. 

Here's the revised version of it. And if anyone happens to be in Oxford on Saturday evening, it's taking place in the studio theatre at Brooke's University on Headington Hill.


Raven Steals the Light

Raven travels into the unknown
Greedy for experience.
On and on he flies.
He almost turns back.
In his greed he is devoured,
Eaten down into the long, black
Hold of a human womb.
For  nine breathes he floats on the ninth wave,
Labouring over his desire.
He slides forth from his biding place.
And there is more – oh so much more-
Than he ever thought to seek.
A secret treasure that he must uncover.
He works. Oh he works! To hold that bauble.
For half a year he weeps himself hoarse
With longing for this hidden thing,
Each day a small uncovering.
Until, finally – oh who can withstand his beseeching? –
It is there, singing its glory.
All the Light of all the world.
And it is his!!!!!
It burns, oh it burns him black.
But it is his, his alone.
His great beak was made for this.
He snatches the wondrous light.
Gloating, he floats aloft.

Who knew the sky was blue
Until Raven flew up with the light?
Who knew the beauty of the green Earth below
Until the Light bathed it?
Who knew the perfection of their beloved’s face
Until eyes could behold it?

That cheeky, greedy rascal brought
All this from its hidden place.
His voice cracks for the wonder of it all.
And he drops it
It falls, gone from him.
The broken fragments rebound to their allotted places
And Raven dances his triumph forever
Between Sun and Moon and Stars.

For half the year the Old Man takes it back,
Piece by piece.
But Raven’s weeping always turns the tide
And the Light always returns.


Saturday 24 January 2015

A couple more poems on the underground. I read these out at Wolfie's poetry surf in Second Life - they seemed to like them

Am I One of Us?

Seat next to a trans woman,
6 foot 3, grey pony tail and mini skirt.
From the corner of my eye, her
Long, hard scrutiny of me
Turns the tables.
Hanging on the bar at the next stop,
I meet her eyes, amused, questioning.
I receive a careful, secret nod.


London Evening Standard

The carriage is silent.
Paper-wadded quiet.
In one moment they all turn a page
The way birds all take off from the wire.


Devices.

Every other hand holds a device.
Fingers point and shift, eyes flicker.
In times gone by they'd read a book, or knit,
Or stare at nothing.
My game stops me chewing my finger-nails.

Monday 19 January 2015

For balance- here''s an old one of mine

The Evangelist

He's a hollow man
All on the outside.
All noise and certitude.
His jaws clack-clack-clacking.
Everything is alright as long as he keeps talking,
Proclaiming. Filling the silence.

Because in silence there is space,
Emptiness, longing.
He shouts and no-one listens.
He knows the words by heart,
A well-worn groove,
That jumps and repeats repeats repeats.

His greatest terror lies within.
What lives in there leaves him
Trembling under the bedclothes
Scarcely breathing.
In the silence he hears their pant and shuffle.
The monsters of his deep.

That place his terror keeps at bay,
That unknown locked away room
In the attic of his soul contains
A shrivelled tiny seed,
Abandoned, alone, waterless,
Un-nourished, waiting waiting waiting

For a chink to open, a crack to appear,
To let in, maybe, oh! maybe!
A single ray of light.
And maybe, Oh! Let it be!
An ear, that finally listens,
And hears his own tiny desperate voice,
Calling "I am here!"


©Cath Blackfeather

Friday 16 January 2015

Another in my series of poems on the underground

The young man is tense.
His skin is not brown
But his beard is black
His expression focused.
Should I be afraid
Of the rucksack behind his legs?
Of the way he checks his watch
And fiddles with his iPod?
I tell myself I am being foolish.
But I stand and move
To a different seat.  Away from him

Sunday 11 January 2015

I'm in a situation that is fairly common for women of my age - no longer young and not in a relationship, and living with my aging mother as her carer in her final years,

