Coming To Terms With Change

It is the second day of February. January, never a happy month has dragged itself to the 200 metre line and handed over the baton - February is now doing the running. The days are still dark and cold but there is a promise in the air for which I am thankful. In another couple of months my elder son will make his annual visit home. He no longer lives in Britain and will soon, all being well, have the right of permanent residency in Canada.  I miss him terribly, not because we saw each other that often when he lived here but because I knew that if the going got tough, if there was an emergency, or if I just wanted to, he was just over a two hour drive away: I could leap in the car and drive until I felt the reassurance and safety that is to be found in his bear-hug embrace. Now, he’s an eight hour plane journey away.

My comfort is that he is so clearly happy in this new life he and his wife have chosen. He is about as Canadian as they come - who knew? When we video call he looks great and is full of conversation. They had heavy snow yesterday which he loves; they went to an ice hockey game earlier in the week and today I think he is ice-skating on what he calls a pond and we would call a lake. He knows that his dad and I have done our favourite 10 kms walk this morning and that Whitcombe Church is as beautiful as ever. All this is all good. We each can imagine the other in time and space, feel connected.

In the months leading up to his departure I grieved so much.  At the same time, I was trying to imagine him in this new place and to imagine how we might maintain a closeness on so little physical proximity. I thought a lot about his childhood and how he and his younger brother were together, remembering those times. I think my own experiences as a child who was moving constantly because of my father’s job made me very fearful of this change. Writing poetry got me through. Here’s some of them.

Moon Myth And Motherhood

In the beginning

a single spark   shaved

from the light drifted      down

through the vault of dark sky

into the belly of the waters

grew big     longed again

for the expanse of heaven

became   in its sadness

as luminous as

the opalescent skin of pearls

until the ocean said   go

now the moon rises

back into the night

looks down at the vastness

of the waters

tugs at the sea    can

never quite   let go

A Quantum Theory Of Loss

Your old room is empty, it is a long time

since you inhabited it.

But in the dark I see how the nothing

of your being here fizzes, bursts

with energy and matter that bubbles up

into being and into nothing over

and over again.

I stand in the emptiness of this room

and know that it is full - still-  of

the particles and waves of you,

understand the business of being

present and not present at the same time.

In that empty room you gift me

waves of your being,

all the moments of you,  all your ages,

fizzing and bursting in this quantum foam

of life and time, thought turning nothing

into something.

Heart Of The Matter

In the spare room, under the bed, there is a universe expanding - or imploding -

I am not sure which.      

It gathers itself into delicate clumps of pre-solar grains, lithium and hydrogen

leftover from the bold beginning.

There are particulates in it of your grandmother; of you aged five, aged ten, aged sixteen;         

elemental flakes of a hamster we called Isaac Newton Browne; there is the dust of three cats.

There are tears that have dried and broken down into their constituent parts;

when the universe expands enough - or implodes - I am not sure which,

those tears will become the seas of galaxies far far away, will form oceans of stars.

         

And the breeze from the spare room window ripples across the universe under the bed

and I understand that once the business of nucleosynthesis is done,

everything combustible will combust, and the heart at the centre implode.

I imagine you there

In the afternoons I watch TV -

French-Canadian crime dramas where

in every episode it snows and there are

pine trees, vast emptinesses

punctuated by mountains.

I immerse myself in this new world,

what happens in the dramas is irrelevant .

I watch; imagine you in this landscape,

imagine you moving in it,

living your new life, happy;

imagine you connected to the snow,

the trees, that distant emptiness. Happy.

A Communion With Nature

To the woods, they say, these sons of mine,

aged nine and seven.

We have been before, once

even at night to walk in darkness

with only the moon and the thrill of

our beating hearts for company.

Sometimes I am tempted to give them a

breadcrumb trail, but I think they know

the way home, though if it should happen

they did not and got distracted,

birds might eat the bread.

My heart…my heart at the thought of it.

The pits, they shout and set off running.

It is a ritual they have, communing not so much

with nature as with the spirits of young men

who scrambled up steep sided trenches into war.

They race each other up the slopes,

I scramble and they haul me up the final yards.

Oh, the wild laughter.

My heart…my heart  at the sound of it.

The thread of molecules between us

pulls me after their young legs, the beauty of

knees marked with dirt and algae.

There is a fallen beech tree,

a swallet hole casualty.

The earth between its roots is useful

weaponry, clumps hard as metal;

it is for these they have come.

Chalk and clay grenades are flung

at tree trunk targets, or at the boulder

we are always surprised to find there,

standing sentinel between the heathland

and the wood.

The plosive sound of shattering earth

as the mark is hit matched by the huff and

whoop of their delight. They dance.

My heart…my heart at the sight of it.

This tree has many names and one of them is home

The view from your childhood window

is the Rowan tree.

It is a force of nature, protection

from malevolence and witches’ spells.

Think of it as the traveller’s tree,

it clears the path for the journey.

For Druids it is a portal,

gateway between the here and there.

Pick a berry, dry it, carry it with you

to where you must go now.

When you arrive look for the dogberry tree,

you will know it when you see it.

Press your palm upon its trunk,

think about the berry in your pocket,

fruit from the sorbus aucuparia

grown in our garden across the sea.

Hold that berry in your hand,

it will be surer than a compass.