Kolinje - the slaughter of the pig

Pig hangs by its hind legs splayed out
on a wide frame. A single slit splits the
underbelly open, opening up to the
outside its warm, steaming interior all
reds and succulent, shining and wet
spilling out into well versed hands
cutting and carving, weaving a polished
tip between bone and cartilage severing
stretched tendons with a snap and
paring flesh from fat. All is carefully
sorted and dispatched, just a small
sack of bitter, black fluid is discarded.
By the end only a suggestion of pig
remains, recognisable, its tail uncoiled
and pale.

from FIELD SONGS

Field Songs, parts VI & VII

VI

More sky appears (Still so warm)
Between each limb (I could be deceived)
As trees cast into the wind
Their bronzed, autumnal leaves (For thinking it is spring)
Edged in burning red
And black decay
Colours almost singed (Colours changing)
For want of cooler days.
From their summer greens.
Rich mossy greens
And blue tinted lichens
Vibrant shades
Of ochres and orange
The season’s
Wind-blown wreckage
Remains. (Remains of leaves)
(Lie scattered in drifts.)
Ankle deep mounds of (Ankle deep mounds lie)
Lobed edges oak, (Under the oaks)
Serrated lime (And the limes.)
And smooth walnut
All long abandoned
By their branches.

I’ll take a rake (I’ll take a rake)
To tidy up (And sweep them up)
And burn them (And burn them)
Scenting the air (Filling the air)
(With plumes of)
(Brilliant white smoke)
With that acrid smell
(In an otherwise)
(Flawless sky.)
That is autumn.



VII

The fires are lit
And the fields glow

The evening sun (The labouring men)
Brightens the wall (Work in silence)
(In their unfenced acreage)

In the room (Burning stubble)
(Each in his field)
Where the colour (Where the slow wound)
Deepens (Deepens)
(And the blood)
To a crimson.
(Stiffens in the veins.)
The floor boards (The earth con-
Creak underfoot -tracks underfoot)

Unsettling the dust.
Viewed from the window
The folds in the valley
Open like a book
(Breaking the spine.)
Where the unwritten lines
Linger in the wood smoke
Hanging in horizontal layers.

A sapling senses the end of Summer

I



These beaded threads of morning moisture
Stretched across our hardening antlers
Come upon us in our sleep and we seem to be sleeping longer,
Longer since our leaves have left us.

Heavy in the dark they become lighter as the light up-rises.
This binding silk is not bondage to us
But through it we detect little tremors in all our parts.
When that happens it is like the wind but not the wind

But like the wind it stirs us from our light-green reveries
Since we know that sound of something airborne all too well.
It has been around us, everywhere, while it has been warm.
A kind of singing that is not singing, just coming and going,

And sometimes we feel the sensation of a sudden shudder
Which shakes these sparkling crystals and then the singing stops And while they fall there is a moment of silence
That is taut and tense in which we wait to hear them shatter.

The Clerks' Well, Clerkenwell, London

The Clerks' Well, Clerkenwell (in memory of Jane Wisner)

Rest a while, traveller
And imbibe at this well

Present long before any human presence
Sought to haul me up
From a hole, deeply bored
In the ground, I lay undiscovered

Until a fissure cracked the earth
And sent me rippling out over bright stones.
Since when I became sacred, appropriated
And around me all life congregated.

There wasn't a time when I didn't exist.
I came into being at the very beginning
And my molecules still carry the memory
Of that moment across the whole globe.

I am that cloud caught drifting
Across the plains of Tanzanier.
I am crystallized in the frozen wastes
Of the Tundra

I hang in the misty humidity
Of the Rain Forest. Irrigate
The tea hills of the Himalayas.
Plash in a fountain in Tivoli.

I have quenched the thirst of a goatherd
And trickled down the face of the one
Who had dug this well.
This well, where all these waters coalesce

Around which the whole world pivots
Will be remembered, well.


1st version

Searching for William Blake

An apple anticipates an afterlife

XIV


We cannot account for our arrival
Such mysteries lie buried in
Between the lines drawn out
In the field’s arable acreage.
Resting in stillness,
Warm repose, warming to touch
Our sensitive hearts. Our vital instinct
Is strong, it means our survival,
Yet when we asked we were simply told
‘It is just so.’ And so it is.
There is, however, something we all share
Of that we are aware, at least.

