Matins.
The day begins. Early morning light at the window.
I sit, in silence, stilled, on the edge of the bed, book in hand.
The reading is Caring by F R Scott.
Caring
Frank Reginald Scott born Quebec,1899. Life cycle completed 31st January 1985.
Sound and song fill my space. A Villanelle for Our Time.
“Centre of calm beyond excess
Who cares for caring, has caress.”
© silkannthreades
It’s just one of those days of summer,
when blooms
Flowering leek
and beings
Bee with leek
and beasties
entwine with sun and sky,
to weave a cloth
Finely clothed
so light and fine
Light and fine
that you wish you could wear it forever,
close,
like the sweet touch of earth to skin.
Day of Summer
Close as Earth to Skin
© silkannthreades
Ladysighs teaches herself to write Minute Poems and Lanterne poetry. Mrs P of Destination Unknown challenges herself to create Villanelles. Their willingness to play with form and words inspired me to attempt a haiku; my very first haiku, ever, emerging, as I near the completion of my fifties!
The monarchs return
when the plums ripen and fall
and the winds blow home.
The monarchs return
when the plums ripen
and fall
There it is; short and sweet 😉
Will I write more haiku, or try my hand, and brain, at another form of poetry ? Maybe, but probably not yet. I would like to concentrate my spare creative energy on my chap books. They need a massive transformation before they are ready to fly.
© silkannthreades
Our previous minister, Rev. John Hunt, (now retired), would sometimes offer the congregation ‘a sweetie for the sermon’. His sermons didn’t ever need any sweetening but he said a ‘sweetie for the sermon’ was an ancient Scottish tradition, and we, believers all, were more than happy to help preserve the ways of the old Kirk. So the baskets of sweeties were passed from one pew to another and we, smiling and laughing like young ones at a birthday party, selected our sweetie and, then, spent the rest of the sermon, trying to dislodge sticky toffee from our gums and teeth. ( Perhaps we were not as young as our hearts imagined 🙂 ) Gummed up or not, they were sweet moments, and, although, I remember not a word of the sermons, I do remember feeling content and treasured and loved. Sugar it seems is a powerful preservative of well-being.
In the spirit of ‘a sweetie for the sermon’, I am spending time trying to capture and preserve the sweetness of the current season. For there is much sweetness to savour.
There is the sweet fragrance and delicate tones of my dwarf sweet peas both outside
Sweetly fragrant Sweet Pea
and indoors, mingled with scented rose.
Rose and Sweet Peas
Then there is the sweetness suspended in the flowers and leaves I am drying for my home-made potpourri.
Summer Medley with Tracy’s butterflies
Potpourri translates as ‘rotten pot/stew’, which, hopefully, mine will not be, if I have dried everything sufficiently well.
Additional sweetness comes in a friend’s seasonal gift of home-made Christmas mince pies; so delicious they are impossible to preserve except on camera.
Stars of Wonder
They are a scrumptious-sumptuous combination of melt-in-your-mouth sugary buttery pastry and ‘ barely there tartness’ of rich, fruity mince meat; made, I am told, with the addition of apple and green tomato to the dried fruit.
So those are the sweeties. Now for the sermon. Sermon? What sermon? My mouth is too full of goodness to speak.
© silkannthreades
The days are busy; the evenings too. Not with big, important tasks; just the minutiae of daily life… . bread to bake, clothes to lavender, meals to prepare, groceries to buy, dishes to wash, feet to scrub, vases to fill, socks to find, hair to brush, a friend to visit, a neighbour to chat to, a letter to write, an email to send, a text to answer, and phone calls to make and to receive….
My mother is improving and gaining strength. She will return home soon, we hope. Her progress is good. I phone her once, sometimes twice, a day. A hospital is a busy place. Our conversations are brief.
But I grab a moment of the call, to talk to my brother or my sister; whoever happens to be with our mother when I phone. They are tired. I hear it in their voices. Whilst one sibling is at the hospital, the other cares for the house and my father. Care responsibilities are 24 hours.
