Brian Lavelle's Blog, page 2

the arch above

the arch above
the air below

the silence

below the air
above the arch

The image is of the soaring arched bridge into the partially ruined Roslin Castle in Midlothian, taken from below, looking up. The crumbling sandstone strives to keep gravity at bay, while a tide of wild garlic overwhelms the base of the structure in a swell of green.

At the Temple of Mithras

Today: a visit to Brocolitia, the Temple of Mithras, just outside the Roman fort of Carrawburgh on Hadrian���s Wall. Roman soldiers built this place of worship for their Mithraic mystery religion more than 1800 years ago.

It was windswept and muddy, and there was no one else there; but it is such a meaningful place.

This site has held a special resonance for me since my dad first took me there many years ago, probably some time in the early 1980s. Lots of the Roman Britain sites remind me of him and his infectious enthusiasm for those places, but none more than this one. I can���t really explain why. It���s not grand in scale and is tucked away in a small depression south of the fort to the extent that it���s not visible until you walk along a muddy track to get to it, but I find it so enigmatic, a quiet place that feels like a concentrated zone of memories of that quiet man.

I stood awhile and thought of him, the wind howling, the weather creating its own swirling cave of grief and mistaken echoes around me.

Two bays, for a friend

the bay at Rockcliffe
sings its near circle
all around you
did our footprints cross
in the sand there
before we met?

it���s as though
I���ve known you beyond
these months
or at least as long
as that spring tide surged
from the Solway Firth

time slips on
in sadnesses
and you stood
looking to another crescent
at the Bay of Skaill
and the sea still further out
your steps not long
after mine

as if kindred souls
in kindnesses
and in near circles
sung around you

Hellebores

planting hellebores
in claggy earth
sprinkled rainwater
and benisons murmured
for life against the odds

green shoots
shot through brindled soil
clay pierced by tine on tine���
this winter���s oil
unframed
unsigned

the mourning
the mystery
dark indigo

and the war
one war anyway
two years old today
no peace is grown
in this ground
from false helleborines

Edinburgh, 24 February 2024

A new single-line poem in whiptail, issue 9

I'm very pleased to say I have a new single-line poem (tree bough) in the latest number���issue 9, February 2024���of whiptail: journal of the single-line poem.

You can read the full issue as a pdf here. My poem is the first on page 8 of the pdf, but there is a lot of really wonderful work there and it's worth spending some time with these poems.

My thanks to the editors Kat Lehmann, Robin Smith, and Marcie Wessels for including my poem in the journal.

turning, turning

The year turns, and turns itself into something we can't possibly imagine: each second different from every previous, precious or unprecious moment. The rainwater on the tree's branches unlike any other rainwater on any tree branch the world over. The blackbird's song a fraction of a decibel quieter, a microtone flatter than yesterday, than last year, than the decades gone. The paper of my books on the shelves a little more yellow and friable than before. The guitar strings' tension more agonised. And so it goes���and goes on.

I hope this new year brings a time for quietness and harmony in all our lives, and for the spark of creativity to kindle the flames of new growth in whatever medium we choose. Some of us are lucky to have what we have; some have luck and love stripped away. I'll take each day, and then take each next and successive day, as it approaches, with sure-footed footsteps on the unmetalled roads of the future.

All my warmest wishes for 2024, and thanks for reading and listening over the last year.

variant, you

bark as cloth of copper
oxidised to
unspoken skin
a variant
arising in tissues that tear
thinly in the yew���s memory

remembering
burnt umber

extinction in a canalside moment
decorticated, bold
taxus baccata
balm and toxin

every last stem
tends
toward brokenness

The photograph is of the trunk of an ancient yew tree in the Arentshof public square in Bruges, Belgium, 19 December 2023.

Two poems in aswirl, issue four

I'm delighted to say I have two short poems in the latest issue of aswirl, the 'quarterly poetry zine celebrating brevity' edited and handmade by Robin Boothroyd.

The poems are two dicotyledons and tormentil, and they appear in issue four: winter 2023. They are very small poems in keeping with the size of this perfectly formed little zine.

aswirl can be purchased in paper and digital formats here.

Three haiku

wind-stirred leaves
on October���s pathways
unwelcome warmth

���

triggered sensors
the midnight garden���s
branches wave

���

a gradual fade to red
on each stem
inevitable change

���

Poem in D minor (for guitar)

the guitar as focus
of time, a landscape

river valley of tumbled granite
under skies
cemented in rainflowfall

shouts of abandon
strings and things that break
down and battle-endings
at the creases and margins of us all

ring out for certainty
ring out for hope
ring out for every last morsel of the very last
and then

as the river
stops its strumming
past the fence

chime in contrast
and start to play
the opening and
the closing note

Score for solo guitarist at dusk; duration indeterminate.