Poems for Spring

Every year, some time in February or March, depending on the vagaries of the English weather, there comes a sunny day when I walk through the Castle Grounds and smell flowery perfume on a warm breeze, and every year I think ‘how wonderful, spring is on the way’.

Doubtlessly there’s a very logical explanation, because strongly perfumed flowers are already in bloom, like this mahonia, which smells rather honeyish, like oilseed rape perhaps:

 

Or this little creamy white bloom that I think is sweet box – to start with, because of the perfume, I thought it might be some strange kind of jasmine, even though the flower is not right for that. But, like jasmine, it seems to perfume the air for a good distance around:

 

Anyway, I’m always reminded 0f Carl Sandburg’s poem Blossom Themes, which encapsulates that moment when the first flowers begin to appear and you realise winter is on the wane…

Late in the winter came one day

When there was a whiff on the wind,

a suspicion, a cry not to be heard
of perhaps blossoms, perhaps green

 grass and clean hills lifting rolling shoulders.
Does the nose get the cry of spring

first of all? is the nose thankful

and thrilled first of all?
2.
If the blossoms come down
so they must fall on snow
because spring comes this year
before winter is gone,
then both snow and blossoms look sad:
peaches, cherries, the red summer apples,
all say it is a hard year.
The wind has its own way of picking off

the smell of peach blossoms and then

carrying that smell miles and miles.
Women washing dishes in lonely, farmhouses

stand at the door and say, “Something is

 happening.”’
A little foam of the summer sea

of blossoms,
a foam finger of white leaves,

shut these away—

high into the summer wind runners.
Let the wind be white too.

I love that first stanza, with the ‘whiff on the wind’ and the ‘perhaps blossoms’ and the thought that of all the senses it’s smell that recognises spring first, rather than sight, or sound.

And this year I discovered Kathleen Jamie’s poem, The Dash, which also seems to capture the magic of that moment when the year turns, though for her the arrival of spring is heralded by a pair of birds returning to Scotland after wintering somewhere warmer. But the sense of joy is the same, and the feeling of exhilaration that a longed-for event has finally arrived, and I think it’s interesting that Sandburg and Jamie both have the wind blowing spring in quite suddenly – there’s no gradual creeping-in of a new season.

Every mid-February

those first days arrive

when the sun rises

higher than the Black

Hill at last. Brightness

and a crazy breeze

course from the same airt -

turned clods gleam, the trees’

topmost branches bend

shivering downwind.

They chase, this lithe pair

out of the far south

west, and though scalding

to our wintered eyes

look; we cry, it’s here

This poem comes from her collection The Overhaul, which I finally got round to buying because I enjoyed ‘Findings’ and ‘Sightlines’ so much – these two books both contain essays, or reflections, mainly on nature and wild things, and Jamie’s prose is beautifully lyrical, as she uses animals, birds, found objects as a kind of focus to comment on life. I thought they were wonderful, but Jamie is primarily a poet, and I have been meaning to explore her poetry for quite a while, but was wary, because I’d read reviews complaining that her use of Scottish dialect words made her work difficult to understand.

I admit some kind of glossary would be useful, but even if you don’t appreciates the fine  nuances in her choice of words it’s not that difficult to grasp her meaning, and there’s always Google – I know lots of people don’t like it, but I found airt without any trouble, and now know it has to do with direction, as in the compass.

She’s very much a nature poet, who observes creatures and landscapes, and she has a wonderful and unusual way with words and language, that makes you look afresh at the world around you, and think about it in a different fashion. ‘Wintered eyes’, for example, is such an unlikely pairing, yet it’s absolutely right, describing how tired and jaded we feel after a long, hard winter, and how different the world (and our view of it) becomes when spring arrives, bringing the hope of better things ahead. 

The poems need to be read slowly, and thought about, one at a time, so that’s what I’m doing, and so far I’m enjoying them very much, and looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.