I'm in a situation that is fairly common for women of my age - no longer young and not in a relationship, and living with my aging mother as her carer in her final years,  Seeing my mother's progression through all the awful things osteoporosis does to the human body, and also a foretaste of my own future.  
Like many women in this scenario, I am using this time to explore my relationship with my mother, all those unspoken, almost impossibly hard-to-articulate webs of connection and hurt that seem to make up the warp and weft of most women's relationships with their mothers.  I refuse to descend into the kind of sentimentality that so many of my friends have done in their own efforts to make some kind of peace with their mothers, a sentimentality that denies the anger, hurt and betrayal that those women still feel after their mothers' deaths.  I accept that my mother- while not a bad woman or even a particularly inept mother - will never have the faintest idea who I am, nor will we ever arrive at any kind of understanding. She's never been able to give that to me and I have long since stopped expecting or needing that. She is who she is and made her own choices in life, as I have and both of us have become who we are because of those choices.  
All I can bring to this process is acceptance, This exploration is a kind of delicate tip-toeing through a foggy bog, trying to find some pointers, some solid ground, unfurling a thread that may or may not help me return to my beginnings, but might just as likely disappear into the murk and swamp and leave me none the wiser. The only guide I have is a determination to remain honest, 


These two poems have come to me, They are a few years old now, maybe more will come as this process continues. 

DELINQUENT DAUGHTERS.

Mothers, thank the Lord for your delinquent daughters,
Who went off and did what they shouldn't ought ta.
Who danced to a different drum
And followed the Moon and not the Sun.
Found themselves, silvered driftwood, on an empty shore
Still following that elusive star.
Whole, though scarred, and eyes too wise,
A hatful of dreams and no compromise.

They are the ones who flutter home
To a nest that's no longer lined with down,
But with silver gossamer

And two silvered heads, one haloed white,
One speckled black,
Lean together in the slowly dimming light.


© Catherine Blackfeather




THE SEPARATION OF DIFFERENCE (TO A MOTHER FROM HER DAUGHTER)

We are constantly being born.
That first wrenching parturition
Constantly repeated.

To blend is bliss
But to separate is to become.

This mother’s womb does not devour,
Suffocate,
But still, it clings,
Reaches out to a hand long gone,
Though still-present.

That never knew oneness, sameness,
Only ever the separation of difference.

And I cannot go with you,
Small hand in yours,
On this last journey,
Alone.
©Cath Blackfeather

Friday 9 January 2015

A funny poem - and a link to me performing it out loud

Here is the URL for a video that was made splicing together film of me in Real Life and in Second Life reading this poem (I am cleverly disguised as a troll for most of it) 

THE VERY HORRIBLE MONSTER

There once was a monster who was very bad.
He was smelly and lumpy and cross eyed and grumpy -
He was just basically horrid.
He had hair that bristled from green warty skin
He had pustules and carbuncles and a sneery green
And those kind of toenails that grow all bumpy and twisted.
In the morning he’d get out, and just for fun
He’d stamp on the gophers on the back lawn,
A bird would be singing out on a twig,
He’d stand under it and aim a belch so big
And horrendously stinky, it would blast that poor bird
Right off for a whole mile and a third
The whole forest was full of mute birds suffering from post-traumatic shock syndrome on account of the monstrously terrible burps
And all the other creatures would cower and lurk.
Then he’d go huffing and grumping along,
Looking for any excuse to pick up bone
With any poor creature that happened along.
He was just basically horrid.

If little red riding hood happened to say
”I’m visiting my granny. What a lovely day.”
He wouldn’t politely tell her the way,
He’d just say “Ah! Dinner!”
He would chomp her up with a big crunchy slurp,
And that’s why he did such terrible burps.

People would hear his thumping steps,
His muttering and grumbling and wheezing breaths,
And all of them, be they postman or tramp,
Or just that nice old lady delivering leaflets for her church bazaar,
Would jump into bushes or climb up a lamp,
And he’d rush after them bawling “hip ho” and “huzzah”
(He’d read these expressions in a book from his grandma).
And no one, not policeman nor mayor,
Not even a traffic warden with notebook and glare,
Not bad boys on the street with wheels on their feet
And slickety knives and packets of weed,
Could stop that monster in his disgusting greed.
He wasn’t like Shreck, grumpy but good,
He wasn’t “poor misunderstood”,
He was just basically horrid.

