Be of good cheer

Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, 
I am as good as dead. 

Every morning, so far, I’m alive. 

Mary Oliver

These lines are from a poem called "Landscape" and I think it offers a good reminder that we need to keep our hearts open. The poem ends with an image of crows.

The wonderful Norman MacCaig uses a "stoned crow" metaphor for this poem that I also love:

A writer

Norman MacCaig   (1910-1996)

Events got him in a corner

and gave him a bad time of it –

poverty, people, ill-health

battered at him from all sides.

So far from being silenced,

he wrote more poems than ever

and all of them different –

just as a stoned crow

invents new ways of flying

it had never thought of before.

No wonder now he sometimes

suddenly lurches, stalls, twirls sideways,

before continuing his effortless level flight

so high over the heads of people

their stones can’t reach him.

 

I enjoy the idea that criticism or bad luck can just make us more creative and determined to do our own thing regardless. Strangely cheering. 

                                               Bruce Monro  -  Field of Light 

I've been finding cheer in all sorts of places and with winter approaching we seek as much light as possible. 

You’ll Never Walk alone

Sally Givertz

How are you?

Well my body has let me down a couple of times lately

I’m sure there were faults on both sides

Maybe I wasn’t giving her enough attention

Did stuff I shouldn’t have done

Until she flat refused to carry me any further

Just lay down and refused all food or comfort

I was totally out of it for a while, I was steaming!

I flew off and wandered in strange lands

Didn’t know where I was half the time

Until I got scared and came back to her

We called for mediation

The doc gave us stern instructions

Told us to pull ourselves back together

So we made a pledge

She’ll do as I ask if I treat her right

So I give her more of my time

I take her to the gym

Lift the damn weights

She lets me lounge on the bed reading lyric poetry

In return I eat right and drink green tea -

Whatever it takes

We’re still an item her and me

Thanks for asking

The Day the Music Revived

Sally Givertz

Feeling like a glad Lazarus

Raised up by antibiotics

I started last night with Bach – what else?

And today the gold of Mozart 

Fell on me like a blessing

After four days of radio silence – 

all gone dark 

Locked in the box of my brain

I can switch on, re-tune
Receive and be glad

Finally I include this poem by Charlie Rossiter that actually uses the word bliss - well he even makes it into a verb. Such a sane way to approach the arrival of winter.  Celebrate and embrace it.  Enjoy! 

Blissing on the Season's First Snowfall

Charlie Rossiter

I light a morning candle

and lift my cup of espresso

the hiss of the old radiator

purrs to me like a friendly cat

I lift my cup of espresso

and wish a silent wish

blissing on the season's first snowfall

listening to the hiss of the old radiator

the kiss of morning espresso steam

rising to disappear in pearly air

outside, snow falls silent as a stalking cat

the candle flickers in columns of warm

air rising, I lift my cup of espresso

to the single silent wish, to always

and forever to this much love my life. 

Blessings and a New Muse

This blog has been in the Doldrums but now I am inspired to put text to screen once more and share some poetry with my invisible friends: 

This is a photo of my travelling companion at a cafe table outside Henderson's in Edinburgh. I just want to emphasise the joy of Edinburgh on a sunny day. This year's International Festival was wonderful as always.

A recent blessing has been the arrival into my life of a new muse - I hope she sticks around ....

Walking with Impunity

She’s not an ocelot

It’s a different sort of face

Rosettes not single spots

With power and grace

She matches me pace for pace

She’s not a cheetah

That would be too fast

Never outruns me

I don’t come last

She’s not a jaguar

Her head more fine

People believe in stranger things

This is mine.

She’s not my daemon

We proudly share a gender

And somewhere in here

Thanks to her -

I’m still young and full of grace

I have leopard-print leggings

And a stunning face

My eyes are compelling

This fantasy is telling

She strolled in through

A Big Cat-flap in my mind

Imaginary friend

I won’t outgrow

She came

And made herself at home

In the fantasy land

Of my muddled brain

When life was cold

And time had slowed

And in alternative reality

She warms the plains

And mountain ranges

Keeps me sane

No sense of her mortality

My alter ago, better self

The creature I would choose to be

She never changes

Wild and free

I’m channelling -

My muse, my leopard, my Impunity

Who or what would your imaginary friend be?

