A GROUP OF FRUIT STACKED ON A GAME BOARD
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This morning the air surrounds me with the scent of a newly cooled fridge. There is a cleanness there that matches the sparkle of the three stars I can see in the sky.
Alt text says this week’s picture is: a group of fruit stacked on top of a game board. I doff my cap to that. I say it is indeed the Ludo board with three apples in a totem pole arrangement. At the bottom is ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin of the Year’ (My mum bought us the tree and I like to select the best apple of the harvest and celebrate that one first) next is a pretend red apple and on the top is a blue ‘apple for my mum’.
On Saturday I sang in the car park in town. Not just a snippet of a song as I parked the car. Not part of a line while getting a ticket from the machine. Real singing. I sang in a marquee, as part of a choir.
I love the fact that rehearsals have led to this. That weekly repeated actions over time have led to being able to be part of a performance. It has been good to learn the words to songs that I have been enjoying for years as well as learning to sing songs that were brand new to me. I still couldn’t do it without the words, and I definitely need the choir director to make sure I come in on time and stay in time, but I am good enough to perform.
I love it all, but my heart absolutely delights in those parts where the more accomplished singers put in the bits that make the back of my neck tingle. I admire this, and I love being next to it and fully in the presence of it. Coming in again when they have sung their parts has me feeling as though I am using my voice to celebrate their skill, as well as mark the way everyone’s voice adds to the layers.
It was wonderful to have good wishes from friends and family for the event. I wouldn’t have imagined a year ago that I would be performing at the town music festival, and I don’t think they would have thought it either. Standing in the choir is now one of my happy places.
I really enjoyed writing my post about silence and it feels almost complementary to now be writing one which includes singing. Although this could take me off on a tangent about how sometimes I walk to the rhythm of a song that I haven’t heard for years because I can suddenly hear it in my head or that seemingly silent thoughts have a sound of their own!
Words are important to me in all areas of my life. For poems, for coaching, for thinking, for thanking. A poem of mine was highly commended in The Gloucester Poetry Society competition yesterday and I love the feeling of someone liking the way lines have been set down.
Staying with words not being silent... I love the way when people read their poetry I receive the words almost as if I am hearing them and reading them at the same time. At a poetry reading this week I was reminded of this and of how wonderful it is when a poet reads their words and certain lines echo in your head long after they have stopped reading. The reading was a celebration of the launch of Kate Jenkinson’s new book, ‘Unbroken’ and I loved hearing the humanness of her poems as well as wonderful sets from the supporting poets. A full set from Jason Conway introduced me to more of his work which I really appreciated and it was good to hear Suzy Aspell for the first time. Cathy Carson’s sharing of ‘Jammie Dodgers’ had me fondly recalling the first time I heard it and I was, as always, beautifully emotionally awoken by her entire set. It’s good to be immersed in the sharing of words. When a poem resonates with me I feel the glow of awe and wonder and it makes me glad to be human.
There was visual awe this week when we got to see the Northern Lights for the first time ever. I am grateful to my friends on social media for posting their sitings which then led to me propelling myself off the settee to find out what I could see. In fact I thumbed a lift from Kath who was returning in the car at just after nine because I thought we would see something spectacular down the country roads. We saw a glorious segment of moon rising in the sky, but no lights. Luckily I decided I needed to check again from our back doorstep before we went to bed and we were fortunate enough to see the lights there. They were quite muted where we live, but definitely lighting the sky with a wonderful shade of red and a green hue. I haven’t written a poem to go with the moment yet, but I reckon there is one brewing. In the meantime I will leave you with ‘An Apple for My Mum’ from Gallery 4 – A Gallery of Dreams in my collection Welcome to the Museum of a Life...
AN APPLE FOR MY MUM
I need to tell you exactly what colour it was.
Did you ever suck an American boiled sweet –
a blue one –
slip it out of your mouth
hold it to the sun to admire it
before sliding its smoothness back in
and licking the wet sugar coating from
the pads of your thumb and index finger?
It was nearly that blue.
And did you have that gel toothpaste
so bright you squeezed it the full length
of your brush’s bristles
even though you knew the tube
said ‘pea-sized’?
The kind that had you wondering how blue
made teeth white?
It was almost that kind of blue.
And it shone
like the first strokes from a bottle of nail polish
labelled ‘electric blue’.
And there it was
hanging from the branch of a tree
within reach
and no one had picked it.
So, I got it for her, that bluest of apples,
and all the way to her house
excitement held my stomach captive
as I imagined her biting into it
or wanting to put it on display
for the whole world to see.
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