We have seen the seasons turn
We have seen the foliage unfurl,
Unravel and return.
We have felt the sway and the pull
That touches us all.
We have felt the swelling
That bends the bower with our weight,
Feeling out on a limb we wait and wait
Growing evermore desirable.
What is it we feed upon to make us thus?
And when the furs and feathers feast on us
Is it then that we loose ourselves to oblivion?

Of the one that is me, I yield.
I yield forsaking my others.
I yield to the ache that comes with age
Assuaged only in a moment of weightlessness.
For this, I yield.
The grasses are waving.
The horizon is approaching.
All is as it should be.
For the one that is me
Departure marks a new beginning.

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

A Canterbury Tale (epiphany)

The Stones of Dalmatia

The stones of Dalmatia

Rest a while, traveller,
And observe these stones

Interlocking, convoluted shapes. Curves, convex and concave.
Holed by the constant course of an underground water source.
Wedded to age , sunbaked, parched, chiselled by the wind
And richly patinated to a sculptured grey whiteness
Seeming as lifeless as a cairne

These stones are the measurement by which this land is divided,
And enclosed. Here fields were cleared and walls were raised up.
Within these enclosures fields produced the first rich harvest
Of stones, before the vines could cling to the thin soil
And bear fruit. All abandoned now.

Who remembers the labour of the field
Who can remember hearing the chime of the mattock
Striking stone.

Stone,
Millenii spent in a slow state of restless turmoil.
Originating deep in the cradle of the liquid earth.
In our lifetime we have witnessed that final push that lifts
Them from the soil's grip. Stones take on another life
In our hands but what do stones care for our intention.

We have a rhythm and a pulse
A skilled hand selected, placed
And replaced each piece to find
The point where the polarities

Are aligned. Where two stones
Touched there the pulse vibrated
Across the void and we became
One entity, again.

These rocks, raw material, the building blocks of cities and
Monuments, these living stones that enable us to reach out
And touch the hand of our ancestry are here all distilled
Into this intimate shelter,
A sanctuary

HOUSE, a poem for two voices

HOUSE


It must have been a meter high, at least
The grass, the hedge lost in front of the house
Through which we pushed
To reach the door
And this is home.
On either side the plaster cracked
Exposed a sight not seen
For nearly 50 years of
Bricks and stones stacked one
Upon another with my bare hands, plaster rendered.
Hollows in the field where I pulled out stones
I filled with trees and more trees putting down roots
Wondering if I should see many to maturity.
Trees which have been neglected
Now need pruning or removing
Since their yield has been
Exhausted as I was stacking bricks on stones
Day in, day out to build my house, my home.
Well cut some down and plant others.
Well rebuild walls using his tools
The axe, the shovel, the saw.
I built walls and planted my orchard.
Four years since they fell into disuse
For years since I left the fruit upon the branch
The grapes on the vine simply wither and fall.
Are not to our taste,
But well keep the old apple
Propped up with branches and magical
Under which we pass still fruits, miraculously,
Finding our way through the orchard
Entering another world
Following a well - worn trail
Quietly, through the orchard
Down to the spring.
Down to the waters source.

How the sea appeared to the stones

All stones hum,
Some deeper than others
Sunk deep in the earth under us.

We keep an ear to the earth
And listen to the stones,
Cradling them with our roots.

The stones have stories too;
Stories of seas,
Of seas leaving

And leaving land, seas
Like windy grasses
Waving in fallow fields

Like big skies
Lying under big skies
Above.

The leaves are reaching up
Into big sky above.
We want to know

Tell us, tell us all you see,
Is there, anywhere
Big sky below?

from An ear to the earth II

Of what we vines are most afraid

Tendrils twisting up limbless trees,
Our season's growth holds on to
Our dead, expressionless companions,
Rootless, yet sturdy,
Pushed deep into the soil.
Who knows of their silent aspirations
To spread a branch, some leaves?
Carrying our fruiting lineage
We emulate their staked-out intervals
And cling for support, since we need you.

