Hand to Earth by Rebecca Brewin

Hand to Earth by Rebecca Brewin, Index, Writing, At the Coalface, Masters, Yoga, Retreats, Workshops, Info/Contact

2024, 27th May Writing

WRITING FROM BEATRIX AND ME A co-created piece of writing from Beatrix and me following 'Meet me at the Threshold' - our May 2024 Yoga & Art Ossom retreat…(read more)

2024, 5th May Writing

LE MAL DU PAYS think we hardly knew what April was that year Or had any sense of the harness of time It moved like an old cog like the thud of horses snorting through white fog while we stood stock still All I could do with this was to come and go Making some daily vigil at this swinging gate…(read more)

2024, 4th February Writing

THE GATE As dusk fell, the colours of the hills would tremble behind a purple haze Light would reverberate, Like it was gradually joining hands with sound, And the song of birds, nameless to me…(read more)

2024, 29th January Writing

THE FRENCH OAK Finally the mist settled downwards towards ground rippling like a dropped veil from where all morning…(read more)

2023, 12th July Writing

THE WISDOM OF SKIN Bodies are scattering across the space Cellular forms swimming in a microscope Tuned and orchestrated by plucking strings…(read more)

2023, 22nd June Writing

THE CHARIOT O phoenix that glows on the high branch You are the spark that calls us into the depths And to travel there we need a chariot To take us through the breaking waves…(read more)

2023, 8th May Writing

UNTITLED This 'gestalt of a person', seen in a face, reminds me of how icons are used for worship and prayer, faces shining out of a hinterland that acknowledges the cycles of experience…(read more)

2023, 23rd April Writing

THE STONE And by Easter morning The sky was aflame It looked flamboyant Drenched by the night's ceremony Drunk on the heat of the vigil fire As if with the tablet of moon It had swallowed its colours… (read more)

2023, 26th March Writing

EQUINOX That spring day in a small space not much bigger than a child's hand there was a whole world moving Where the mirror had shed its film of dirt grass was swaying in the blustery wind beyond the beams of the old barn… (read more)

2023, 7th March Writing

NOT ONLY THAT The dark soil closes around the fragile roots of the tree Like cupped hands folding around the words of a secret prayer Some times our prayers are like this Our words are fragile and we don't know what to say Some times it is difficult to know why light or love might seem to disappear…(read more)

2023, 7th February Writing

UNTITLED The moon was resting her haloed head In a black lace collar of tropical plants Which seemed to be climbing the walls Like the secret ladder of Romeo Reaching up past the lit windows As if wanting to touch her glow With their tentative stems and leaves…(read more)

2022, 24th December Writing

HIDDEN LIGHT There were three of them Animal like in the half light No sight No sound No speech Three angels crouching under the bent buttressed shadow of wall Behind the railings and steps flanked by figures carved in stone I found them hiding behind the church all glowing in the gathering dusk…(read more)

2022, 29th Septmeber Writing

WINTER TRAIN that winter train, the warm red carriage pressing like a surge of blood through the ice-cold Dutch landscape, leaving a trail of smoke, like breath on glass, whilst all outside was snow and blue, (read more)

2022, 8th April Writing

AFTER THE STORM Roaming out into the tail ends, her winds still puffing through cheeks of clouds, Everywhere blowing in rhythmic force, bowing and lifting as in a trance And things are scattered up and down; branches, feathers, bulbs only just burst out She shakes off this trail of debris in her wake; it snakes through the grass, (read more)

2022, 1st January Writing

RELATIONSHIP* I journey to its frontier a landscape of salt-faded signs Chaos here... not land nor the embrace of ocean... more like where the waves keep breaking with constant infidelity Rhythmic cycles that are unpredictable in their pull and ebb (read more)

2021, 21st September Writing

THE MEDICINE OF PARADOX To find our innocence is also to find our inner shadows and the experiences of darkness that want to cover it up. The word innocent was described in something I heard recently as a timeless part of our growing selves that gets uncovered when a sense of self returns after a suffering, illness, trauma. It felt familiar to this summer. And from an unnameable before-land, where the words 'any expression of innocence attracts an opposite, the forces of the opposite' help to make sense of a year beyond words. (read more)