  

I needed a little rant about the affection many of us feel for the beleaguered NHS after it has been challenged and eroded in so many ways recently.  Somehow many of the staff summon up the Spirit of the Blitz and keep on giving of their best. I wrote this after encountering a particularly amazing doctor who showed no signs of compassion fatigue - a small miracle. Some of the buildings people have to work in are Third world standard but this man and many others are First Class. They deserve better and I wrote this to make the point (and the rant was very good for me). 

Hands On

Sally Givertz

They're like gold dust round here

Can't get one for love nor money

A waiting list as long as your arm

And even then you'll be lucky

But they sent this one over from 

Aberdeen!

He made like it was just for me

Relaxed, all the time in the world

He said, "Can I see your hands?"  

He took them so gently and looked;

He turned them over palms upward,

And looked.

I felt blessed, recognised, seen. 

Like Jane being clocked by Rochester

Bless the NHS

For all your faults

(And they are many)

We love you

You’re family 

We won't let the bastards grind you down

We all know who they are -

Chasing the money

Getting their hands dirty

And covered in grime

But you at the front line

At the coal face 

In the line of fire

You walk out of the flames 

Shining 

So a short blog to warm up with. May you be inspired too. 

My boat is so small and the sea is so wide

photo by Gordon Parks

Summer in the City 

may look glamorous but the reality is very different. We stay here in the village and go for our city fix later in the year. People come to stay from all over the world, they rent the holiday cottages and liven up the village - the world-wide-web makes it possible. Many of us living here have to cope without a decent mobile phone signal but we are blessed with the internet and that keeps us sane.
"Only connect ""...

Summer in the village

So much comes to us. 

We had a a close encounter in June,  The cold, wet spring made eider ducklings rarer and later in arriving. 

Lost and Found

What are you?

I get closer and scoop you up

A lucky strike – have you safely enclosed in one hand

Small eider duckling with elegant eye-stripes

Feathers like tiny hairs and a big personality

What was your mother thinking

Leaving you tumbling over our steps?

We find yet another use for a Lidl plastic trug

Lie you in a teatowel and hear you cheep-cheeping

Grab the ipad for a quick snapshot -

A composition in suffragette purple, green and white

With you, a tiny brown dot in the centre

One may take a duck to water but …

When we find a crèche for you to bond with -

The sight of a long, thin man,

topped by an orange hat

Holding a purple trug

and brandishing a duckling

Seems to spook your relatives on the water

Off they all fly each time we approach -

An inter-species misunderstanding

Finally he launches you

Into an unknown future

We scan the sea-

Eider duckling

Is that you?

©Sally Givertz         June 22nd 2015

This is what made me think of that quotation:  "My boat is so small and the sea is so wide."

When one sees an eider ducks on a wild day with the waves battering them it seems unlikely that the young will survive but they ride the waves fearlessly and seem somehow glued to the water. They disappear neatly to snatch a quick bite and pop up unperturbed.  Blissfully unaware of the magnitude of the sea they just get on with living. 

Feeling like a leaf

                                              photo by Rob Mckay

This blog post stalled because I was feeling like a leaf....

Yesterday I came across this poem by the wonderful Naomi Shihab Nye:

The Art Of Disappearing

Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say  We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees.  The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

I love this poem and it had just the right words at the right moment for me; the last three lines in particular. If you are feeling fragile or overwhelmed it might help.  Decide what to do with your time.

(Note about copyright - I don't usually publish poems by living writers but this one is already up on the internet and I am sure that it will help sales of her poetry rather than reducing them.  If anyone thinks I should take it down or just give a short extract please let me know.)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/naomi-shihab-nye

This is a link to information about this outstanding poet.  She is not Scottish but I am widening the parameters of the blog - we are all global citizens after all.

Update - now writing this in September 2016 - blog went into the Doldrums we I am steering out of it now. 

At the beach life is different

                                                               Out at Sea - Ritchie Collins (Scottish Artist)

At the beach life is different.  Time doesn’t move hour to hour but mood to moment.  We live by the currents, plan by the tides, and follow the sun.

