Writing

Writing Things Passed Away Things Passed Away Things Passed Away In lapis, dun and grey, heave, swell and gale are stilled; the whispering mast and shingle-roar silenced. Small boats of larch and oak and prayer take on the storm with slender oars and straining sail. Umber and ochre beget beast and bale, the harvest cart, the scythe, the brooding moor, and, as lowering clouds advance upon the shore, the lover waits, the mother saves the veil. But soon, beyond these whelming cobalt seas, young men will reel, mistaking smoke for fret and blasted shells for raining ore or jet, seeking dolphins as they to darkness yield. Then, painting dark on dark when life has ceased, charred bones become ivory-black and stain the field. © Jane Poulton 2015 Things Passed Away is a sonnet commissioned to commemorate World War One. It was inspired by the paintings of the Staithes Group of Artists in the permanent collection of the Pannett Gallery, Whitby, which reflect a world untainted by the horrors of war. The poem makes reference to seafaring folklore, to the colours used in the paintings and to the industries depicted in them—fishing, farming, jet working and ironstone mining—and it imagines what happened, in many cases, to the men from these tightly-knit communities who lost their lives on the field of battle. The title of the poem is taken from the foreword, by the fisherman Frank Wheeler, to the collection of drawings by Ernest Dade in his book, Sail and Oar, published in 1933. Here the phrase refers not only to lost lives, but also to lost ways of life. Pannett Art Gallery, Pannett Park Whitby, North Yorkshire YO21 1RE Tel: 01947 600933Email: Seeming To Stand Still Seeming To Stand Still Seeming To Stand Still still water summer's blue mirror in which we swam as if it was eternity and we were all that ever mattered is ice hard as bone frost re-maps fell moor and harrowed field to binary black and white or ghosts of themselves rime blooms on the windward side of things bole branch fallen seed anything evergreen or still it burns to the touch and cleaving to it cleaves bare earth winds keen like jilted mistresses roam roaring in leafless canopies stalk in ginnels harry tides and travellers tease who and where they please whisper vengeance through small hours then conjoined companions light and dark their infinite journey bound by axis and degree seem to pause as if uncertain of their course and this strange lingering proves more dazzling than their customary path the world is unfamiliar to itself sunbeams halt to cut through stone we cease our tilting spin and in a moment quicker than a blink day turns to night night turns to day © Jane Poulton 2016 Poetry in the Park Poetry in the Park Poetry in the Park Poetry in the Park was an event within a town festival. Festival-goers were invited to write a short message saying what they loved about the town and their contributions were later incorporated into the poem Paradise My assistant at the event was James Harris. Paradise Paradise The origins of the poem Paradise lie in the responses of others to my request, "Tell me what you love about this place." at the Poetry in the Park event. Inevitably, I found myself answering the same question and my own love of it can be found here too. Paradise someone said This Is Paradise new days breaking gold like blessed oil on thin horizons to birdsong high above high grassland more urgent than the tide below and the blazing gardens loud as a brass band brazen plantings of close-coupled blooms yellow orange yellow red yellow orange yellow red another spoke of mirrored memories a young girl's Eden in long-ago long summers and another of returning surprised to find his boyhood waiting someone said it was breathing in bracing wind walking through dazzling views yellow fields in spring blood-red fields in summer or on the rugged limb of clay ember-red at sunset its sharp-shadowed gullies streaming down its glow its soundtrack sea-crash and peevish plainchant cantankerous and quarrelsome of fulmar and guillemot kittiwake and gannet one said it was silent footsteps on shining sand the shifting moon-measured margin between land and sea and listening to the latter's sound delivered on surf spindrift or cloudy fret echoes and songs of clippers smacks and trawlers heaving and hauling whaling and drowning of chasing silver darlings on the storm-bound grounds hymns of harbour lights distant in the blackened blue and the God who steers us home © Jane Poulton 2015 Click on image to return to Home page