2020, 7th October Writing

EAST WOODLANDS, SOMERSET The sun had dropped into the heart of the woods Each trunk and stalk was carrying its yellowy gold Onto a scattered letting-go-of-leaves now like flames Now like the fins and scales of a beached red fish… (read more)

2020, 15th August Writing

TWO TELEPHONE BOXES AT FINDHORN BAY I know this might be an old fashioned way to talk Our modes of communication may seem outdated And I go crimson and strangely rigid at the thought Of the street life we once served for a rough rattle of coins But perhaps this is our ship that has finally come in Some force has washed our battered boat upon this shore… (read more)

2019, 21st June Writing

WEIGHT ON WATER I imagine now you felt the scarcity, Like a word prematurely uttered on stage, Creeping to the edge of the cliff face, Craning neck to look down upon that swaying body of green, Its white and grey skirts pulling, pushing, crashing The fallen frame of your beautiful black dog Again and again against the rocks....(read more)

2019, 19th June Writing

FATHER WHO ART Yes you struck me from your inadequacy, so there are times when we all feel loveless, and I see you too some times as a little bow-legged boy, a motherless child...(read more)

2019, 17th June Writing

OPENINGS Wound, I tap your size through the digits of my fingers and thumb; two round openings enveloped in soft letters like the edge of broken skin...(read more)

2019, 16th June Writing

FOREIGN SONG I walk the line of of a high-wire fence like a lesson in a book Park bowling green church graveyard playground school On the other side are gravestones toppled by a ground ruptured by time And I am learning I do not understand the topography of this place....(read more)

2019, 12th June Writing

HERE AND THERE Falling onto the hill, the cobbled hill; the air of factories and weavers who trotted on these cobbles;
it is father, father is round each corner; this is in the history and our father is around every corner. Singer's stone statues of altars and churches and museums and judder of sewing machines; the mason's hammer cracks against the thud of wool sacks thumping to the pavements....(read more)

2019, 11th June Writing

RIVER CROSSING Blue black lashes of some distant branches Lift a lid to a sky spilling spit and tears Letting loose a smudge of wings Washed by the wind...(read more)

2019, 7th June Writing

BALLAD OF THE FOREST FLOOR It is as though some gathering up of cry Lifts then into the thrust of trunks of trees Through the gaps and grace of the branches And in the canopy this draw runs through me...(read more)

2019, 5th June Writing

BLUE FIRE Your hurt words Stick my bones Drag a crime From blue fire A finger traces Through my dust The stone stays In your hand The first hurl Falls like love...(read more)

2019, 28th May Writing

MERIDIAN in the heart of the foot just under where the bones congregate into the valley of the mid-foot there lies a pyramid-like collection of bones that form the arches of the foot the three cuneiforms the navicular the cuboid...(read more)

2019, 24th May Writing

FROM THE SCHOOL STEPS How beneath two rutted pillars the stone steps sagged, pillars that stood wearily - parental monoliths guarding doors whose studded wood made an inhospitable meal of welcome, floors flagged with a strange hush or guilt that bleached the eyes, lucky to be here...(read more)

2019, 23rd May Writing

SHEPPARDS BARTON The front portholes and side-scuttles of the old stone terrace opposite my writing room
had been permanently closed for however many months I'd been looking...(read more)

2019, 22nd May Writing

FOOT WASHING But it is something else to find forgiveness how it comes by a route that circles outwards folding over itself before it returns layer by layer through the ground I heard this from you who had been there as water coiled from the jug and over your feet into the bowl...(read more)

2019, 22nd May Writing

LIFE THROUGH A CURVED MIRROR I am watching a morphing circle of darkly-dressed figures as they flock like a murder of crows on benches by the town library; through the window the giant-sized lens of the book-lined walls...(read more)

2019, 21st May Writing

LEAVES BLOWN ON THE FENCE The sudden gust flipped and sprang the coloured leaves, pinning them in rows onto the chain-linked fence, like a display of doll's clothes or old-fashioned brooches...(read more)

2019, 18th May Writing

WE ARE LIGHTHOUSES I want to inscribe a letter to you in the way that you are not here; letters that speak like cave drawings that wholesome kind of absence; lasting and notched as jagged notes carved into a trunk or bench...(read more)

2019, 17th May Writing

WRITING IN THE DUST Ground zero may sound like a place of ice But when you go there you realise it's a fire Some saint spoke of a thorn in the flesh It is the prickle that burns your heart to jump It's the spiked chalice that tilts you to the edge Where your skins break to fall you into fervour...(read more)

