Peter Lomas
Therapy, Peter Lomas said, was less an attempt to treat a sick person “than to find one’s way through the false ways in which a person may live, and help him to experience his life more truly”. To do this, the therapist had to do everything possible to create an atmosphere of “trust, respect and flexibility”.
Wanting to fly!
Wanting to fly
Do you remember?
in the stairwell
of the old house
at Netherfield
Red Admirals
gathered
and over wintered
and hung
waiting for Spring
then fluttering
at windows
to be let out
when that time
had come.
I hear you
stretching
your wings too
aching to fly
and grow again
in the sun.
First published in Rob Cullen’s first poetry collection “Uncertain Times” September 2016 (Octavo Press).
David Guterson
Snow falling on Cedars
“Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it. There’s a certain nostalgia and romance in a place you left. But I don’t need to leave to write about it. I don’t think anyone but a native could have written this book.”
Bookpage interview.
https://bookpage.com/interviews/8121-david-guterson#.WRw198a1s2w
Eva
“Anger can be borne – it can even be satisfying – if it can gather into words and explode in a storm, or a rapier-sharp attack. But without these means of ventilation, it only turns back inward, building and swirling like a head of steam – building to an impotent, murderous rage.”
Eva Hoffman Lost in translation.
Walking with Water
Heart lifting news! My poem “Walking with Water” dedicated to my daughter Beth Cullen will be published in June edition of The Bezine!
Walking with water
When I was a child I believed God lived in the skies.
It was the only way God could see everything
God was everywhere his proximity was frightening
I walked the mountains searching endlessly
I know I wasn’t alone in these beliefs
I’ve written fifty years and a day, written as they say
without knowing whether my words are listened to
so I walk these mountains listening to your words
I walk old pathways following mountain trails
I sing my words I sing my song to silence.
Jacques Benveniste
believed water retains
on a molecular level
a memory
that triggers antibodies.
His hypothesis remains unproven
but his conviction stayed firm
until his end came.
I reflect on our indifference
to the way we walk on water
we float on strata of sandstone
once beaches and layered memory
water filters and holds
breaching the surface
springs and dark pools.
And I walk endlessly
on the draining land
beneath my feet
examining the new
examining the past
walking with water
walking with love.
Erw Beddau
has been desecrated
a place of burial
long forgotten by men
it was still there
when I was a child
amongst the panorama
of the plateaus uplands.
From those heights today
I cast an eye to the valley slopes
and see in the distance
where Errw Beddau had once lain.
The spring, the well,
it’s clooty tree remain.
It was said of the well
which stood
in that funerary landscape
of twenty five burial mounds
its spring water cured
ailments of the eye.
In this age of blindness
I sense an irony here.
If I could only see it now
I tasted its spring water
many times long ago
when I was young
walking winding trails
in the steepness of the day
Erw Beddau
the acre of untouched graves
remained a story hidden.
And I crossed the silence
of the high slopes
following
parish roads and bridle paths
and when these ended
the intricate web of trails
of hefted sheep
mapping out
describing
the lands contour.
Do we mould the landscape?
Or has it formed us?
Walking with water.
Walking with love.
When I was a child I believed God lived in the skies
I walked the mountains searching endlessly
I wasn’t alone in those beliefs
I’ve written fifty years and a day, written as they say
without knowing whether my words have been listened to
so I walk these mountains still listening to your words
words and teachings no longer listened to
I walk mountain trails following old pathways
I sing my words I sing my song to silence
Walking with water.
Walking with love.
.
Dedicated to my daughter Beth Cullen who walks with water, walks with love – who achieved so much in Ethiopia with the Karrayyuu pastoralist community and our shared love of past essential knowledge!
Inhalation
Source: Inhalation
Mislaid
Mislaid
Memory is like a broken mirror
sometimes
purposefully misplaced shards
so that we are unable
to recall the pain
some memories entail
our lives
are littered
with such shards.
Who met the hundred morns
Source: Who met the hundred morns
Valueing
Writing today about a walk with my daughter along a river bank and discovering Bastard Alkanet. An old source of rouge but also of henna. Afterwards exploring the etymology of Alkanet and its Moorish and Arabic roots reminded me of walking with my children when they were small asking them if they could recall the name of plants and trees. And the insects we’d see on our walks through the dunes to the beach and the sea. Its something I still do. Passing on a love of nature and of the earth is a heritage that has great value. You can tell when an artist walks into a room by the way they see. I cultivate a small plot on the side of a hill where everyday there is so much to see. Overhead the sharp cries of a pair of buzzards conducting immaculate Immelmann turns without having read any book about First World War fliers. The Buzzards upward glide still manages to disturb the Ravens from their nest and fly out from the oak to protect their chicks and start circling on updraughts too.
Celfypridd 