Do you look upon us with envy?
Our leaves cast great shadows
That our companions could only dream of.
Reaching out along a trail
We've spent years mastering.
Contorting our trunks into shapes
That are not straight or rigid
But as if to say, ''We're alive, we're alive
Admire the fruits of our labour''

It consumes all our strength
To divulge this wisdom
And each year we are cut back to conserve our energy.
Each year is our new beginning
Until one year we shall be cut back completely
When we are no longer yielding
And become, like you,
Unyielding.


from An ear to the earth, V

A tree contemplates its own mortality

It was like,
How shall I put it?
Like the first lightening strike
Or the moment a storm cloud bursts?
No, much closer.

The first swing of an axe
Sending a convulsion,
An electrical charge
Through the forest floor
Through every fibre.

How can you prepare
For the as yet unknown?

And when a light space opened up
Touching the forest floor,
Where the shady things grow,
I knew then
That there would be no rest.

An ear to the earth, X


.

How the leaves learnt to speak

It is the wind
that gives us

our voices we
chattering leaves

are full of whispers
sighing , breathing

leaving the forest
ripe with rumours

as we collectively
exhale.



An ear to the earth
IX

The secret in the soil

What goes on up there above in the light
space we have no names for or know
what shape such seeds take on where
our skin is exposed to all the elements
suffering every condition yet we give
seeds life but are not life itself me we
us soil and the seeds that seek shelter
all manner of things have grown here
in the dark in the turmoil of our acidity
and alkali seeds in stony layers
between which roots thrust their searching tips
prising and worming deep into our soul
and where only the drip
drip of liquids
penetrates deeper and deeper still.

.

An ear to the earth, VIII

The conspiracy of ivy

By the field's edge we grew
Long time undisturbed
Edged by ploughing
Observed the breaking clods
Long time looked over
A distant edged distance
Watched the sowing
The reaping
The ploughing
The sowing
And all the time
About our trunks
Grew a deeper green
Than we'd ever seen
Creeping up
Stealthily,
Slowly,
Slowly,
Suffocating.

.

Poem VII from the collection
An ear to the earth

.

A butterfly alights on a leaf

Why do you copy in our dead colours
When we struggle so hard for life
Even last year's leaves still wave and rattle
Yes, even we saw the winter through.

How easily you melt into our surroundings
Sunning your wings just long enough
To alert us here of the dangers there...
Just the thought of it now makes us all shudder.

from An ear to the earth
VI

The waking sensations of brackens and long grasses

Gaps appear when dark descends,
When the nighly sun is up,
Pushed between up brackens and long grasses.

Tramping on, me
Snuffling for seeds and berries.

We sleep soundly, undisturbed.
We rise up from earthly-dark earth
And simply unfurl each frond.

Sometimes a marking passing
Remains, me scenting soft earth.

Undisturbed, but for waking sensations
Of a not-seen having brushed against
Our stalks, caressingly.

.

from An ear to the earth III

The Vision of the Oak

Listen
A measureless time the deepest of visions came to me
When all human voices rested in sleep
It seemed I beheld the mystery of the Wood.
It was a marvel touched with rays of golden light
Shining like jewels stretching to the four corners of the forest
Radiating throughout eternity. I observed it
Saw the fiery glow in the glory tree.
It ran through all creation a beacon of splendour
A magnificent, perfect light. And through that radiance
I was able to witness when it first began.

And as I began to grow there
The most ancient of ancient trees began to speak.
'It was long ago but still I remember
My roots at the forest's edge.
I too saw the world's edge the light of the world
Throwing out rays of perfect light
Before the sky darkened and the Earth was once again
Cast in shadow veiled under clouds.
I witnessed it all.'

Vision, strength of my oaken heart deliver this message
That my soul is urging me upwards
I hardly dare move. Gradually my solitude is relieved
But still I have to endure the sensation of longing.
The time will come for me to honour
The whole glorious creation from the canopy above
To the ground below worshiping this beacon
More than all other trees. My life's hope
Is to seek out that triumphant Wood
And become that most glorious of ancient trees.