There was a brother and sister, terrible twins,
They made everyone cross,
They were a really bad lot,
They couldn’t resist playing naughty tricks,
And they’d had to split,
And come and hide in the forest.
They wandered around, looking for food,
Wondering at the silence and a strange smell in the murk and the gloom
Of those boggy, soggy, deserted woods.
And they began to feel a little bit scared,
The light was fading, and they were aware
They had no shelter or home to call their own,
Not even a cafe to sit in the warm,
Or a sweet-shop to go nicking, no place to run,
Just trees and more trees, and nothing to eat, not even a bun.
Then they saw through the trees a flickering light,
And shuffled close to catch a sight
Of planks in a stack that was really a shack.
It leant over sideways, propped up by a pole,
It looked deserted, but for a lingering smell.
It didn’t look nice, it certainly wasn’t made of gingerbread.
But the twins crept closer to get a look in,
And there wasn’t anyone to be seen,
And it was getting darker and scarier outside where they were,
So… they went in.

It was scuzzy and manky and totally minging,
But it had a small fire, and a table and chair,
And even though common sense said Beware!
This is some horrible creature’s lair!
They started to look and poke around
To see if at least there was any food to be found,
Something to eat and a place to stay
At least till the following day.

And so it was that the monster came home,
Hungry and grumpy from a day on the roam
Looking for food that wouldn’t come out and let him catch it,
Whether he belched or threw stones or jumped up to snatch it.
He’d just about had it, his temper was raw,
He was looking for anything to gnash and claw,
When he got home this is what he saw –
Dinner! Just sitting waiting.
He let out a roar,
His horrible toenails gripped the floor,
As he got one twin in his grip.
She struggled and thumped him and tried to nip
His scabby fingers that poked and throttled.
She looked round and thought her brother had bottled,
Because he ran out the door and went outside.
She thought he’d run off to hide.
And as the monster opened his mouth wide
Showing his snaggly, yellowy teeth
Saying “There’s nothing I like better for tea
Than a child I can roast
And eat with a slice of toast.”
Back came her bro with a hammer and nails,
That the monster had left sitting in a pail
Because he meant to get round to mending his roof,
But was always too grumpy to be in the mood.
Bang! Bang! Bang! in went the tacks
While the giant his lips he did smack
“I’ll scoop out to your brains with an egg spoon,”
He drooled, and he went to hurl
The little girl into his roasting pan.
But down he fell with a whackety wham!
All eleven of his toenails were neatly fastened,
Nailed toenails all in a row,
Hammered to the thick wooden floor.
In the shock of the fall his claws he un-claspened,
And while sister tipped the table on the monster’s back
Brother gave him another whack
On the heel of each foot.
The monster bellowed and heaved and shook.
The floorboards snapped and up he got,
And he picked up the table and blocked the door,
The twins were trapped!
One in each hand he threw them together
And tied them with ropes to the post in the room,
He tied them tight and knotted them good,
They could barely breathe or move.
“Now you’ve made me really cross!” he bellowed.
“I’m gonna cook you hot as hot,
And suck your bones, and nibble your giblets.”
He bent down close to their cowering faces, and
Droolingly licked first one, then the other,
Smacking his lips and sniffing the savoury smell of their fear.
Then he went out to get logs for the fire,
Leaving the children trussed up and tied.
But these two bad kids had been in trouble before.
The monster had barely got out the door
And they were wiggling and squirming and stretching and turning
Their nimble fingers at the knots.
Once they were free they wiped off the snot
Of his drooling and licking.
Then they climbed up the chimney, the only way out.
Bro went up first, with a bit of toil,
While sis found a bottle of cooking oil.
Using the ropes her brother threw down
She shimmied up and told him her plan.
They hid there, quietly, up on the shingles,
Till the monster came back carrying bundles of kindling.
He built up his fire, crooning a song,
About boiling and roasting and basting and toasting.
Then with a happy, monster-y smile he looked along
To where his dinner was tied at the end of the room
“What?!” he bellowed “where did they go?
I was gonna fricassee them with some escargot!”
He hunted through his room high and low,
Meanwhile his fire had started to glow
To thrum and hum and flicker and crackle,
The flame was spreading from kindling to peat,
And now something else was adding the heat
Down through the chimney the oil was dripping
From up on the roof where sis was tipping.
Down on the ground bro wedged a pole
Against the door, then off the two stole
Back to the woods, a job well done.
They’d cooked the monster and turned round his plan,
He’d been caught well and truly in his own scam.

