I sat long
the bleached and broken branch
sacred as any stiff-backed pew
stillness was learned
as dusk became
a gauzy sky-robe of constellations
I expected silence
to be peace
some sort of hard-earned joy
but instead I wept
as silence offered me
my own star-shrouded heart
Writing prompts – they occupy a slightly sado-masochistic place in my writing life. They can be agonising to engage with, but can be so very helpful too. Like a good stretch when you first wake up, they can function as a way of loosening up the imagination and writing muscles, and sometimes a wee gem emerges unexpectedly too.
I came across Vox Poetica a little while back and started to follow them on social media – who wouldn’t love their mission of bringing poetry into the everyday?! They run an occasional series of writing prompts and I recently responded along with several others. I called my own poem “Blue Music” but click on this link here and you will be able to check out the original prompt and the other very varied responses. The idea for my own response came from someone commenting about having synaesthesia, and going on a little research journey to consider what it may be like to have senses interacting in a way different to my own, and using a bit of poetic licence to play with those thoughts.
I see blue
you hear low, swaying melody
and together
we move
slow dancing
in cool night air
Stars light the way
but we close our eyes
against their silver
and our bodies
they move so slow
together
Blue music
slow dancing
under starlight
© Vicky Allen 2018
This is another piece produced in response to a writing prompt at a recent writers’ group. I loved this one in particular because the prompt was to choose a line from Wendell Berry’s wonderful poem “How to be a Poet (to remind myself)”, and in ten minutes draft a piece of work from that line. I chose the line “accept what comes from silence”, and lingered in those words. Silence has been an important discipline for me this year and so it was perhaps not surprising that it was that particular line which drew me in.
I sat long
the bleached and broken branch
sacred as any stiff-backed church pew
stillness was learned
as dusk became
a gauzy sky-robe of constellations
I expected silence
to be peace
some sort of hard-earned joy
but instead I wept
as silence offered me
my own star-shrouded heart
© Vicky Allen 2018
I am part of a fantastic writers’ group in Edinburgh, and it has been one of the quiet joys of my life to be connected to this group of gifted and encouraging people. We meet most months if we can, share what we are working on, and try a couple of writing exercises together. It can be so scary to stretch your writing muscles with others, but having a group that is committed to encouragement and mutual support makes it easier for us all to be brave. At a recent gathering we did a writing exercise from the prompt “a favourite place”, and spent ten minutes seeing what we could come up with. This came from that prompt:
breathe in
breathe out
slanted sun
warm dust motes
rising
paint tubes scrape, squeak
quiet clatter of lids
soft squelch
palette and brush
focus
breathe in
breathe out
bristles circle wetly
blues and greens and swirling greys
pause
brush sweep
wrist arc
chemical smell
colour flood
forming
breathe in
breathe out
© vicky allen 2018
Nearly everyday when I’m out walking across the fields and hills and beaches here I find somewhere under my feet a bit of blue and white pottery – the photo shows some of my pocketed finds. I often wonder at the sheer proliferation of them; what was going on that so much blue and white pottery was getting smashed up in fields?!
Walk any path
in any direction
around the old field fringes
across the wide wild beaches
and there are traces,
for those who look
of ones who came before
I have collected traces
as I go, walking any path,
broken bits of cup and plates
blue and white fragments of forgotten meals
fractured from their whole
and turned over in the soil
sown for some later renewal
I turn over these broken things now
with curious fingers
wondering how they came to be lost
and found
was this once a plate, a cup
a common meal passed between friends?
The everyday mystery of the forgotten
Any path
in any direction
leads to broken things
blue and white memories
trodden down beneath careless feet
but beauty breaks the dirt
and brokenness becomes shared
© Vicky Allen 2018
with sudden fanfare
spring’s sharply opened curtains
are a longed-for surprise
the light streams in
the dark scatters.
even-handed
day and night spread
celestial balance
the vernal welcome mat
an open door to coming days.
lion and lamb
are quiet today
a truce
their faces turning
to the March sun.
© Vicky Allen 2018
For Lent I decided to participate in The Silence Challenge, a commitment to seek silence for 5 minutes of each day. It’s been such an interesting and hopeful experience to practice a spiritual discipline in an accessible, attainable way. At first I began by setting the timer on my phone to ping after 5 minutes so I didn’t need to think about how much time had passed – I knew I would be alerted when 5 minutes was up. I have loved the sacredness of it – the setting-asideness of the time. Early on in the challenge I did some reading about silence in “The Spiritual Discipline Handbook” (Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Intervarsity Press 2015) and came across this phrase :
There is nothing you need to do here
….and breathe….This one phrase floored me. Choosing silence for just 5 minutes a day is choosing a space where there is nothing required of me, other than to stay within silence. More and more I have come to experience silence as that sense of space, a wide open place where I can simply be. In that space unexpected things can happen.