.

Tall nettles

Tall nettles

All day long we've languished in our place,
Since we like the same view from here,
Growing in clumps, sending out shoots

The earth accommodates us all, we have space.
We are not as bitter as our yellow-headed companions,
Who vanish in a whisper, no, we remain.

As the sun sways towards the day's end
The shade offers some respite
But too soon, we cry, too soon!

We have strength in numbness
Colonizing spaces that are hostile and hard
And by remaining, know our place.

.

Taken from the collection
An ear to the earth
XIII

Blossom

Blossom

Brightly coloured buds are breaking out
On the magnolia like an eruption
Of blistering sores. A gentle breeze
Peels back the writhing petals

Tearing open the maroon wound within.
Their agonizing cries go unheard
As we pause, admiringly, at
The suddenness of Spring.

.

Thoughts of an acorn upon waking in Spring

The breathing wind
Ripples the moist air
And ruffles leaf's smothering covering.
We stir us from under cold slumber
To warm our backs,
Face down in earth's ochre. Alone

I carry me a weighty ancestry
Yet all that is known is still my unknown.
Is it my own turn now?
Am I ready yet?
Am I?
Ready.



Taken from the collection
An ear to the earth
IV

.

The Poem Tree - complete reading

The Poem Tree - complete reading
recording lasts 45 minutes


Synopsis

It is 1844 and Joseph Tubbs, a local man, is climbing up to the top of Castle Hill, Wittenham Clumps to carve a poem into the bark of a young beech tree. As he makes his journey he reflects on the nature of the countryside and the people who live and work in his village. He meditates, too, on the nature of walking.

In parallel nature itself is given a voice and becomes aware of its own existence. As these various monologues develop they enter Joseph's conscientiousness and gradually a conversation ensues and an agreement is made with one particular tree on which Joseph will carve his poem.

As Joseph begins to carve his poem into the tree's bark he has a vision of the events that occurred on the hill many centuries before, events which resonate across the years and enter the text of his poem, touching his presence, and which subsequently touched the presence of this author some 150 years later.


.

Landscape painting V

Landscape painting V

Scraping away the layers of earth's ochre and ore
From beneath the level of a long forgotten field,
Where primed and primeval origins are concealed
On a canvas under layers of pallet-knifed impasto.
Colour heaped on colour burying sketched outlines
Rendered in charcoal dug from an ancient fire pit
And found with shells bearing traces of green,
Ultramarine and gold mined from precious seams.
My brush reveals such details from among the debris.
Then, lifting from the pallet the unearthed fragments
And assembling them in situ it seems
That I touch upon a latent sense of lineage
That my painterly marks like pottery shards
Have a similar potential to awe.


.

VELIKI OTPAD - BIG RUBBISH

VELIKI OTPAD - BIG RUBBISH

Anticipated like an annual migration
The nervous wait is finally broken
By the first few, exhausted arrivals
Washed up on the grassy shore

After an epic journey begun
In some distant, forgotten country
A sofa appears by the road's edge,
Its tail feathers torn, an arm seems worn.

Then, a rare balloon-backed chair
Lands awkwardly and a second leg snaps off.
Blind windows having lost their site
Stagger clumsily over the growing mound

Of carcasses. A flock of aged, bald headed Michelins
Alight in the field, their tarnished, black plumage
No longer impress the lesser breeds.
A nest of boxes stuffed to the brim

Spill their guts on impact with a downey,
White feathered fridge. By nightfall vans draw up
Furtively and with a flapping of wings
Relieve themselves of the burden of all our failures.

Then the scavengers descend in search of scraps
Sinking their hammer-claws into anything
Showing even the vaguest signs of potential life.
And when they leave they leave nothing
Nothing more than the wreckage of all our lives
Of our own pathetic journeys.

.

A London Symphony

A London Symphony (1993)

It was such a familiar sound
I had heard it often, earlier today in fact
When I passed through Parliament Square.
I passed in bright sunshine and hardly noticed
That slow hollow chime above the cacophony
Of traffic and running feet.
Though it arrested my attention monetarily
I soon forgot about it.

