Joyce Barrass's Blog, page 39

THE JOY OF SCAMPER

Suddenly startling, yet continuousFor you with the joy of scamper,You skitter through underbrushDamp with February.To me you are lift in a lick of lightTravelling the trunk of an oak,A denser shadow, furred furrow.Tree knows your transient tickle,Stays focused beyond your claw clicksOn her slow hiddenFostering of foliage,The suckling of Spring.

IT ALL DEPENDS

ONE THING

There's only one thing.One thing important to say.One thing important today.You are beautiful.Whatever your fears or failures.You are loved.Whatever your need to curl upLicking those wounds unseen.You are safe. Cherish yourselfIn the warm wise core of your heart.There is peace here.Peace you bring to the eye of your storm.Don't let the wilderness of this wild worldPull the wool over your lovely eyes.You are good enough, beloved.This is the simple truth.This is all you need.It is enough.Enough,And so are you.

BELLA AQUA

Photo credit: Pixabay via Pexels.com
Spill. Splurge. Swilker.We splosh. We slop. We slurp.O Bella Aqua! Wondrous water!Today we keep you prisoner,Aerate you not by thrilling plungeCascades where you can shimmer,Shiver, shatter, shine in rainbow,But by brutal blasts of CO2In plastic bottles a-fizz with death,Drunk by our drunkenToxic passing foibles,Seething our sludge of poisonBack to Mother Ocean.
As river we pollute youWith our casual cast-off,Our heaving landfillShores up sea defencesAgainst the tide of taintWe've boiled and brewed,Seeping and leachingThrough the thirsty land.Casual we jerk the tapTo drain your flood and flowAt every blindfold whim of wastefulness.
Bless your primordial founts and fonts,Your chuckling wellsprings,Mirrors of genesis,That we once honouredAs our liquid life,Vital as breath,We lapped with silence on our lips.
Instead we have abandonedYour secret sacred surgingTo nodding donkeysAnd the fissures of frack.

SORRY SUN

GET OUT OF YOUR MIND

IMBOLC 2019

Snowdrop melts into glass-crisp swirl.
Spring stutters
Under silver tresses
Of birch. Leant
Against the flaking bark,
Chilblain wrinkled,
Old one stoops
Arthritic with her
Dowager's hump,
Cradling the bridal bursting
In her lap,
Where the edge of thaw
Stains daylight
With its fluttering storms
Of crocus and inclemency.

She lifts her aged fingers
To the tent's sagged roof
To shed the snowfall
While she croons
Songs of weasel and of hare.
Earth's scald of inner friction
Too far beneath to warm
This refugee, this home-lost.
From temporary kitchens,
Soup pans
Nourish with blessings
Ladled into her bowl,
Whose simmering surface
Reflects the face of an angel.

In her arms, the youthful shoot
Still sheathed in silence,
Stirs and hears the lapwing
Curling and kiting
Through the wheeling wafers
Of persisting winter.

CLIMACOPHOBIA

Photo credit & thanks to:  eberhard grossgasteiger from Pexels
(Climacophobia: a fear of climbing stairs)

Playing statues at the apex of the pinnacle
Of the top of the 'big' slide,
At watering eye-level
With the trunks of poplars.
Except I'm not playing.
Behind me, below me, bump and shove,
Other kids wait-not-waiting their turn,
Impatient to glide back down the shining
Ribbon of glissando,
The squealing slither
Coasting casual on belly or bum.

But there is this trembling 
Stopper in the bottleneck.

I stoop frozen. Jelly leggy. Sweaty.

On some school trip, half way up
Cathedral, windmill, tower, steeple,
Sickening spirals
Jostlers barging,
Climbing contrariwise
Over pocked medieval puddles
In slippery stone.

Or those awful public spaces
Gaping mockery of open plan
Steps with no vertical risers,
Daylight jeering between each tread,
While I steel myself
To bumble down on buttocks,
Blushing cheeks ablaze.

Don't go up one rickety rung
If you daren't come down again.
Life lessons learnt.

Down was always the killer,
The handrail from hell,
The hanging back,
The stepping off
Into cataclysmic abyss,
Vertigo's tunnel
Spinning and pitching.
She who hesitates is lost
In fathomless undercrofts,
Cellars and cryptic crypts.

Bless you, O bless you, terra firma!
I live to kiss the ground.

HOWLS OF HOME

FIRE & FALL