2019, 17th May Writing

DIPTYCH: BEFORE AND AFTER THE FALL before they were all growing beards all the time growing beards talk was fire and light blamed the Jews for defects energy was sealed in his body Islam is the world outside for all things unjust and hateful and then the Americans pairs of shoes set outside jumpers wearing keys to paradise...(read more)

2019, 13th May Writing

PENUMBRA A stifled hammock swings to and fro Its colours flickering under orange trees It creaks and swings in tropical winds On a numinous line of shade and shore Bodies dip and dive along this line Hiding and languid under humid leaves...(read more)

2019, 10th May Writing

MY ASH CROSS leaning lean as in lent the fastening approach of light lengthening days hallow of Spring charcoal smudge across my brow stench of incense and a threshold to cross fresh with memory the garden being that bluster of arrival when all is raw and uncertain the soil and buds...(read more)

2019, 9th May Writing

RESUME ON THE ESSENCE OF VIRGINIA WOOLF The Waves, Kew Gardens, The Voyage Out; her writing as though carving out her own destiny; the details of her fragile beginning, the cloister of her artistic life and friendships, her watery death. They are archetype; over-identified, lacking in breathing space, like her drowning...(read more)

2019, 5th May Writing

WRITING MY WOLF OUT OF THE WOOD there are days when the world stands so still and so silent as though a foretoken of one single stand-alone Word such as Out or Come or Wood this was a day like that having walked all the way through the maze of trunks and swaying arms I was out of the wood into the wind standing at its tree-line...(read more)

2019, 26th January Writing

EQUINOX POEM Let us spread out into the fresh of this day Run into to the field of our furtherest smile Here in the open warm sleeves of Equinox May envy, shame no longer green at our back...(read more)

2019, 22nd January Writing

WINTER PASSAGE A fork in the road appears in the mist It is a knife edge to my mind The parting comes towards me Like the front of a ship Breaking in as through a wave The force has to crack in It must because choice is free...(read more)

2019, 21st January Writing

EPIPHANY AT BONNEVAUX The morning throws fingers of light Softly tickling through the tree trunks The branches are moving like hands Weaving shimmers of silken threads They vibrate and sustain in symphony Strumming the wood as keys on a piano Each note presses us to turn and look To let go of words and drop our reading To reach and take down an instrument Wrapped in swaddling waiting to sing...(read more)

2019, 18th January Writing

SENSE OF SCALE Like a pair of hands scanning Bach on a piano We move synchronised between scales We draw close the mirror strikes up its shard It cuts and draws blood it hurts like a birth But it is through this canal of wound That we fly out and make sense of the world It channels us out and about onto the highways The byways where we pour the blood as wine Pollock-like splashes of red into the skins Into the boats crossing the lake to the place of prayer...(read more)

2019, 15th January Writing

RED DRESS My red dress says it's calling for a poem I guess you might know what I mean If you've ever had the cheek dare I say To swan into a shrine in brightest beak red Sylvia Plath wrote a poem about tulips Their lips turn from innocence into animals Wild they screech around like a fire engine Racing through the nun-pure petals of her sheets...(read more)

2019, 13th January Writing

MOON OVER THE WALL The faithful ever-changing face of the moon Peers over the ivy-laced wall I am caught in that tissue called loneliness Strangled tight by its tenuous crawl Its hands are both sown with obscurity Its toes are then far too direct Like a falsified creature of nature Its voice tells me what now to expect...(read more)

2019, 13th January Writing

LINES ON A PAGE These words, though dark etchings on the white page, Are each in potential little carriers of light; I thought I'd know better, one of my age, Yet necessity bore me into this night. A word is a star, already burned out, Before it reaches my such fleeting eye; Then it's mind to which I must lend my shout, That robs and twists what belongs to the sky....(read more)

2019, 10th January Writing

SURFACING Early spring pressed in upon us all Its quickening light cold and sharp Rushing to our senses still in winter sleep The lake was frozen but we all fell in We were piercing the ice in a small boat Holding the idea we're all in the same boat And then it toppled and we all tumbled We sunk down into the reedy bed Blinded by weeds and murky water Shards of winter rays just enough to see That we were each a swimming search Looking for each other in the dark...(read more)