But not so quick my smarty-pants twins!
That monster was only a little bit singed
And he broke through the door
And let out a roar.
Seeing the twins, he extended his claws,
And he would have caught them if not for the pieces of floorboard still fastened to his toes,
That made him move just a little bit slow.
Quick as a flash they climbed up a tree.
They went nimble and fast and thought they were free.
But that monster wasn’t as thick as he looked.
He used that tree on a regular basis
To hang his victims in a state of stasis.
The whole tree was covered with hooks
Dangling from every branch and crook,
And he had a pulley and rope to bend it down,
Once his meat had been well and truly hung.
Bleauugh!
So he grabbed at the handle and started to turn,
Lit by the flame of his shack while it burned.
Blimey O’Reilly! Can’t this monster be killed?
Will he ever be finally stilled?

But what are they doing now, these two clever kids?
Down and down the tree’s bending low,
The monster’s grinning in the fire’s glow.
The kids are hanging on tight to a bough,
Rope in one hand each, ready to throw.
Closer and closer to the monster’s great maw,
At the very last minute each of them threw
A rope lasso onto each huge ear
Of that green-skinned, partially singed, hungry, big monster.
The other ends of the ropes were tied to the tree,
And each kid managed to kick one knee
Of the monster as they jumped down free.
He screamed, more from shock from pain,
And tried to grab them both again,
And… he let go the handle he was turning,
And it ratcheted back
With clanking and churning
And with a great snap
It broke right apart.
The tree went twoinnng! Like a big catapult,
And the monster was dragged by his ears up high,
And he flew off into the night sky.

And finally, finally they had got rid
Of that horrible monster, so green and so big.

He cracked open the ground where he finally landed.
The people of the town saw him and banded
Together to tackle him for once and all
Who had held the whole place in his terrible thrall.
Policeman, Mayor, traffic-warden and tramp,
Skateboarding boys with slickety knives,
Ganged up on the monster and began to jump
Up and down on his head,
And the little old lady with her leaflets from church
Said “That’s for all those terrible burps!”
And the monster began to bawl and whine
And cry like a great big baby,
“I’m misunderstood! I am really good!
You don’t know the problems I’ve had!”
And they all said “You’re not good! You’re just basically horrid!”
And they kept on pounding him with bat and stick,
And brolly and bag, and even the birds came and had a peck,
Till all that was left was a big greasy smear
And a lingering, stinky, horrible smell.

And when the twins staggered into town
They were welcomed, and settled down.
And somehow they didn’t need to play tricks,
And be bad kids and terrible twins.
Sometimes bad can be good,
If you’re not basically horrid.

Thursday 8 January 2015

I got second prize for this in a competition in Second Life - the theme was Winter.

