Another Small Stone - A Hedgerow Heart...

(You may need to click on this to read it larger!)

 

Here's the Small Stone that fluttered its way into my notebook this week - though it is maybe a little long for a small stone and a bit ragged around the edges. 

Earlier this week one frosty cold morning, I rescued a tiny wren from the paws of my Mum & Dad's cat. She seemed unharmed and I could hardly feel her at all as she sat calmly and patiently in my hand.

I was enthralled by the brightness of her black glitter eyes, there seemed so much spirit contained within that fragile form, light as breath. Her beak was like a single curved blackthorn, a tiny embodiment of Hedgerow and breezes and wild greeness. She didn't cower or tremble in my hand, just waited, full of awareness, sparkling with it.

A bit blurry - sorry!

 We took her across the field and I opened my hand where she coiled poised for a heartbeat on my palm before fluttering into the hedgerow. She could fly and perch on the fence wire, so I hope she was strong enough after her tangle with the cat to get away safe and rest.
I was intrigued by the spirit of her, the bright spark of her enfolded in feathers.
I'm sure she has more songs to sing.

The Moon has come to call, a knocking at our door...

We got home after dusk tonight and there is already a real feeling of nights drawing in, the first leaves turning, a restless questing wind chasing the last light.
Driving home a glimmering of Moonrise crept up over the hedgerows and the children laughed to see it following the car as if we were towing a big glowing balloon! But when I opened our (very overgrown) front door to check the post, I found the Moon had followed us home and come to call, waiting like an invited guest directly in the frame of the porch...



I still haven't got round to reading the instruction manual for my hybrid camera, but I thought I'd try with a very wobbly tripod and some random chance to catch the Moon...

I've often watched the Moon rising behind these trees, always fascinated by the speed as it passes behind them and on up into unfettered sky, moving even as you watch.
Though the Moon and I have not always been on best of terms, its always a spellbinding thing when it rides behind the clouds or dimishes to a pale wistful thread. I remember once seeing it rise with an aurora of Earthshine, very strange.

This is as far as my camera will zoom in with its current lens, maybe not the clearest of images, but in the same shot below I edited down the brightness to see the wonderful pock marks and craters more clearly... I'm quite fascinated with that bright pinprick of light on the shadowy left edge...

I'll leave you with a rather ropey poem of mine written last year looking at these same trees from my window...

Evening wakens a gilded-mist moonrise.
Not the bright hard light of yestereve
when the Moon rose in bone-light, cold as a river stone
to glitter blackly on still Holly leaves...

No, the Moon is less strident tonight,
drifting beyond the trees grasp,
dancing in a golden mist,
vaporous drifts
like a flowing scarf gossamer fine,
stepping now in front,
now behind,
full laden and bright,
the Sky's shawl of softness gentling her gaze.

The Weaver of Snow...

The Weaver of Snow
by Fiona Macleod (c. 1901)

In Polar noons when moonshine glimmers,
And the frost-fans whirl,
And whiter than moonlight the ice-flowers grow,
And the lunar rainbow quivers and shimmers,
And the Silent Laughers dance to and fro,
A stooping girl
As pale as pearl
Gathers the frost-flowers where they blow:
And the fleet-foot fairies smile, for they know
The Weaver of Snow.

And she climbs at last to a berg set free,
That drifteth slow:
And she sails to the edge of the world we see:
And waits till the wings of the north wind lean
Like an eagle's wings o'er a lochan of green,
And the pale stars glow
On berg and floe...
Then down on our world with a wild laugh of glee
She empties her lap full of shimmer and sheen.
And that is the way in a dream I have seen
The Weaver of Snow.

I thought that since most of the UK has seen at least a few flakes today, this lovely old poem by Fiona Macleod, (also known as William Sharp) might be fitting!
Sorry not to have posted much lately... life has been overwhelmingly busy!
I do still have commissions to finish which hopefully I will be able to show you soon... but even finding time to paint these is proving tricky at the moment with our fledgling business demanding all!
I think the New Year will be my time to reclaim some time for art and resume both my portfolio coursework and my dummy books! ( I really hope so!)
But for now here's some art painted by Jack Frost on my car windscreen...

Keep warm!

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...!