2019, 9th January Writing

POEM OF SPRING II Look how the conduit From source to well Has softened her tongue, Opened her lion mouth, Corroded her limey lip. She drinks from the ebb, The clear-flowing waters, With mud earth mingled, And feeds the world With what she releases. Under church towering spire, She is bypassed, forgotten. Yet her mossy thighs sing Where sacred stones fall Into the gritty street...(read more)

2019, 3rd January Writing

POEM AT STANSTED AIRPORT The stars say It is high time To stop climbing That now is about Falling right in... Swimming deep Beneath the play Of searching To this place Where the eyes Are clouds of Soft unknowing Where the soul Opens to its own Necessity to go Share its thirst...(read more)

2018, 29th December Writing

LOVE LESSON Red noise day Thank the gods Nature teaches us This mad dance Of moving target We b r e a k rules
we M a k e mischief Trees shout out Clapping loudly Spilling red joy On the silent hill Up the scudding sky… (read more)

2018, 24th December Writing

THREADS Absent one, with whom I sew stuttered Scribbles, stitched in buttons on a screen, I think you have entered my nature library; The autumn-soft leaves got ruffled Into beautiful squirly windswept patterns To blur my still-hardened horizons. It was later in the library of work, Getting my threads in order, I encounter a man called Henry. Enter Henry, his own threads trailing At his trainers, a mess of bleached hair Under a beanie, jeans royal blue and frayed.… (read more)

2018, 22nd December Writing

SLIDE OF PREJUDICE This sentence that drums And amplifies me through to bone, Locks hairline to thigh and toe,
Draws my false body floating From the lake into the surface world Is surely enough madness I can do no more; To reach down towards you Or up to them or him or theirs… (read more)

2018, 21st December Writing

TALKING WITH YOU My frame may be fragile, but it is tough; It sounds deep on the pavement as I flow to meet you. Entering, my face lights up at the table of hope, A flame flying from heels, entering hips, freed through my ears..… (read more)

2018, 18th December Writing

LIKE MY MOTHER'S FACE It still trammels my dreams, leaving you, my eight-year-old child, In that stiff, forsaken hospital bed, under the foreign watch of nurses; The ward a haunted train tunnel, their night-station a ghosted engine; Your room of hungry isolation, an abandoned, broken carriage.… (read more)

2018, 18th December Writing

ACEDIA* I watch raindrops caught in netted patterns on the window They are wintry bright faces wearing little black caps Today in the wet streaming streets it is difficult to see Who is who all hooded and shielded against the bleakness Every year this happens across the northern world A dark bonnet encases Earth like the shell of a conker Each year seeds offer up their life to the soil And there a great and erotic emptying occurs… (read more)

2018, 14th December Writing

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER Letters light up like bioluminescence Against a darkening afternoon sky; It is November, I am walking the wet world, With these tendrils of dangling words Drawing saline pools round my squinting autumn eyes. We are questioning whether a thing has inherent value in and of itself, even if it is never beheld… (read more)

2018, 11th December Writing

BOTTOM LINE I do not want to steal your eyes To trail these words upon this page Or bend your ears to understand The scent with which I see the stars It's not my way to throw your mind To twist and bump to fit my flow Or fish from where your river turns To catch what's yours to make it ours…(read more)

2018, 7th December Writing

RED HERRING Scarlet scales skip around our words Like jumping flesh in a whirlpool The red herring swims to the centre Pinkening the pull of our sense We are drawn to its pungent scent Like moistened dogs' noses This does not really weigh up Something about its smell is false…(read more)

2017, 19th November Writing

POEM FOR DELFI During a wintery, rain-swept circular journey around Germany I’ve found such amazing friendship, warmth and connection of heart to ﬁnish a poem about my trip to Delﬁ… (read more)

2017, 25th October Writing
OTHERWISE* I have met ones Or other wise two Who see the world As though through My other pair of eyes And here dwells The gaze-lifting might Of moving mountains The chasms deep blue Of the teeming ocean… (read more)

2017, 18th September Writing
SALT This new poem Salt is one that I shared as part of a poetry and music evening in an autumnal candlelit garden in Frome. Each line of the poem is an acronym of SALT, inspired by journeys in France and Greece this summer, which together make up all the mineral grains of wisdom we need to be as salt in the world… (read more)

