Of Golden Moonrise and Wolfish Tales...

I couldn't resist trying to get a picture of the Moonrise earlier this evening - she was huge, full and very golden, swathed in soft trailing gossamer scarfs of cloud (though the Moon comes out white in my photo) She seemed a gentle Moon tonight in a soft, still sky, gentling the shadows that are so often hard etched and chill when mooncast.
It seems a good image to bring the day full circle... I am still trying to find that elusive day to tie up my three unfinished paintings, when it will come I still don't know. But today I started clearing the outbuilding that will eventually become my studio, before heading off with the children for a picnic across the fields beyond our earthen 'Badger Lane' where the neighbourhood of diggers have turned out all their winter bedding all down the bank.

With my eldest whose mind is wonderfully enrapt by mythologies,we began to discuss Fenris, or Fenrir the Wolf, how he was tricked by the Gods into magical chains and how Tyr lost his hand. And then how Fenris eventually was to devour the sun when Ragnarok descended, plunging the World into Darkness and Ice.

As we walked home we talked on how Elora might outwit such a Wolf as Fenris if she were to meet him, and between us came up with a story I might one day try to write that has much to do with the Moon and explains why wolves seem (in stories) to howl for the Moon! I will keep the rest under my hat until I manage to tame the story with words on a page! Tee hee!

So, Wolves and Moons and then such a beautiful moonrise to end the day, what could be better...? I'll tell you, as we were saying goodbye to some dear friends who had come to play this afternoon what should glide low overhead out of the pale and empty sky, right over our house... A Red Kite! Unmistakeable V-shaped tail and long, broad splayed wings, huge and magnificent! I have only ever seen them in Wales and although I know they are increasing in numbers down in Exmoor, I never imagined we'd see a Kite in Somerset. I was so thrilled, I do hope he visits us again!


I will leave you with a powerful Wolfish poem by my favourite poet Ted Hughes that I have always loved called:

'Amulet'

Inside the Wolf's fang, the mountain of heather.
Inside the mountain of heather, the Wolf's fur.
Inside the Wolf's fur, the ragged forest.
Inside the ragged forest, the Wolf's foot.
Inside the Wolf's foot, the stony horizon.
Inside the stony horizon, the Wolf's tongue.
Inside the Wolf's tongue, the Doe's tears.
Inside the Doe's tears, the frozen swamp.
Inside the frozen swamp, the Wolf's blood.
Inside the Wolf's blood, the snow wind.
Inside the snow wind, the Wolf's eye.
Inside the Wolf's eye, the North Star.
Inside the North Star, the Wolf's fang.

By Ted Hughes.

Wild winds and whirling words...

'Joy of a falling leaf' by Arthur Rackham

I woke this morning to a wild blowing gale rattling the sash and an early dawn mirk of stormlight chasing wind-tattered cloud across a ragged sky.
And on a breath the words of a Ted Hughes poem tumbled through my not quite awake mind...
It is one I have known and loved for years and the mood of the elements this morning woke them from my subconcious before I was really awake myself. So I suppose my bemused husband was woken by his crazy wifey randomly (and sleepily) quoting half lines of a random poem to the darkness!
But anyway, its been in my head all day so here it is as set out in one of my books...

Wind (by Ted Hughes 1957 - 1994)

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Til day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

An early Halloween, Acorns, Oaks and the writings of a great wordsmith....

Being the last day of school before half term, the children had their Halloween school 'disco' tonight, a week early... I've only just recovered enough to restore brain functions! Very manic and very noisy! I can handle heavy metal concerts far better than a barn full of two to ten year olds running riot!
My eldest Elora has gone every year as a cat, so this year she broke tradition and went as a skeleton... then at the last minute buckled and added the cat ears!
Here they are very excited and proud of their pumpkins...

Then, looking on my camera I discoverd pictures from an autumn walk a couple of weeks back that I'd totally forgotten about, so I thought, it's still autumn so not too late to show some of them...

(This spidery ones suitably Halloween-ish!)

Here's some of the treasure me and Elswyth found on our way...


There's a very grand old Oak tree where we like to stop and rest, very Squirral Nutkin-like with lots of little hollow doorways in the roots. I love the expressiveness of the limbs, all gesturing crazed and contorted, and the fragile little girl gathering acorns, dwarfed by its presence...


And these limbs bring to mind one or two of Ted Hughes' poems...
I love the raw, sometimes brutal power of his wordcraft, he was so good at drawing out the elemental roots of the world, savage and wild as it has always been... both of nature and human nature...
Here is a short excerpt of a very long poem from 'Gaudete'...

Your tree - your oak
A glare

Of black upward lightning, a wriggling grab
Momentary
Under the crumbling of stars.

A guard, a dancer
At the pure well of leaf.

Agony in the garden. Annunciation
Of clay, water and the sunlight.
They thunder under its roof.
Its agony is its temple.

Waist-deep, the black oak is dancing
And my eyes pause
On the centuries of its instant
As gnats
Try to winter in its wrinkles.

The seas are thirsting
Towards the oak.

The oak is flying
Astride the earth.

How I love Ted Hughes. He has had a huge influence on my own writing and its time I started reading again I think... I have a shelf-ful of his books waiting, brooding bound within their pages, wanting to get out!
( I think there is a bit of Pratchett creeping in there, with images of restless muttering books flexing their covers ready to take flight from the shelves!)

And Elswyth's acorns have just reminded me of a bronze romano-british acorn in a little antiquities shop I saw years ago. Probebly the best part of two thousand years old found by some metal detectorist no doubt...
It was verdigreed and fashioned as a pendant and from the moment I walked empty handed out of that shop I have always regretted not buying it...
I always wondered who would once have worn it and what it meant to them... I really should have bought it!
Anyway, time to stop rambling on me thinks...!