 Sandy Gingras, Writer.

We are all fascinated by the sea - that place where the ground under our feet shifts into less solid sand and then to another element entirely.  We walk into the sea and suddenly we can float; we look at the sea and are moved and soothed, or swept away from our own concerns:

When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.

 Rainer Maria Rilke, Poet.

Poets can't resist the sea and Scottish poets have plenty to go on, or on about.

Contemporary poets need to sell their poems so I have chosen some earlier poems for this blog post,  If you want to read or listen to new poems the Scottish poetry archive is a wonderful resource:

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry

Norman MacCaig (1910-96) was one of the best Scottish poets and one of my all-time favourite poets. 

I was quite annoyed when I first came to Scotland and discovered MacCaig properly. Previously I'd only read his poem Stars and Planets in an anthology and no one had grabbed my arm and told me to read his poems. But on reflection I realised that I would not have enjoyed the poems half as much before I lived in Scotland.  I'd never seen an eider duck diving or the wine-dark seaweed at night; I'd never heard the squeaky rasp of the winch on the pier: 

Midnight, Lochinver

Norman MacCaig (1910-96)

Wine-coloured, Homer said, wine-dark…

The seaweed on the stony beach,

Flushed darker with that wine, was kilts

And beasts and carpets… A startled heron

Tucked in its cloud two yellow stilts.

And eiderducks were five, no, two –

No, six.  A lounging fishbox raised

Its broad nose to the moon.  With groans

And shouts the steep burn drowned itself;

And sighs were soft among the stones.

All quiet, all dark: excepting where

A cone of light stood on the pier

And in the circle of its scope

A hot winch huffed and puffed and gnashed

Its iron fangs and swallowed rope.

The nursing tide moved gently in.

Familiar archipelagos

Heard her advancing, heard her speak

Things clear, though hard to understand

Whether in Gaelic or in Greek.

                                                                       Summer Seas - Owen Henderson - Scottish artist

I have been marinading a sea poem for a while now and it finally reached the my consciousness this morning.  Most of the human mind is unconscious and the sea is far more than just the surface we can see. 

That Which Can Be Celebrated

Yes the levels are rising

Yes the coasts erode

(if a clod be washed away)

But it’s not all about us

The sea is bigger than that

It is splendidly indifferent

It offers trade and riches

Trafficking and despair

Here I live by the sea -

A challenging companion

I am in thrall

But fully aware of her

Moody ruthlessness

Like a spoilt beauty

She thinks she can

Get away with murder

The drowned are buried at sea

The victims of sea battles

Were slid over the side

Tipped off a board

Covered by a standard

Visible for a second

Before the big, deep, sleep.

For me it’s more personal

(It always is with humans)

I cast the last ashes here

Into a light breeze

Haloed by rainbows

It’s what he’s now become

Hold fast to that

Which can be celebrated

And move on.

       Sally Givertz©2015  

Kathleen Jamie  (b. Scotland 1962) is next.

The poem below is already up on the internet and I love it so am breaking my own rule and showing it here in full. I think that we can all - both men and women - identify with this universal burden of believing we are somehow responsible for keeping the earth turning.

                 

The Creel

Kathleen Jamie 

The world began with a woman,

shawl-happed, stooped under a creel,

whose slow step you recognize

from troubled dreams. You feel

obliged to help bear her burden

from hill or kelp-strewn shore,

but she passes by unseeing

thirled to her private chore.

It's not sea birds or peat she's carrying,

not fleece, nor the herring bright

but her fear that if ever she put it down

the world would go out like a light.

creel: wicker basket for carrying fish, peat, etc on the back

thirled: enslaved

I have added a tiny poem by RLS being fairly cheerful about life for a change:

FAIR Isle at Sea - thy lovely name

Soft in my ear like music came.

That sea I loved, and once or twice

I touched at isles of Paradise. 

Robert Louis Stevenson

As a footnote I'd say there are hundreds of other poems written by Scottish poets about the sea. 

Hearing them speak their own poetry is the best way to get to know a new poet or enjoy a familiar one.  Try the Poetry Archives.  You can search by subject or by poet. 

http://www.poetryarchive.org/explore

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poets

Have a good summer.