Later, when it is 1 in the morning here, I may phone my sister again. It will be 10pm in Cairns. We discuss the day’s events. I am yawning and, suddenly, my sister switches from talking about hospital matters to something about ‘hammering nails’. I am silent for a while, wondering what this means. My sister is silent, too, for a moment. Then she laughs and asks, “What did I just say?” “Something about nails,” I reply. She laughs again; her great,big, only-my-sister-can-laugh-this-way, laugh. “I fell asleep. I was talking in my sleep,” she says. A short while later, it happens again. We hang up before our words become any more incomprehensible 🙂
There are other calls to make at other times. To friends; to my aunt, in a rest home, to let her know that her sister is okay; to my uncle and my aunt who are moving to their retirement home. To others we Skype. My father likes to Skype chat. He types well and knows how to use those emoticons 😀
Thus are the smallnesses that occupy my days; that keep my fingers flying, my voice activated, and my brain engaged (mostly).
But there are other smallnesses that rest my body and mind; that communicate by ancient paths and provide calm and continuity,
and call forth joy every morning.
© silkannthreades
In Christchurch, letter boxes are being ‘harvested’. Our Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) has given permission for a community group, the Avon-Otakaro Network, to gather letter boxes from red-zoned residential properties where the houses have been demolished. The letter boxes, and the homes to which they belonged, had to be abandoned following the devastation of the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. The Avon-Otakaro Network, which has so far collected 200 letter boxes, plans to use them to create 10 sculptures to be placed by the lower Avon River. They will be reminders of loved homes and communities that are no more. http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/9305950/Harvesting-red-zone-letterboxes-for-art
Just as letter boxes are changing their form, so, too, is our Postal Service. Yesterday came the not unexpected announcement that New Zealand Post will reduce “its work force by up to 2000 staff as part of a strategy to reshape the business over the next five years.” (http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/business/9352413/NZ-Post-job-losses-restructure-revealed ) Part of that strategic plan includes a move to a 3 day postal delivery service, beginning in mid 2015. Like any good organisation, it must continually renegotiate its terms of existence in order to survive and thrive. New Zealand Post has been doing its vital work, in one form or another, for at least 170 years and I expect it can continue to serve for another century, if appropriate innovative strategies are implemented.
In the meantime, whilst the Postal Service and the letter boxes are being sorted out and re-arranged, some of us are doing our best to help keep the current postal structures in good heart.
Here are my bookmark gifts ready to fly away, par avion, to distant shores.
Fly away my pretty ones
Can you guess which one is coming to a post box near you? One will find a home, in the US, and will soon be covered in dog hair ; one will settle comfortably in London, next to Danny, the teddy bear, and a cat called Thomas ; and the third will go to a dedicated reader of books, and my blog, and long time friend, who lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
But real mail doesn’t only leave my home. It arrives as well. In my broken-down-earthquake-damaged-letter box, which no one would want to harvest, I found this…..midday yesterday…..
All pink and white and pretty
This pink and white parcel delight contains my first purchase from Koru Knits’ Felt shop. (Felt is our New Zealand answer to Etsy)
I always love a parcel and the treats within. Here is my treat; beautiful ‘sapphire blue’ handwarmers, lovingly handmade by fellow blogger, Lynley.
Handmade by Lynley
Sapphire Blue Handwarmers
Of course, they won’t be needed right now, as we head in to summer, but I like to be prepared!
Included in my parcel was a lovely, and generous, bonus (because I was Lynley’s first Felt customer) ; a pink, white and blue striped apron, ( you can see a little of it underneath the handwarmers), which is perfectly perfect for me, in both colour and size. How did she guess?
What Lynley didn’t guess is that I would put ‘pinny’ and handwarmers on, straight away, and prance around the kitchen taking photos of myself!
And, if it had been morning time, I would have pranced right out the door and taken my new garments for a walk to my letter box, just for the sheer fun of it. And, perhaps, even given a friendly wave to the postie, if he or she had been cycling by at that very moment.
© silkannthreades
silkannthreades 