Winter Tale

They sent the child out to fetch some wood, to keep their tiny fire stuttering on through the raw, bleak glimpse of daylight that was all they got on this shortest day of the year.
She was only a child and they sent her out, wrapped in whatever she could find to keep the wind from her.  She crackled through the undergrowth, looking for anything that would burn, her reddened fingers clutching and tugging at twigs and branches, snot running freely over chapped lips. She wore rags wrapped round her feet, then stuffed into over-sized clogs that had already been passed down through six older children before her.
The wind whistled, and a small, private Being watched her carefully from the hollow oak-apple where it had taken up residence.
There was man-scent on the air, and dog scent. They set traps and weren’t fussy what they caught in them … a deer, a hare….. a child.
The Being watched and did nothing. It wasn’t exactly thinking – its kind didn’t do thinking… but it was   …. considering, noticing.
Humans were none of its concern.
The sap was low in the trees, the bracken and ferns had gathered themselves into their roots, the filaments of fungus spread underground, connecting all the tree-roots, the messengers of the woodland – all that was as it should be. 
A small scream and the scent of blood indicated a kill by the stoat that had passed by just before - weaving and sniffing through the dried brambles. 
What would a little more blood and screaming matter to one such as the Fae Being who watched all?

But no, children were half-fae - wild little things that belonged in the woodlands and meadows before they were tamed and blinded by adult cares.  The creature stirred in its nest, sensing the darkness in the trappers’ minds, knowing from long since the deeds of human kind against their own. That would not be a clean blood-letting, vibrant with the flame of life passing from one to another. This would be twisting the life-force and darkening it in a way that was not meant to be.
The stoat trotted by below, its jaws clamped around a rabbit bigger than itself. The warm blood scent drifted up, igniting an answering fire in the Fae’s heart.  The human child had stopped moving as soon as she’d heard the rabbit scream, and now she watched the valiant little killer and his prey. The child blended perfectly with the scrubby growth, in the dim light with her ragged layers of indeterminate-coloured garments.
Wiping her nose on her sleeve, the child stepped right up to the tree where the fae nested.  Glancing around her, she took something from within her shawl.  She struggled to disentangle it with her one free hand, chilblained fingers carefully un-weaving whatever-it-was from the woollen threads.  Then she stood and looked at the object – a small figure made of twigs that had been tied together to make a body, head, arms and legs.
The Fae-creature stood and craned down to look – interested.
It could see the child’s heart - the little blaze of light that even humans carried within - suddenly grow big and bright as a flood of feeling welled through her.  The Fae had never seen such brightness in a human - even in a child. It watched as the child placed her little offering in a hollow of the tree, then leaned in and hugged the tree, laying herself against the ridged and scented bark, her left hand still clutching her bundle of firewood awkwardly.  Did the Fae see a quick kiss on the tree before the child levered herself back upright?
Her bundle had fallen apart and half-dropped on the forest floor, so she put it all down and worked busily scraping the sticks together into a tighter, more ordered collection. She straightened up, pulled her shawl tighter about her and picked up the bundle.  She sighed, eyes travelling back to the doll she’d left, and clumped off in her clumsy footwear.

There was a shifting in the air higher in the tree and a shadow seemed to flit over the child.  She stopped and looked back at the tree, hair prickling on her neck – but all was still.  She heard a branch fall from a tree a little way ahead.  It just cracked, loudly in the damp air, and thudded to the ground with a loud swishing of branches and dead leaves clinging still to their boughs.  She went towards it - there would be good firewood on that.
When she got there she found a dead log hanging from a noose suspended from a branch that still bobbed and shook where it had sprung up.  Turning, the child ran back and hid behind another tree – looking out and around fearfully for the hunter who had placed the snare. It wasn’t one of her father’s or brothers’ – that she was sure of.  They were all weak of the ague and had not been strong enough to hunt for days. 
She waited, heart beating, but no-one came.  All was still.  She crept back – her eyes searching the forest floor now, wary.  But there wouldn’t be another one so close.  She examined the rope, in the dim light – not one she’d seen before.  Strangers! In their woods! But she could do nothing with this big log.  She’d return with a brother and an axe.  They’d warm the bothy with this and maybe the baby would get better from the sickness.
Half a mile away two men crouched over a metal trap, easing it open and setting the catch. They had this one metal one they’d brought with them and were setting it where they saw an animal path. Their hound startled up, woofing a brief warning. A gleaming shape bounded across the glade. 
“Did you see it? A hind!”
They stood, frozen a moment, and again they saw it, almost gleaming in a last ray of sunlight.  It paused, seeming to look back at them, then trotted away. Seizing their bows the two men and their dog began to run after it – heading further into the woods as the daylight snuffed out. 
They didn’t know these woods and the land dropped away suddenly into an unexpected gully just where they were heading.
Now the woods were utterly silent, settling into a murky twilight.
Snow began to fall.
A stone detached itself from a bank and landed on metal. A ratcheting snap broke the silence for a brief second.

