Lynne Rees's Blog, page 9

Poem: impressions

impressionswe make thembut more often we don'twe take themto rememberor recover what might be lostsometimesthey lingerother times they fadebut no mattersomethingis always saved

Poem: Resistance

Some days even the flat roads
present as inclines and inclines
persuade me they are really hills
while any actual hill has risen
to an unknowable height. And then
I glance through the trees
at the side of the lane, the glitter
of sunlight, the short grass
stretching to the horizon, and I feel
the opening of my own heart
as I run through the world,
overcoming, for now, that ridge
of resistance and accepting it all:
flat roads, hills, how the world
is composed of joy and woe, of light
and shade and we are the bearers.

Poem: Wild Fennel

Look at them, they are giants! Just like
the flaming stalk of one another giant
carried from Mount Olympus to Earth,
fire stolen from the gods, the gift of civilisation.

Poor Prometheus. He paid for his defiance,
of course. Well, his liver did, pecked
by an eagle day after day, renewed each night
until that champion, Heracles, set him free.

I wonder why he chose a fennel stalk.
Surely, he wouldn’t have been short on torches,
oil soaked cloths. How could a fibrous stem
have kept the fire blazing? But it’s a myth

not a history. The sense it makes is what
we want it to make. Fennel as food, insect repellent,
as medication. When I sip my home-made fennel tea
a story of courage, of generosity, enters me. 

Poem: Invisible

From this angle it doesn't seem possible that something of that girth and weight could lean out over the water and not tremble.
It's what I can't see that holds it there, a web of roots that exceeds the span of its branches. So many invisible things that I rely on:
gravity, oxygen, radio waves, the workings of my mind, of your mind, awareness. Though sometimes one materialises
in front of me when I least expect it: the woman who stepped onto the grass so I could run past safely. Thank you.

Poem: No Through Road

After I loop through the woodsI know I’ll come back to the lane, the same lane
I’ve been running along for five years but from this direction it is suddenly unrecognisable –
the hollow at the roots of a huge oak, the rise of the bank, the sky tunnel of branches
are all unknown to me. And even though reason is telling me otherwise
something is feeding the beanstalk of trepidation. And I think of the cat, how after nine years
she can still walk out of the backdoor and abruptly freeze, every muscle tensed, as if
there might be assassins lurking between the fruit trees, traps laid in the grass.
So, perhaps wanting to make a point to myself, instead of turning right for home at The Green
I take the narrow No Through Road behind the pub  I’ve never ran along before and find, at the end,
a footpath that swings me aroundonto East Street whose cottages fringe the village.
I suppose I want to believe there is always a way out and a way through. Because
what else can I do? Collapse into whatever strangeness and fear I encounter and weep?
How quickly the cat shifts from panic to acceptance. Look at her rolling
in the dusty earth, as if this place is what she has always known it to be.

Poem: Skylarks

You might hear them beforeyou see them, the sign saysbut we still look up
a little like the way we hearthe voice of our own conscienceor our fears, and look around
for a sign that might convince usto take that first step forward.

Skylarks ~ a poem

You might hear them beforeyou see them, the sign saysbut we still look up
a little like the way we hearthe voice of our own conscienceor our fears, and look around
for a sign that might convince usto take that first step forward.

Haibun: Straight Lines

Oh how good we feel on those straight lines, so sure of our path, running parallel to the turning world, convinced of our own deservingness, the justice of it all, we are so right, righteous even, and able to see where everyone else is going wrong, what they should be saying, doing, who they should be doing it for.
And what about the crooks and fissures in the road behind us when we stamped and grumbled, the times we ran back from fear and not toward, the fences we kicked in, the gates we refused to walk through when someone opened them for us, when we refused to move on and blamed the road we had made and chosen?
Here they come again, more clefts and fractures, and that bend ahead just willing us to refuse it.


allowing for forgiveness someone else’s footsteps    hardened in the dry earth   

straight lines ~ a haibun

Oh how good we feel on those straight lines, so sure of our path, running parallel to the turning world, convinced of our own deservingness, the justice of it all, we are so right, righteous even, and able to see where everyone else is going wrong, what they should be saying, doing, who they should be doing it for.
And what about the crooks and fissures in the road behind us when we stamped and grumbled, the times we ran back from fear and not toward, the fences we kicked in, the gates we refused to walk through when someone opened them for us, when we refused to move on and blamed the road we had made and chosen?
Here they come again, more clefts and fractures, and that bend ahead just willing us to refuse it.


forgiveness someone else’s footsteps    hardened in the dry earth   

Prose Poem: Sometimes it's the science...

You have such potential, I tell the small oak tree that Tony found sprouting in a damp corner of the lawn, dropped there by a bird, I guess, or perhaps, now I think about it, from one of the oaks the railway men cut down some years ago, to clear the track, then brought the logs up to our barn, the thought not entering anyone's head that this was not an end, only a beginning.
I draw the line at showing it the photo I took this morning of a great oak sweeping its low branches across sunlit bluebells and resist the weaving and unravelling of any stories of its possible future, after all none of us want our paths mapped out for us by others.
But look how the light on those young leaves illuminates the pulse of chlorophyll. Sometimes it's the science that breaks open our hearts with gratitude.