Later at night, and at home
I turned on my radio at random
In the middle of 'A London Symphony'
And heard those very same notes
The three quarter hour rippling across the Thames
Spanning 80 or so years.
But what I heard in the music
Was no more than an echo
Of the moment Vaughan Williams stood on the Embankment
And committed that phrase to paper.
And I thought, 'What momentous events are contained
Between these two incidences
These bookends to our century.
This sound, this shared experience we both made a note of.

.

Last Weekend

Last Weekend

The weather has been glorious again
But I think it will be our last weekend
Before we close the house for winter.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

Our kindly neighbours gave us a bottle
Of their home made brandy, and they promised
Us some meat when they slaughter their pig.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

We're both sad for the loss of our hedgerow
And several trees in the orchard since
The workmen widened the village road.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

You know that rare black squirrel I mentioned
Before, well, it's been seen again hiding
In a shadow in the tallest pine.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

On Sunday we wrapped up all the young
Fruit trees to protect them against frost and
Deer, before clearing the lawn of leaves.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

Next year we are thinking
To enlargen the garden.
The last inhabitant
Of the oldest house
Has left.

.

sitting on a tram

sitting on a tram
and over hearing
a conversation
beginning, 'imam
feeling,' mixing two
languages each word
understandable
plainly and without

thought. But it was the
combination that
confused and left me
momentarily
wondering which one
was my mother tongue.

.

SPRING RITUAL from Field Songs

.


Spring Ritual

Three figures approach the house all dressed
and made up and plant themselves in the garden.
The boy has a tambourine tapped to
a certain rhythm accompanying, on cue,
his two female companions,
who link their arms
and roundly dance
in one direction
then the other
back again
holding their hats
and ruffling their skirts
at every turn.

A melody is faintly audible, a soft murmur
picked up by the breeze carrying the sound
across fields and into the embryonic ears of the
soonly-sprouting corn and the blossoming buds.
They have been waiting all winter for this.
It should be a good season, they tell me.

.

from FIELDS SONGS

.

Poppies - an ear to the earth XI

XI

Even we don't know
How, after long time lying
We can suddenly find ourselves
Erupting in a meadow

Suddenly appearing and
Languishing in such away
That our coloured and colonized space
Never looks simply green again.

Our scarlet splashes
So spectacular
Our papery petals
Plentiful

We carry no scent to lace the wind
But deep rooted in our heads
Lies a latent, hazy memory
Of intoxicating dreams.

.

from An ear to the earth
a collection of 14 nature poems.

.

SNOW II from Field Songs

Snow II


It is dark out
Pitch black

No sound from the meadow
Except for the top
Of a plum tree

Breaking off
Burdened under
The weight of snow.

It has been falling all night
Muting all other voices.
Drifts have reached
Halfway up the front door
Lying just under the ledge
Of the windows.

The house is increasingly closed off
The neighbours are becoming
More distant.

No one stirs
It is so silent outside
Not even a dog bark.

I move closer to the fire,
I need that wood
It would be useful now.



from FIELD SONGS


.

SNOW I from Field Songs

Snow I

Trudging through snow.
All has succumbed
To sleep below a
Dense, white covering

The landscape's stored energy
Is waiting for an incentive
And that particular imperative
To grow.

All has been
Woven into whiteness.
Each knotted stitch
Of thread stretches

To my foot's depression
As I struggle, cautiously
For balance
And so as not to wake

From unresolved dreams
The wilderness
And the village from
Hibernation.


taken from FIELD SONGS
published 2008

.

The Poem Tree

Presentation compiled from 8mm footage and video
filmed between 1991 and 1995 showing views of
Wittenham Clumps and the beech tree known as
The Poem Tree.



I (extract)

From the small western window of their house
On the eastern edge of the village
Joseph Tubbs can watch the whole street. It is waking up.
It is still dark out. Behind the village, etched on the horizon,
Two hills are silhouetted, twin clumps
Their gentle forms agitate the skyline.

For as long as he can remember
Joseph has always kept the clumps in view
Never straying so far
As to loose sight of them.
It is there that he orientates his face
It is there that he will find his place.