Cycling Adventures

A bicycle  drawn by Rosalind Bliss
on the front of Ten Poems About Bicycles

Here, somewhat belatedly, is a blog about bicycles. It’s by way of being a thank you to Lynne, at Dove Grey Reader, who pulled my name from the hat in a draw for Ten Poems About Bicycles, published by Candlestick Press. It’s a beautifully produced little pamphlet, with a lovely illustration of a bike on the cover, drawn by Rosalind Bliss, and I was thrilled to receive it because I was feeling particularly down at the time, and it really cheered me up.

Bicycles have a special resonance for me as my parents met when my mother, cycling rapidly round a roundabout, ran into my father while he was crossing the road. Fortunately there was less traffic in those days, and neither was hurt, but the incident has acquired legendary status in the family history, along with the heroic exploits of my mother’s father. For almost 20 years he cycled around 20 miles to work, and around 20 miles back home (no M4 in : even during WW2 he continued to ride to work, undeterred by bombs or blackout. Then he moved to Ireland and spent the next decade or so defying all obstacles as he negotiated gravity-defying hills and boulder-strewn tracks.

The composer Edward Elgar w
as an enthusiastic cyclist.

As you can see, bicycles hold a special place in my affections, and I felt a book of poems about them deserves rather special treatment, so I settled down to read them, to the accompaniment of Elgar – including  Dorabella, from Enigma Variations, beacause Elgar was an enthusiastic cyclist (he must have been tough indeed to cope with the Malvern Hills) and Dora Penny often accompanied him on his excursions.

The booklet races into action with ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s Mulga Bill’s Bicycle, in which the protagonist regrets turning away his good old horse in favour of a bicycle. His hair-raising ride on the machine (which made me laugh aloud) comes to an inglorious end when:

“It struck a stone and gave a spring that cleared a fallen tree,

It raced beside a precipice as close as close could be;

And then, as Mulga Bill let out one last despairing shriek,

It made a leap of twenty feet into the Dead Man’s Creek.”

Wheel Fever, by Connie Bensley, where a cyclist’s mishaps prove expensive – and very painful – also made me smile. But there are sad poems, like James Roderick Burns’ Boy on a Bicycle, where the chain driving the wheels around is contrasted against the ‘snarl of barbed wire’ trapping the fallen body on a WWI battlefield.

A wooden cycle is mentioned in Wheel Fever.,
 but I doubt it looked like this  human-propelled
model made in Germany around 1820.

In A Lady Cyclist Learns to Cycle, Jonathan Davidson shows how bicycles helped women achieve a degree of independence, and I particularly liked Helena Nelson’s Bike with No Hands, which is also about independence, and love, and accepting your own individuality, even if you sometimes yearn to be different. It ends on a hopeful note, with two people balanced in their relationship, just as we balance on a bicycle:

“I wish – but then, we are what we are.

I drive with two hands, walk with both feet

Firmly planted on sensible ground. And

I’ve got you. You can ride with no hands.”

Women's  cycling bloomers were
considered outrageous in the
alte 19th and early 20th centuries.

I also loved A Spider Bought a Bicycle, by Phyllis Flowerdew, which for some reason reminded me of the Christy Moore song Reel in the Flickering Light:

“A spider bought a bicycle

And had it painted black

He started off along the road

With an earwig on his back.

He sent the pedals round so fast

He travelled all the day                  

Then he took the earwig off

And put the bike away.”

Nonsense? Yes, I suppose it is, but it seems to captures the joy of cycling, something which is also encapsulated in a haiku written by Coney and printed on the back page (reproduced from www.bikeforums.net), although this final poem carries a warning:

 “The wind behind me

Water bottle is my friend

Watch that taxi door.”

By the way, if you've never come across Candlestick Press (I hadn't), it's a small independent company, based in Nottingham,  which operates on 'green' principles.  It produce a range of 'Instead of a Card' poetry pamphlets (including this one) on subjects as diverse as cats, dogs, gardens, tea, puddings and love. They each come with a matching envelope and bookmark and can be found at http://www.candlestickpress.co.uk/ .