Marvels

One of my favourite poets, Seamus Heaney, became fascinated by the idea of the miraculous to be found in the mundane.

Denise Levertov writes too about the importance of paying attention in her well-known and much-loved poem, Witness.

Witness

Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.

Over the summer I became fascinated by the idea of the marvellous and the need to pay attention to the here and now.

Scotland opens up and shows many new colours as the light changes and intensifies our everyday responses to nature. And not just to nature - we stumbled upon a group of people dancing on the street in Edinburgh back in September when we had a small heatwave. 

A poem came out of this thinking:

Marvels

You’re so lucky, they say

To live here, to have seen

Dolphins and puffins and guillemots

But I think,

No – we put ourselves out

We went in search

We climbed over Troup Head

And braved the steep paths, the vertigo

We took a boat and braved

The seasickness, the discomfort

But then I thought

What about the peacock

That just appeared from nowhere

And crossed my path

Popped out of a field

And flaunted its colours

In the morning sun:

Electric blue neck

orange striped flanks

The outrageous tail

It fluttered up onto a post

And posed there like a model

(Transvestite perhaps?)

In an evening gown

Showing off its gaudy train

With its little fan comb stuck

On its pea-head.

Sometimes we have to put ourselves

Into the way of seeing things

Othertimes marvels just appear

Sally Givertz©2014

I'd like to think that we can retain our capacity to marvel at the world no matter how tough it becomes to live with the reports of misery brought to us by the media.  This is real too of course; but only part of the picture.