Read the whole poem
http://thepoemtree.blog.hr/



As up the hill with labouring steps we trod
Where the twin clumps their sheltering branches spread
The summit gain'd, at ease reclining lay,
And all around the wide spread scene surveyed,
Point out each object and instructive tell
The various changes that the land befell
Where the low bank the country wide surrounds
That ancient earthwork form'd old Mercia's bounds.
In misty distance see the barrow heave,
There lies forgotten lonely Culchelm's grave.
Around this hill the ruthless Danes entrenched
And that fair plain with gory slaughter drenched
While at our feet, where stands that stately tower,
On days gone by up rose the Roman power.
And yonder, there where Thames' smooth waters glide,
On later days appeared monastic pride.
Within that field, where lies the grazing herd,
Hugh walls were formed, some coffins disinterred,
Such is the course of time, the wreck which fate
And awful doom award the earthly great.

Poem carved on a beech tree, Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire,
by Joseph Tubbs in 1844.

.

from FIELD SONGS

from FIELD SONGS

Mapping the ground
In measured footsteps
Where certain stones
Mark territorial edges
Lying in places overgrown
Obscured in undergrowth
Older than ancestry
Marking boundaries
Touchstones that
Give me a grounding
To work in my field
A measured space
In which to dig.
I walk out into the field and look
With an untutored eye
Across the meadow.
I notice the lengthening shadow of trees
The soil under my feet is unknown
Where my spade wants to dig
For a moment I pause
As if trespassing on another's land
Uncertain, I've chosen a fertile plot
In which to dig.
The blade slices cleanly
Through the surface veneer
Of densely woven grasses
Down to a spade's depth
Levered and turned
And repeated
Releasing a warm smell
Of humus and promise
The earth is kind and yielding.

.

A walk between two high points, Hampshire, 1993

A walk between two points
an 8mm film with narration

Video presentation compiled with narration in 2009
from film shot in 1993, Hampshire, England



A walk between two high points - A meditation on walking


From where I stand the ground slopes in all directions
I came here earlier this year while the field lay fallow
and I stood waist high in the long grass
From where I stand I have a clear view to all points of reference.

On softer ground I gather momentum and there is a rhythm
to my steps. Each step lands in the print of other footsteps and
I remember walking in other fields, along other bridleways with
muddy tracks and overhanging branches

Sunlight filters through the arc of branches, the sun feels warm
on my back. Branches drape the air across the entrance of a hollow.
The leaves are brushed by many shoulders, shredded edges.
I step through thorns into a darkening path as feet sink into the mud,
leaving an echo of my passing as I listen out for those who have gone
before me.

The air is still.
Nothing stirs.
Red flag limp amongst the verdure, no wind to disturb its sails.

Crunching gravel underfoot I lick at loose stones and follow
my shadow. My nose is filled with the scent of wood smoke,
chamomile and cow parsley. The smell of pine from a fir plantation
sweeps across the valley, a great surge of verdant miles.

Four ways meet at a five bar gate. Of the three remaining options
one must be discarded. I take the only one that takes me past
the 'acorn post'. Unlikely as it is to ever grow branches and spread
a canopy I wonder if it is merely directional or a monument, perhaps,
to the hills and valleys once covered in oak and beech. The last
surviving clumps become landmarks crowning the tops of hills.
Looking back one affords a distant view of Deacon Hill,
further off St Catherine's.

Far away a dog barks. Further still a skylark, invisible but audible.

The South Downs Way runs like an artery through the hills
of the southern counties, an ancient highway. I feel the blood
rush in my veins as I align myself through Hampshire and Sussex.

This chalk ridge terminates abruptly, not at a gate or the scar
of tarmac but at the sea. Yet, among these gentle undulations
there are thorns and nettles. Barbed wire is a hazard, much as
rocks and stones are, but these I put behind me as the clump,
the triangulation point and my thoughts all come into focus.

Ash Mizmaze - e ART h works XIV

Ash Mizmaze - e ART h works XIV

Performance piece created in August 2008
as part of an on going series of art works.
Zvecaj, Croatia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJhKr9a4Ngg

A longer, better quality version can be found on
the above link.