2017, 12th September Writing

THE MOLE STORY — AN ELEGY TO MOLEFULNESS The more I delve and dig, Into the dazzling and dense, Distant and delicate world, The more this not-seeing reveals itself; So much so that today I thought, Why not close your eyes, forever, And simply dive? The smell, taste… (read more)

2017, 9th August Writing

BOUNDLESS This poem was inspired by the non-duality (advaita) retreat I was part of at Kissos in the Pelion with Michael A. Rodriguez and friends. Another attempt to express the learning of living and diving in the liminal… (read more)

2017, 8th August Writing

FLOURISH So my poem below is about questioning, a word that begins with ‘quest’, which is going out into the unknown, with a question we want to ask of the universe. Questioning is such a deep motivation of the human spirit… (read more)

2017, 6th August Writing

A FIELD GUIDE TO GETTING LOST A beautifully crafted reﬂection here on the empowerment of loss and change, how it reconnects us with life… the link to the ancient Greek word ‘psyche’ I ﬁnd fascinating… (read more)

2017, 21st July Writing

NOISE AND SILENCE, GREECE Saturday night there was a huge Greek wedding here in Kissos village. We are in tents on a garden terrace yards away from the village platia; every night, deep into the cooler dark hours, sleep is accompanied by people chatting over honey tsiparo… (read more)

2017, 16th July Writing

SACRAMENT OF A CIRCLE The word sacrament isn’t used much now and mostly has religious connotations. But I’ve been thinking about it in the context of community; for every intentional group of people there is a sacrament, a glue, that holds the members together… (read more)

2017, 25th June Writing

POEM FOR MY MOTHER This dark-fringed little woman is my mum. I’m celebrating from afar in Greece; unbelievably she turned 80 yesterday. She hasn’t changed much really! Gray hairs crept in a few years ago… (read more)

2017, 25th June Writing

THE PICKAXE, KISSOS, GREECE The round house at Kissos is a really beautiful space; all variety of workshops and gatherings, meditation and dialogue happen between its bamboo walls, where the rising and setting sun casts stripy glints and shadows on the ﬂoor… (read more)

2017, 17th May Writing

WORK CAMP AT ANILIO, GREECE Work camp ending at Anilio before our Yoga, Writing & Art begins today. And glad to have a zen shot of me painting this wall! It’s the characteristic lime-wash you see all over Greece, and also has been quite a meditation that got me thinking… (read more)

2017, 11th April Writing

UNLIKE ME A kind of poem, memoir and statement of an evolving feminism and poetic activism rolled into one. And today… there are some unseen peacemakers in the world who, like the artist or the healer… (read more)

2017, 3rd February Writing

POEM OF LA GOMERA My poem of this trip in January 2017 ended up as solid rock-like verses, attempts to convey the feeling of meeting this volcanic frontier, in the landscape and in me. From the meaning of Islas Canarias (island of the dogs), there are little echoes of poets that spirited the experience… (read more)

2016, 8th December Writing

BECAUSE WE ARE ALREADY ROOT* This poem is about darkness and light. The language we attach to these polarities. Actually, in the journey of the soul, to the divine, they are the same. It is the naming that divides them. The poem questions, why do we see light as… (read more)

2016, 14th October Writing

POEM OF EVIA II Walking today, a swathe of shoreline Sprung at me, its stalks giant tall, And still swaying; the feathery grass That we had watched dancing, Brushing against the curve Of July’s pregnant full moon… (read more)

2016, 18th August Writing

POEM OF THE PELION I crossed lands to climb this mountain, And the mountain climbed into me. First, it’s fern shadows ﬂickered at my forehead, Second, it’s pines started their moan-song in my mouth, A breath further, it’s springs were pooling silver in my chest, It’s shoreline nudging through my hips, legs, hair, Mountain foot wetting ﬁrst my feet, then everywhere… (read more)

2016, 18th August Writing

POEM OF EVIA There was too much for-giving For me to write a poem today The sound of the lute Is ringing in my ears And I cannot strike a note Of the old song I know… (read more)

2016, 8th June Writing

THE IRREPLACEABLE Mum, is it because You have been so Not-counting happy To swallow your pride And wing out of your way For so many long long miles That the doctor now says: ‘Your hip needs replacing’ And: ‘Your heart is too big It’s oversized for your body’… (read more)

