Silver Windermere

We're in the Lakes at Low Wood for a little silver honeymoon and this is the view of Windermere from our room. We've swum in that very spot!

Pete gave me Penguin's Poems for Love and it's an incredible book which I'll be reading over the next few days - and beyond - up here in Wordsworth Country.

The poems are all truly wonderful, but here are three which take my breath away

Let me put it this way:
if you came to lay


your sleeping head
against my arm or sleeve,


and if my arm went dead,
or if I had to take my leave


at midnight, I should rather
cleave it from the joint or seam


than make a scene
or bring you round.


There,
how does that sound?


Simon Armitage


Wedding
From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it's like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it's like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it's like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions. . .
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it's like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it's like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.


Alice Oswald


Scaffolding
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;


Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.


And yet all this comes down when the job's done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.


So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be 
Old bridges breaking between you and me


Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.


Seamus Heaney  

Blackberry Time

Back home and poor Benji is ailing so we took him across to Chorlton Meadows, one of his favourite walks. He rallied and his spirits seemed to lift, being back on familiar turf.

By the side of the brook the hedges were laden with blackberries, so I found a bag in my pocket and we filled it in rapid time. Tomorrow we'll get some tasty apples from Unicorn, the organic grocers we're lucky enough to have as our local. I will bake a bramble and apple pie... mmmmm

And here's two blackberry poems to feed our souls

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Seamus Heaney

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks --
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

Sylvia Plath

Mothers' Day

A lovely spring day spent doing this and that. Two of our three children at home, breakfast in bed, roses, tulips, Lady Gaga CD (my kids are quick to pick up hints!), celebratory meal this evening. 

We don't have a swimming pool, but we do have a small pond. This afternoon we cleaned it out for the first time in quite a while - hard work, but intensely satisfying. Sadly, none of the fish survived the harsh winter (or had the heron eaten them all?) but the frogs were fine, hunkered down in the sludge. We got the cleaning done just in time, there is a frog orgy going on out there as the pond refills. Now we'll be able to see the frogspawn develop and there won't be any fish to eat the tadpoles. Ah, the cycle of life!!

Here's a poem by Seamus Heaney to mark the day.

from Clearances 3
(in memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984)
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.


So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives -
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
Seamus Heaney


from Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive, edited by Neil Astley, Bloodaxe.

Digging My Way Out

I am snowed in, so to speak, writing a 6,000 word essay which must be completed and handed in by 4.30 on Monday. There is nothing else for it but to dig, dig, dig until my work is done.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging.  I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner's bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper.  He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf.  Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney

Last Post (2009)

This afternoon we came back home to Manchester, but not until we'd had our last walk for the year/decade on Tynemouth beach. The tide was rolling in, the sea wild again. Today a solitary surfer had decided to try his luck but didn't look as if his heart was in it. 

We visited a favourite haunt - Tynemouth outdoor pool. 

Built in the 1920's, it fell into disuse/was condemned and filled with sand and rocks during the 90's. When the tide is high the waves crash around it in a spectacular fashion. There are thrills and spills dodging the waves as they threaten from over the railings.

Old swimming pools fascinate me, I love the architectural features -

- but the thought of encountering this inlet while swimming underwater both thrills and terrifies me! 

I've seen Youtube footage of people having fun in the pool during its heyday. It's a shame that it's been pensioned off

as I'm sure there are outdoor swimmers aplenty in the North East who'd happily make full use of this facility and build up their resistance to the cold by swimming here!

I've enjoyed taking photos with my phone recently, but the cost of sending them to my blog has started to tot up. I'm going to get a decent camera in 2010 and improve the picture quality and keep costs down.

I want to give the final word for this year to Seamus Heaney. This poem is one of my absolute favourites. I take permission from it to ignore the impulse to reach for the camera sometimes, and  just enjoy the moment!

Happy New Year!!

Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Seamus Heaney
from ‘The Spirit Level’.