Restless...

March marching on - a quick and rather discombobulated catch up, with poem.

ALL OUR LOVES, ALL OUR LIVES - IN FLUX AND FLOW

My daughter sends me a message saying her train is not running due strikes and her anxiously awaited return for a long weekend is cancelled. She hasn’t been home since January and I feel utterly forlorn…

And so it rains and rains, the wind howls, ‘stove’ complains bitterly and the kitchen fills with smoke time and again. I open windows and doors everywhere to free the acrid stench of soot and cinders but am counter attacked by a shivering husband. Trees come down, more slates from the barn roof — how much more damage will it stand before it falls in completely I wonder — and the pond fills and overflows so badly I think the sheep might need flippers. They are so disgusted by their wet feet and muddy knees they escape to a dryer pasture, (not mine of course) and I am drenched to the skin while I try to cajole five soggy and rather miserable woollies into their cabin with a bucket of nuts and hay. They hate it and bleat all day.

I survey the damage and resulting detritus when the rain has abated and am dismayed to find a tidy up necessitating at least two days work.

Mayhem!

It is to be expected I suppose but a feeling of discombobulation reigns… the days are romping by at a rate of knots and I am unable to concentrate on anything I would like to, or need to. I forget that I feel these exact same frustrations every year when the cantankerous and changeable month of March is upon us. My seeds have only produced their usual fifty percent success rate in germination and even after so many repetitions of the same result I am still surprised. The kale is winning as always, surprisingly, cauliflowers, too, have also have made a tentative showing. Three types of tomatoes were sown and only one behaves as it should and my birds-eye chilies resist all cajoling and stubbornly refuse to even try. The squash too are shy to start which is disappointing, usually they play the game so well. I plant more of everything plus some sweet peas and pray for small miracles to happen.

Unwillingly and probably as disgruntled as my sheep, although I don’t bleat as loudly, I am confined to indoor chores. I drag out old journals, old notes on scraps of paper, dried clovers with four leaves, did they bring me any luck? I don’t remember…. dried flowers and unlabelled seeds in brown envelopes lurk in the corners and bottoms of every drawer and cupboard. Piles of paper, drawings and paintings, unfinished of course, some so old I don’t even remember their beginnings. I despair at the amount I hoard but hesitate not even for a second in abandoning it all when I find forgotten bags of wool. My excitement overrules any sense of self recrimination.

I choose a huge ball of creamy cotton yarn, find a corner of the sitting room that isn’t draped in ‘son’ paraphernalia, put on some music and begin knitting a summery scarf — my only clothes obsession, mainly, now, to hide my scraggly chicken neck — for milder days. I even try, for the umpteenth time, to teach myself to crochet and for the umpteenth time I am unsuccessful! Why does tying knots with one needle instead of two defeat me? I am, as always, vexed at my inability to master this relatively uncomplicated art and vow (to myself only so that I may change my mind) never to attempt it again.

I am thrown off course during these days of March, like a leaf picked up in the wind being buffeted hither and thither without a calm place to settle.. Excited by the first day of spring, the frogspawn in the ponds, the birdsong and blossom, all of which should have arrived with my daughter at the end of the week and in the end only the toads sing their high pitched songs down in the valley, which I know from years of listening, only heralds more rain.

I wait impatiently; willing the clouds to carry with them the balm I need to soothe and quiet my disquiet.

Cloud watch…

RESTLESS…..

Eddies in streams

flying leaves

amber eyes

runaway horses

whispering winds

bones

aching of love

for freedom

without reason

oh for that…

a symphony of days

singing their hours

running

laughing, crying

sunburned hands

burning cheeks

scents that linger

in old minds…

Ploughed earth,

snow flakes

smothering

nights of passion

tangled sheets

meadow flowers

dancing and dancing

indigo melting

a magenta dawn

to endings

hypnotic embers

far callings

wild mountains

bubbling streams

gentle fingers

a touch that heals

a glance

that loves

that shines

with a gypsy soul...

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I began this poem a number of years ago during a fleeting few months of feeling unsettled by the turmoil of life during a time of change. I wrote pages and pages of words that made sense at that moment, I named it ‘ode to chaos’ but having recently reread every word mostly I see less the chaos and more the love of a gratifyingly varied life — so I have edited and rewritten and juggled the words a little to fit the generally restless but never unhappy mood of the last few days…

Chaotic it maybe but oh how fortunate I am to be part of it!