2016, 31st May Writing

THE MOVING ARCHETYPE A prevailing ‘moving archetype’ of this era is that of the immigrant, the homeless person. We now have these images sealed in our minds and psyche. In spiritual cultures through history the stranger… (read more)

2016, 21st May Writing

WHY I LIKE BUTTERCUPS Jewels of the grass, They are the crowning yellow of yellows. They are not ﬂakey ﬂowers —Cowardice does not lurk in their belly, But a call to dance, to come and knees-up, And a give us your chin up… (read more)

2016, 4th April Writing

NATURE AND THE BODY It has long been understood that the natural world, connection with wild spaces and engagement with what lives and grows in the soil beneath our feet, is good for the human soul… (read more)

2016, 4th April Writing

THE BREAKTHROUGH New birth hurts It cuts through You, discards The old leaf For the new… (read more)

2016, 16th March Writing

ACHILLES HEELS You’re sitting, legs askew On the deck of a boat. Is it the bobbing water beneath your gunnel That is making your cling With hands, skirt, lips, That slightly forced smile? And your feet, Jammed into tight, white, backless sandals, Like the cigarette jammed between your ﬁngers, Portray a woman unsure, unseen, Grasping desperately… (read more)

2016, 18th February Writing

PATTERN OF THE HEART We were traversing the etched-out landscape of Hampstead Heath, In the way that only old friends can; Weathered skins, shielding yet knowing. Maps, outdated in their story, and still showing the way… (read more)

2015, 14th December Writing

GOING TO GROUND II: BITING WINTER’S APPLE It’s winter and my body is shrouded; My spark, I know, ﬂickers thin beneath its cloak. As I ascend and wind up to the gallery, It is as though climbing a tree to get a view. And whilst damp shoppers cling in the marketplace, I am up here, peering on tip-toe into… (read more)

2015, 9th November Writing

MY EKPHRASIS: ART AS A BACKDROP TO A POEM Hello, hello, hello Is there anybody there? The mobile line goes empty, Alive, then wincing to a buzz. There’s a mouth-shaped void In the gap between What’s native and what isn’t… (read more)

2015, 15th July Writing

EDGE IN THE NATURE OF THINGS III Sometimes the ground on which we’ve stood for years — That room, where objects we’ve known rest against its edges, Containing us like signposts on a pilgrimage — That place in nature, where spirit drops our feet So much closer to the grass… (read more)

2015, 11th July Writing

EDGE IN THE NATURE OF THINGS II While once, perusing the life-lines of your face, Its landmarks of grace, failure; pathways of shadow, light, The question lingered, ‘What it is that has brought you salvation?’ I now see this as a telling for your rest bed, your death-bower… (read more)

2015, 20th June Writing

EDGE IN THE NATURE OF THINGS It’s not for me to know why or how That in touching things — This spoon on the work bench, That box on the window-sill, Whilst sifting dusty trafﬁc sounds… (read more)

2015, 20th May Writing

ELEMENTAL WALK The green cocoon of the ﬁeld Carried dew to my eyes yesterday, To my hips and thighs. Was I wandering into some jealous grip Of the One whose cloak and staff Brings me comfort… (read more)

2015, 5th May Writing

SUN SET “To see death is to touch life,” she said, Turning her head to look at him, Turning west, that is, Towards the framed light of a dipping sun… (read more)

2015, 28th January Writing

I TELL THE TREES “To see death is to touch life,” she said, Turning her head to look at him, Turning west, that is, Towards the framed light of a dipping sun… (read more)

2014, 29th August Writing

BONES: A SHORT STORY She came in search of her mother’s bones. By boat, ten days telling tales to the crew about her purpose. This morning she was up at dawn, breakfast bagged, blanketed against the chill, leaving nervously, peacefully the cheap seaside hotel… (read more)

2014, 18th July Writing

THE PLACE OF RESOURCE Seated here, crossed-legged, I am archaic sea creature Clamped fossil-like to a rock, Grafted on the sea’s dark ﬂoor… (read more)

2014, 13th April Writing

WRITE AT NIGHT Back in November last year I was travelling to Greece with my partner and our van was broken into outside a supermarket. It was midday, we were travel-worn and didn’t notice until half an hour down the road. The bags that were snatched contained both of our lap-tops… (read more)