The snow continued to fall.  
My most recent, possibly unfinished poem.  To round off a year that started with Gaza, which we have all conveniently forgotten.

ON THE DECISION NOT TO GO AND SEARCH FOR REFUGEES IN BOATS ON THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, DECEMEBER 2014.

A camera noses through a rusted hulk,
Sea-life swarms and clings on the fecund surfaces.
We shift our gaze, re-focus.
The fish quietly strip flesh from
Bodies, scattered like the contents
Of burst suitcases on the ocean floor.

They did as all our ancestors did –
Walked across tracts of desert,
Left where they were, to go somewhere else new.
Somewhere clean and clear
And no dead piled up.

But there was no such place, they’re all taken.
Their brave, pioneering desperation
Was not enough to keep them afloat. 
Here’s one that came to me watching on the London Underground. I always watch people and love the idea of writing a series of little haiku- like verses about all the things I see. I carry a notebook with me to jot down words. So far this is all I’ve done, but maybe it will grow.

The Well.
Beneath the overhanging armpits
On the London Underground
A woman reads her Koran.
Soaking up the prophet's words

A small oasis, brimful of sweet water.  
I’ve been trying to work on a virtual dance piece with a friend in Second Life on the theme of love. We are looking at all aspects of love, well- the aspects that interest us, as it’s kind of a pretty large subject. I wrote this as potential lyrics to a song that I wanted to end the piece. So far can’t find anyone who is willing to set it to music. 


I BELIEVE IN LOVE

Refrain A
I know it’s hard,
I know it often fails,
All the times I gave my all
Only to say never again.

Refrain B
But still I believe in love,
Crazy though it seems.
I still believe in an open heart,
Ready to receive.
I won’t let all the hurt
Close me down,
Nor all the times I’ve failed
Make me afraid
To love again.

Verses between the refrains.



1.
All those couples who live half-lives,
The sum of two makes them less.
Rather be half-dead than be alive,
Locked in a zombie embrace.
They’d rather the devil they know
Than the wide-open, unknown world.

2.
We all have it in us,
We need to love.
We need to see those eyes gazing back
So soft and full of trust.
It makes the world come alive,
The wide-open, unknown world.

3.
The child feels safe in her mother’s arms,
Her world is full of love.
She stumbles and falls and learns
The arms are always there.
The lucky ones carry those arms inside
Into the wide-open, unknown world.

4.
The world is full of wounded souls
Who wander, wounding others.
Do you give up on hope, or struggle on?
Or settle for what you’ve always known?
A shadow of the self you could have been,
In the wide-open, unknown world.

5.
Some want to hunt and conquer,
Always wanting someone new.
Some will never venture,
Afraid ever to have what they may lose.
It’s all a game of control and use,
In the wide-open, unknown world.

6.
We all want to have and hold,
We all want someone of our very own.
But the thread between my heart and yours
Is so deep and yet so delicate,
It’s a bridge of air and light between

Two wide-open, unknown worlds. 
I spend a certain amount of my time in in Second Life in the form of a pixie. This came out in response to being asked my age – elves have a tendency to go on about how long-lived they are – like- hundreds or thousands of years. As I pixie I am ageless, and probably quite old but we tend to have a different perspective.

LESSER FAE OR PIXIE, IN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION ‘HOW OLD ARE YOU?’
I'm as eternal as a dewdrop
With its rainbow heart.
Each moment a galaxy aeon
In one dragonfly dart.
Don't ask me my age, I can't count.
Each of my fingers tells its tale,
Grubby with tree-sap and mud.
"One, two, three," I chant
Lost in their stories before I've begun.
Here! there! Now it's gone - I don't count

These moments of mayfly, galaxy life
I wrote this one in October to enter a competition on the theme of winter. (Didn’t win, of course)


An English Mid-Winter

I still can’t see the paths in the woods
That were covered with green and brown
And orange and palest yellow
That appeared all at once on a night of nearly frost,
And crunched damply underfoot
And smelled of musk and honey.