I have found thoughts flitting like anxious birds looking for somewhere to alight
I have found the quiet emergence of nature’s liturgy
I have found the dark hollow ache I have been trying to ignore
I have found companionship with a loving God who looks into the hollow with me
I have found tears coming unbidden as I cradle a cup of tea
I have found stillness
I have found peace
As time has gone by I have stopped relying on my phone timer, discovering at first that when I decided to leave the period of silence the 5 minute space still held. My internal clock told me that that was enough for now. Then I gradually found my internal clock stretching the time out, until today I emerged from a period of silence after 10 minutes. I suppose it’s a sort of muscle-memory, and my “silence-muscles” are gradually being strengthened. Or perhaps it’s more like eating after a long period of illness and poor appetite – at first it’s hard to eat very much, but little by little you find your appetite improves and you are ready to be properly nourished again. And yes, I think practising silence is above all else proving to be a source of deep spiritual nourishment. I just didn’t know how hungry I was until I had that first small taste…
You are probably wondering why I am writing about it here, on a so-called poetry blog. I think I’m trying to find a way to gather together the emerging fruit of this season. Perhaps poetry will help me to understand it more deeply in time.
Today I held my heart in my hands
and walked into the wide open space before me
not looking for you
not exactly
but I found you anyway
and you took my little heart
you cupped it in your hands like it was an injured bird
whispering words of consolation
then
you stretched out your arms
and my ragged heart flew free
I have loved discovering the ancient story of Thenew, the princess of the Gododdin tribe. You can find out more about her story in a beautiful recent publication, “East Lothian Folk Tales”. Thenew was sentenced to death by her father, King Loth, for defying him and refusing to marry the man he had chosen for her. The story has lots of twists and turns, but it is a tale of abandonment and miracles and hope in the darkest of places. After miraculously surviving her first death sentence Thenew is then cast adrift in the Firth of Forth in a small coracle, pregnant as the result of being raped by her rejected and angered suitor. This part of the story haunts me. How was she feeling? Was she so caught up in sheer survival and fear that she could give no thought to her father’s great rejection of her? What were her thoughts towards her unborn child? Thenew had become a Christian during this period – perhaps that was something else that her father was angered by? Thenew once again miraculously survives her second death sentence, when, after a dark night adrift and the tiny vessel taking on water with every wave she finally falls asleep…only to wake to a new day when the coracle reached the far shores of Fife. Thenew gave birth to her son that morning and they were cared for by the local community and the holy man St Serf. Thenew’s son was named Kentigern, or more intimately Mungo. Mungo grew to become a monk like St Serf, and went on to become the patron saint of Glasgow.
I have been thinking about Thenew as she faced what she must have thought was her last night. These three short drafts of poems are the beginnings of my explorations of her powerful story.
Thenew Speaks To Her Unborn Son
If this is our last night
then we shall be cradled
by the surging sea
the stars, the moon
sing silence over us
tonight
If this is our last night
then we shall let this wind
scour us
be known by it entirely
have no fear of its chill breath
tonight
If this is our last night
then we shall welcome
seal and bird and fish
they keep company with us
and this wild earth is not a friendless place
tonight
If this is our last night
we shall be held
in creation’s embrace
you shall be held
in my womb, your only home
tonight
If this is our last night
let wind and wave
the stars, the moon
write on our hearts
that love does not abandon us
tonight
The Moon Speaks To The Waves
Be calm tonight
let us conspire with our maker
to bring balm, peace
Be still tonight
let us bear our traveller
to a safer shore
Be quiet tonight
let us invite the wild ones of the sea
to tame her wounded soul
Be kind tonight
let us be a love-lullaby
to her dear unborn one
Be calm tonight
let us conspire with our maker
to carry her home
Mungo Speaks To His Mother
You held me first
my small fist clasping
your one outstretched finger.
You wrapped me
in your skirts,
wet and cold as they were,
but our only warmth.
You curled me close to your breast
and you sheltered
my fresh-born skin
my down-soft hair
from the cool morning breeze.
You did not know the night
would give way to a new dawn
but when it came you dawned anew with it.
So now
I hold you last.
Your first-born
has been kept warm
by your love
has been kept safe
within your wisdom
has thrived
through your courage.
You did not know
how many days
would follow your longest night
but as light fades
I hold you fast
and relinquish you to hope.
© Vicky Allen 2018
My mum died just a few weeks ago after a short illness. We remembered her at a service of thanksgiving last Friday and I read this poem there. Writing the poem was a joy and a challenge – reading it to all our gathered family and friends even more so. However, I am glad to have it as a way of remembering Mum and I’m publishing it here as a way of holding on to that memory.
Home was once
a tumbling tribe of you
stacked and packed
into that wee house
so many brothers and sisters
all folded into one family
And then
home became
the two of you together
forever fixing up your not-quite-dream home
for a knock-down price
every new neighbourhood
a new possibility
Soon
home looked like
us four, family
finding our future
in every unpacked box
and planting our roots
in rich hopeful soil
Eventually
home was found
coming back to you for hasty visits and holidays
kettle on before the door closed
biscuits and board games and brilliant stories
you both stacked and packed us back
into your own wee house
We know now
home is what you made
every day
with secret skill and kindness
we know too
you have finally found your own way
Home.
the light is halfway here
solstice and equinox
thread a slender ribbon
between winter and spring
and in the half-light
all I know for certain
is the darkness cannot quite forget
how the flower turns to the light
bring on the joy blog 