2013, 13th September Writing

AUTUMN POEM I love this treasure of a poem I found by this undiscovered poet of her time (of the 1,800 poems she wrote only 7 were ever published)… and I’ve been contemplating what the modern equivalent might be to ‘put a trinket on’… (read more)

2013, 15th August Writing

SUMMER PILGRIMAGE POEM Self-shelf, shell ﬁsh My clam-side washed by Moon tide, moon-clock Dissolving a tale Of ragged thread Fabric of gut-pearl Shell ﬁsh, sell-ﬁsh Speared off the old block… (read more)

2013, 12th June Writing

I HEARD I heard ‘Let me unburden you.’ ‘Of what?’ I asked. ‘Of yourself.’ The voice was still and small, Mine and yet from the expanse of horizon around me, While the wind ﬂuttered around the corners of the house Like an indecisive ﬂock of crows… (read more)

2012, 11th December Writing

SYMBOL OF PEACE Olive-picking this autumn; Thrashing and stroking the slippery green and black Chocolate-purple fruits From branch to ground, Over and over and over… (read more)

2012, 25th September Writing

UNTITLED “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back — Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one deﬁnitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too… (read more)

2012, 30th June Writing

GREECE POEM Body and words melt, Drowned by sense and sound, And the sea’s blue quell Pulsating and shimmering In the electric air… (read more)

2012, 16th May Writing

A REFLECTION ON HOPE The word ‘hope’ popped up so many times in a literally uplifting conversation I heard on Radio 4 between Jim Al-Khalili and Frances Ashcroft, this year’s winner of the L’Oreal-UNESCO Woman in Science award… (read more)

2012, 13th March Writing

UNTITLED Only the soul knows we grow best in the shadowlands. We are blinded inside of either total light or total darkness, but…ironically, it is in darkness that we ﬁnd and ever long for more light… (read more)

2012, 30th February Writing

MORNING SHRINE Today I awoke With two beings inside me, Billowing apart, Then trying to join. A story evolves From the tugging and sighing… (read more)

2012, 10th February Writing

UNTITLED In shifting ﬂicker on the water The blot of white behind the trees A moment seeing two birds ﬂying Shooting out from grass to sky… (read more)

2012, 8th February Writing

RIVER POEM Dropping now onto the river path, Trees attendant, clad in green; Feet lightened by the layers of leaves, Arms swinging free in woolly sleeves, Water, birds and limbs unfreeze Into the sound of what’s unseen… (read more)

2011, 25th October Writing

UNTITLED The turning of a season, I’m thinking of the beauty of darkening colours and the shadows of autumn.

An astounding but simple little book exploring the shadow side of life is A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly… (read more)

2011, 19th September Writing

WHAT MATTERS IS THE MIND Today someone gave me a calendar of quotations from the late Ajahn Chah. This is one of them, apt I felt for times of ﬂux; the woven joy and sorrow of a disappearing summer and new beginnings… (read more)

2011, 18th August Writing

DEEPER INTO AUTHENTIC ACTION I have no source from these quotes but wanted to share them…“The deeper I go into practice the less I’m prepared to act in ways that diminish my sense of purpose in the world… (read more)

2011, 15th June Writing

INTERIOR SOLITUDE CONNECTS US TO OTHERS I have no source from these quotes but wanted to share them…“The deeper I go into practice the less I’m prepared to act in ways that diminish my sense of purpose in the world… (read more)

2011, 4th April Writing

SERVICE AS JOY I slept and dreamt that life was joy I awoke and saw that life was service… (read more)

2011, 2nd April Writing

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PROTECTION “Committing ourselves to caring for one another and living in a way that is not harmful is the most basic and fundamental protection we can give to and receive from each other. It protects us… (read more)

2009, 2nd December Writing

HAND TO HEART This Christmas, take some time for yourself, to allow the rush to meet your stillness. Find a quiet place to let your soul speak. It’s a gift to yourself, for everything your hands have worked on, created, touched, held, (maybe pushed away) in the past year to catch up with your heart… (read more)

2009, 29th September Writing

WHITE FLOWERS Last night in the ﬁelds I lay down in the darkness to think about death, but instead I fell asleep as if in a vase and sloping room ﬁlled with those white ﬂowers that open all summer, sticky and untidy in the warm ﬁelds… (read more)