They are black now and oozy underfoot.
It’s an effort to walk - step and slide back.
The air hints at snow, but it’s a promise unfulfilled.
I smell wetness, and a whiff of chimney smoke.
Families gather in cheery indoor light,
While I duck and slither past black, bare branches.

There is a holly, with silver-skinned bark.
Its leaves catch all the light from that grey, lowering sky
And throw it back to me.
It stands proud and green, glowing,
And reminding us of the greenness

That is merely waiting to come again. 
Here’s more poetry from movement, some of it from 2012 I think:

 Foot Poem

I sit
A nurturing place
My foot needs no longer
Support the world
Rest my little one
Be loved.





Chalk Island

Bony chalk pathways of twisty formations
The Land builds from undersea.
Their shells, its bones.

Our feet find the path.
I am the Land.
My knees take me out into the open.
My elbows find a hollow way.
I turn, I twist, I lay myself just so.
My teeth are a gate.

 She turns, she twists
 She lays herself just so.
 Her jaw is a weather vane.
 She tastes the wind.




All front!

I thought my body flat
All front and no depth.
God! She’s got a lot of front!
Don’t get my back up!
She’s not backwards in coming forward.
She’s all arse backwards!
Put on a brave front!
Where is my frontanella?

Let your wings fly little beetle,
Scapular coverings unfolding
To reveal lacy fronds
That buzz and quiver and
Impossibly carry your horned shiny blackness.

They fill the back of your body
And open and close
And open and close
And carry you any everywhere.



A soft-shelled creature

My shell, my splitting soft shell.
My mother is dying.
I hold her, she is warm.
I am flesh, deep pink,
Gristly flesh inside spongy carapace
I am
I am
I am
I am
Clawed hand touches fragile skin
I give heat to coldness
Singing my heart


Me-spine.

My spine stands me
I grow to my feet
Heels dig in and root.
How am I here?
Abdomen
Full of everything.
I grow down.
  
Trawling back through stuff I wrote last year I found this little snatch. I think it came out of a movement workshop.
Ancestor

I walk you
I spring along your paths.
Human, I dance the wolf.
Wolf, I run with human.
We spring along paths.
The mountain stands beneath our feet.
We are rock and wind
And keen scent
And the darting swallow.

At home, a cradle
A cub learning to walk
Lying on the Earth. 
There is also a dance piece trying to emerge from me on the Welsh tale of Rhiannon. She is a Queen married to Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, but she is condemned to carry people on her back like a beast of burden. Rhiannon is considered to be a version of Epona, the horse goddess, and the whole story is redolent with horse imagery, even though it is about an apparently human woman.  Even though I am not a horsey person, I resonate on so many levels with this tale.
Rhiannon
All I see are my feet, as I slip and stumble on the mud-caked cobbles.
My burden is heavy. I never look up.
The hem of my queenly robe is soaked and heavy with mud.
I don’t try to lift it up.
I deserve to be here, a beast of burden.
I, who once stepped through the mists between worlds,
Reining my King into myself,
Leading him by the rope of my own majesty,
To do my bidding.

The ground shifts under me and all is changed.
How did I give myself away so easily?
Taken and possessed, I am broken.
My swift feet no longer fly effortlessly
Ahead of all who would have me,
I am yoked to earth, and mud, and mocking laughter.

I killed my own gift that I birthed from out of myself.
I taste the blood of my spirit-child on my lips.
I am cursed.

But I will hunt for my stolen child.
I will track him down.
And when I face the afanc that snatched him from me,
In a spell of drowsy unawareness,
I will face it.   I will stare into its eyes,
And see myself looking back.
And the chains will drop away.

And I will fly free.