Waiting

 

Whisper it but softly: Christmas is almost here…there is a stillness to be found in the spaces between the panic and preparations. This poem is perhaps a  movement towards Advent-stillness.

waiting

in the deep silence

pulsing between our words

 

waiting

in the heavy dark

laying light to siege

 

waiting

in the lonely ache

lingering behind laughter

 

we wait for Christmas

 

waiting

for silence to reveal

a peal of hope

 

waiting

for dark to yield

vanquished in light’s joy

 

waiting

for loneliness to dissolve

banished in a blaze of love

 

we wait for Christmas

we wait for Emmanuel

we wait for the world to change

 

we wait

we wait

we wait

 

© Vicky Allen 2017

 

 

The Way of the Carpenter

Another one from the Beatitudes series. I think this will be the final one I post. (I have another two, but have fallen out of love with them since I wrote and shared them at the poetry reading in Leeds a few weeks back! Does anyone else ever feel like that about their work?)

 

When the carpenter invites you to his feast

there will always be room at the table

for those who are empty and long to be filled

for those who are broken and long for wholeness

 

There will always be space

for the grieving to weep

and the lonely to find friends

 

When the carpenter invites you to his feast

the doors to the house are flung wide, the table fills and fills

and still there is always room for you

the carpenter is always building a bigger table.

 

© Vicky Allen

 

An Entreaty

In an indifferent universe

shall my voice collapse in the vacuum?

 

I call upon the sky

bear witness to me

I call upon the earth

remember me with love

I call upon the waters

cover me with grace

 

Then all is still

until the wild goose flies

 

 

 

© Vicky Allen 2017

I need the night

I’ve been thinking a lot about light recently, and even did a social media collective mindmap of all of the resonances of that word. The responses were amazingly varied and often profound. Which got me to thinking somehow about how I struggle to sleep as well during the summer time, because it is light for so long here in Scotland (and we aren’t even in the far north). And so, this: a short, grateful meditation on what night means to me.

 

I need the night

blessing and balm

of the softening sky

as the day folds its hands, finished.

 

The soothing weight

across scratchy eyes

a mother’s hand, resting

sounds still to reverent hush

 

Velvety animal-black with

trails of stars summoning silence

moon cycles moving heaven and earth

to bring sleep

 

I need the night

long, dream-hazed, quiet.

How else to welcome

another dawn?

 

© Vicky Allen 2017

 

 

 

Growing

Scottish Book Trust ran this fantastic public project recently called “Nourish” – you can find out more about it here. I was one of the many who contributed pieces of writing which can still be found on their website. This is the poem I came up with:

 

You fed me with words

morsel by morsel

fledgling food

tiny teaspoons of invalid broth

whetting my appetite

for an alphabet future.

 

At first

I have been told

words would choke me

I couldn’t swallow one whole

a sentence was too-long spaghetti

a paragraph, a recipe for heartache.

 

But you fed me with words

and soon,

because I was famished,

I learned to chew

to taste

to savour the subtle possibilities.

 

One word, two, three

appetite teasers

I needed more, richer, deeper

feasts and banquets of writing

my food, my air

my universe of letters.

 

You fed me with words

and now,

now I am learning

to grow my own garden of delights

where I root in the soil of my soul

and prepare a table for you.

 

© Vicky Allen 2017

Rorschach Skies

I wrote this today, after waking up to the news of the horrendous and cruel attack in Manchester. Our world is a strange, wonderful and terrible place. A special, beautiful night for me was turning into an unimaginable horror for so many just a couple of hundred miles away, and I was, of course, oblivious.

 

There were Rorschach skies last night

deep clouds spreading across the blue-black.

I drove the straight way home,

Heart full

As I played in the garden of my imagination.

 

The slick sliver of road stretched beyond the horizon

Headlight smudges glowed through rain

And the sky, the sky

With those clouds spilling darkness

Like ink on wet paper.

 

How was I to know, last night,

Going home?

Those Rorschach skies

I read them all wrong.

Night never comes the same way again.

 

© Vicky Allen 2017

 

I wrote this today, after waking up to the news of the horrendous and cruel attack in Manchester. Our world is a strange, wonderful and terrible place. A special and beautiful night for me was turning into an unimaginable horror for so many just a couple of hundred miles away.

Taxonomy

A new piece. I’m not sure it’s quite finished, but I’d love to hear what you think. I belong to a fantastic writing group but only get along to it very infrequently. Last night was one of them, and I decided to be brave and share it there. I feel I still have work to do on it but can’t quite figure out where that will happen. I’ve read it aloud to myself a LOT which often helps to find areas that don’t flow. Maybe I will come back to it in a couple of weeks and it will be glaringly obvious what I need to change…

 

At first every walk is a silence,

A frustrated blank.

I don’t know the names

just – that plant, that bird, that tree.

 

I classify it all according to beauty:

That flower, an overnight wonder,

I have no name to give it other than love.

 

The birds that explode out of the marsh grass like fleeing exclamations

I can only call them joy.

 

Then there are the trees

Who, like old friends whose true names are forgotten,

Have instead the private joke, the intimate reference point:

lightning tree

koala branch

the trunk that breathes.

 

I eventually learn:

Rosebay willowherb

Little Egret

Wood-sorrell

 

But the old taxonomy remains intact:

Beauty

Wonder

Joy

Love.

 

© Vicky Allen 2017

 

 

 

 

 

This is how we live: one breath at a time

This is one of those “I’m not quite sure what this is” pieces of writing. Anyone else do those? It’s been lying around among my drafts for a while, but after a bit of twiddling and paring away I think this is as far as I can go for now. It came, obviously, from a time when I was having a bit of a word with myself about being less afraid to take chances (which is partly what this whole blog business is for me), and from feeling for people I had met who had boxed themselves in with fear.

How many breaths do I take each day?

And how many days have been mine to live?

This is a mere calculation of averages, a simple multiplication.

But how many breaths, then, have I withheld?

How many times did I inhale, not daring to breathe out into that next scary moment?

How many times did I press my own pause button, stop moving forwards?

I’m holding my breath now, chest bursting, lungs straining.

Where do I dare go from here?

Forwards, into possibility beyond today?

Forwards, into danger beyond my courage?

We can’t reclaim yesterday’s breath

But still

This is how we live, one breath at a time

 

Copyright © Vicky Allen 2017