Tuesday Poem - SUMMER by Mary McCallum

Oops - I'm completely off the calendar. I thought today was Tuesday but apparently it's Wednesday which means I have an appointment with my accountants at lunchtime. . . Oh, joy and off I go! 

SUMMER

Toenails freshly pink, washing on the line held by the last
of the pegs, apricots the colour that can only be called
apricot (perfect for picking but rotten by noon). Bees sip
the lavender, the dog has – after a small performance –
swallowed her pill, the girls are up at last cracking eggs
for pancakes. Ian’s making coffee. Blitz of the grinder,
chuckle of fledglings on the roof wanting breakfast – one
being taught how to fly - an asterisk of a cloud dissolving

in the time it takes to walk to the compost bin. Summer

here – a held-breath -     Now a thousand trees

exhale – now the deep greening that sussurates, resuscitates

- this! pixilated sunlight – leaves startled into silver.   

                                    Mary McCallum

The Tenderness of Light - Mary McCallum 
(click on the title or image for more on Mary's beautiful, hand-bound collection) 



Don't you love the word sussurates? Especially here where Mary teams it up with resuscitates and vivid, light-emboldened images of pixilated sunlight and leaves startled into silver. 

Asterisk Cloud - Central Otago ; )


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Mary McCullum is founder-curator of our Tuesday Poem community. She won the inaugural Caselberg Trust Poetry Prize in 2011 with After Reading Auden, and her novel The Blue (2007) won the Montana Awards for the Best First Book of Fiction and Reader's Choice. Mary is working on a number of projects including a novel and children's book. She blogs at O Audacious Book and freelances as a writer and tutor. Mary lives in Eastbourne with her family, and spends summers in the Wairarapa. 

On After Reading Auden: 'This poem is full of curiosity: about the river, the light, the landscape. There's story and memory here, and best of all, a patient, deepening re-creation of experience, what is feels like to be, for a moment or two, truly alive.' Bernadette Hall, judge of the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize 2011.   

For more Tuesday Poems please click on the quill -

This week's editor is Melbourne-based poet Jennifer Crompton
with On Small Planes by Fiona Kidman

All Colour Depends on Light

These fragile candle-bearing porcelain vessels live on the mantle*piece in my bedroom; they were made by artist and dear friend Katherine Glenday. Katherine lives in Cape Town; we'll be working together on various collaborative projects (a porcelain flotilla?) when I return to South Africa for a month or two this coming December/January. . .

And don't you love the word 'mantle'? Like every grain of sand, it contains the universe. . . 

*mantel |ˈmantl| (also mantle)nouna mantelpiece or mantelshelf.ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: specialized use of mantle 1 .mantle 1 |ˈmantl| |ˈmøn(t)l| |ˈmant(ə)l|noun1 a loose sleeveless cloak or shawl, worn esp. by women.• figurative a covering of a specified sort : the houses were covered with a thick mantle of snow.• (also gas mantle) a fragile mesh cover fixed around a gas jet, kerosene wick, etc., to give an incandescent light when heated.• Ornithology a bird's back, scapulars, and wing coverts, esp. when of a distinctive color.• Zoology an outer or enclosing layer of tissue, esp. (in mollusks, cirripedes, and brachiopods) a fold of skin enclosing the viscera and secreting the substance that produces the shell.2 an important role or responsibility that passes from one person to another : the second son has now assumed his father's mantle. [ORIGIN: with allusion to the passing of Elijah's cloak (mantle) to Elisha (2 Kings 2:13).]3 Geology the region of the earth's interior between the crust and the core, believed to consist of hot, dense silicate rocks (mainly peridotite).• the corresponding part of another planetary body : the lunar mantle.

This weekend I hope to post word re; the environmental nightmare that's pummeling our North Island coastline. . . Our hearts are in our mouths. Meantime, please love the waters - wherever in the world you are - love the waters and light candles. . . ? Thank you xo. 

  

Temporarily disheveled

My feathers have been in disarray these past few weeks. (Actually, the ones I'm showing here belonged to Murray, plucky bird that he was; no doubt, still a zealous preener.) 

In time, I might find language to write about aspects of my recent 'in-house' process, but for now, suffice to say most of the changes taking place involve 're-' words... recognizing, reconfiguring, recycling, re-booting, remembering, redistributing, recharging, releasing - and ultimately, the realization that I feel a sense of gratitude and relief at finally reaching a place of relative respite and reasonable resolution.  

There's a way to go yet (isn't there always?) but let me risk saying this; while so much depends on the angle and way we look at things, the straggly bits really do have a habit of finding their place. Which is pretty remarkable, don't you reckon? 

There are times when - no matter how squiff & skew we let our tail feathers get - grace abounds. 

   

     

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Miriam Levine's poetry collection The Dark Opens has kept me company during these 'off the wire' days. 

Thank you, Mim. Your writing is tough and delicate; striking and wise. The dark does indeed open and when it does, light is already there, eager to come skipping on in...