These Beautiful Days: Part 33 of my Immediate Writing Series for Sarah Gosling’s Arts Show, October 8th 2021 (close to National Poetry Day)
This is the second collectively written poem by my Band of Bards. The words were created during Tuesday evening's creative writing workshop, co-hosted by Harula Ladd. Contributors were Rebecca Bindon, Sovereign Jones, Harula Ladd, Art Pajor,
Jen Pill.
TRANSCRIPTION
These beautiful days I often find myself just floating on the surface of some giant vessel filled with sand. It is warm but I can hardly feel it. When I look around I can see that everything is like always but I'm somehow drifting anyway in a dream. “I don't know what you want me to tell you”. My mother used to say that a dream is just a dream, so I took her words and carved a very heavy, still statue out of them. It is now in the basement where it belongs, along with the dust. She doesn't think that the things that are hidden at the bottom of the ocean can be discovered. One day I will bring her a beautiful shell of an animal she doesn't believe in.
***
These beautiful days when the weather is hot and we feel most like ourselves, I come here to surrender humbly and gracefully. A dream - floating into freedom, in a crazy world I reach for my centre. I am weightless as I move, effortlessly flowing, floating, bobbing, sculling. I roll onto my back to see the sky. I am in my garden. This has been my dream since I was 3 years old - to have a pool with my house, with a big inflatable ring to lie on.
***
These beautiful days are slowly slipping through my fingers. As the trees become heavy and the leaves start to fall. Where will my footsteps take me? I am not happy here. I am searching for some other landscape. Right here right now, in real life, I feel such a righteous anger my fists scrunched together, nails crushed into my palms, anger coursing through my veins. What is this madness? I find myself living a life devoid of what nourishes me from within. What beauty does the future hold? As I uncurl from a deep sleep my hands start to speak. Nourishment, connection, courage - Courage! To keep walking and trust I won’t fall, but even if I do there are others to call.
***
These beautiful days when the shadows lengthen and the goldenness hangs in the air like I could pan it, bottle it, drink it and glow forever from the inside. Days when we speak softly and you reach out your little finger to graze my arm; the sensation of care. Days when you and I, we jump into the freezing cold river, head rushing into your pupils as they dilate and you gasp and we gabble at each other non-stop. Right here, right now, in real life I feel it all.
***
These beautiful days, where clouds and patches of blue dance above me in celebration of the gentle warmth and courgettes race towards marrowhood. Days filled with growth, abundance, gatherings and holidays. These beautiful days we cling to with a kind of desperation after the denial of recent times, occasionally drowning under the weight of 'be happy make the most of it' expectation because there is so much not-beauty fighting its way towards us too. What beauty does the future hold? I don't know but if I see a river do I look for a bridge or stepping stones to help get me to the other side, a place I can see and prepare myself for, choose to go. Or do I dive in, trust the course of the river to know best, and take me there.
***
These beautiful days are starting to come to me, where stillness is bliss. At midmorning I sit and think of nothing in particular, and it is the finest quality of nothing I have ever tasted. I sit and savour it with the sweetness of flower honey in my dark black tea. At sunset I walk by the river and speak to nobody as they pass, and it is the gentlest wordlessness I have ever shared with anybody. I hear only the long grass brushing against my boots as I stride through it, letting it bend and give way to my quiet path.
Where is the soundtrack for the
climate revolution? I believe it is down to us all to make it. This year I've teamed up with folk musicians Chris Dance, Lisa Rowe & Anita Clarinet to make the songs of tomorrow’s history: music that births change - a lush landscape of vocal harmonies, guitar, strings & woodwind to surround and transform you....more
The new EP from Scottish songwriter Alec Bowman_Clarke goes deep, setting vulnerable lyrics to gentle melodies & stripped-back arrangements. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 30, 2021
Alec Bowman perfectly captures the dark soil under the pastoral world of British folk with this collection of melancholy originals. Bandcamp New & Notable May 12, 2020
