CHALK - a meditation on place and identity

1.

It fits well in my hand
Lacking sharp edges
It is warm and dry, holding the heat of the earth
As I turn it around it becomes smoother
Leaving traces of a fine, white powder
That fills the lines in my hand
The life line
the head line
the heart line


2.

This piece of chalk has no grain
I cannot tell how it lay in the ground
How it was built up layer by layer of once living organisms.
Creatures imprinted with a memory
Of a time passing through the Cretaceous period
A time of hills and mountains rising from seas
Ending with extinction.


3.

A fragment of chalk
Gathered from the eye of the White Horse at Uffington
Gathered from an eye which has for centuries
Stared up into a revolving sky
Your lithe, sinewy form I have heard you galloping
Your hooves hammering the Downs, foal of Lascaux
I have stood with the Long Man
High upon the hill's ridge
And surveyed the forested domain on the lower levels
Where the deeper soil allows trees
To get a root hold and establish themselves
I have stood with poles in hand
Finding an alignment between the point left
And the place yet to be reached
I have pitched my tent in the hidden hollows
In the valleys, in the dense, broad leaf woodland
And woken at night to the sound of the sea
Welling up from deep underground
The wind cuts my boat adrift
As waves crash through the trees overhead


4.

In a field somewhere a fossil has been found
Fragments of flint, an arrowhead, a line kiln
Excavated on these undulating hills
Where settlements were founded, industries forged
Stone age
Bronze age
Iron age
How far it has traveled
That it should now come to rest in my palm as my inheritance


5.

Each time I walked upon the Downs
I left a layer of memory and identity
Embedded in the chalk.
Scumble the surface of the Downs
And find it through gaps in the scrubby grass
It lies close to the surface there.


6.

I turn this fragment around in my hand
It reaches the tips of my fingers
And the tip of the chalk touches the ground.
I make a mark, a line that will link the meridian points
Of my own history like a constellation of stars


7.

I am standing in a field
Surveying the space around this
Point where my feet are taking root
The plough has drawn deep lines
Musical staves through the earth
But has not revealed the presence of chalk
It has no place in this field,
In the formation of this geology.
This piece of chalk I brought here
It gleams against the up turned top soil
And finds its place
The outline acquires form
Pigment of ochres and earthen stains
Add a richness of colour
The earth regenerates itself and absorbs
All that is discarded
Its scent is the scent of decay, but a decay
That nourishes growth and inspired
A faith and a belief in the industry of soil.
I will draw a line in the earth
And here I will dig, and dig deeply
Deep down through its many layers.


9th December 2008