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Singing as the Darkness Lifts 06/11/2023 (10)

Singing as the darkness lifts 06/11/2023

    This morning the air does not have a hint of fireworks or bonfire smoke and this surprises me. Instead I sense the faint smell of gentle cold which contrasts with the element of incense as I move from the outside in. The moon is beautifully bright and the red light of an aeroplane flashes in contrast to its pure white. I am slow and methodical in my movements this morning taking in the width of new day.

    Yesterday I met with my editor to finish going through each of the poems in my new collection. It has been good to revisit each one in turn and to hear myself read my work out loud and then note how it feels when they land for a listener. There has been an element of careful viewing from different angles as we have worked together and I am looking forward to sitting with the whole of the book for final tweaking.

    On Tuesday I was the invited host for Top Tweet Tuesday and I spent the day immersed in over fifty poems from the TTT community. The range of poems delighted me and it was a privilege to be a reader and responder to the work being shared and showcased.

    I also decided to face my dislike of having my photo taken. (I am definitely seizing the moments and using my coaching on myself and it feels good.) I used some of the photos from Tuesday and one from my recent reading and put them on to social media to give myself a big nudge towards taking action. There were plenty of comments to spur me on and I loved the way people engaged and the wonderful thread of humour through this too. This ticked all the boxes for me and thanks to my lovely wife I now have a new photo in a style which suits what I wanted. It took ten minutes from moving the table and setting myself up to having a photo which made me smile. Sometimes I like to time the things that I have been procrastinating about just to see how long they actually take. Of course there was ‘mindset time’ in the days leading up to this, but I am still pretty impressed.

    My coaching journey is exciting me and feels more and more real as I progress through the taught element and move to thinking about working with more people. I love working with people one-to-one. I was thinking about the why of this and what it is apart from feeling the privilege of working with someone, and there is a definite bonus to me in the silent work that I engage with before a session followed by the wonderful intensity of being present in the session and then the quiet reflection time that lands afterwards. This suits me well.

    There was a call out on social media last night for a piece of writing that was exactly 150 words long. I wanted to engage with it because it was a ‘what can you share in the next couple of hours?’ kind of call and sometimes I really like that speed element. At first, I hadn’t read the post properly and I shared a poem from my forthcoming collection that had newly impressed me in the day, but then I actually read the 150 word part and took it down. Instead I found a poem that I have always enjoyed which has never felt finished and I finished it! It feels complete now, see what you think...

 

THE STARS ARE CLAYS

 

Because I didn’t listen in science

or had forgotten that stars were big balls of gas,

I told you that under a silenced moon

an unnamed god had taken aim

then fired.

 

I told you that they followed

each upward trajectory

after hearing someone’s cry

of Pull.

 

I said, the stars are clays

held by the galaxy,

to pattern the darkness

for you and me.

They have been shot

into smithereens

and are shining there now for us.

 

Even though I knew the sun was a star,

that the shine had something

to do with immense pressure

changing hydrogen to helium,

even though I could have told you

that there were hundreds of billions of them out there

I didn’t.

 

All I was actually sure of was that

I needed to stand in the darkness

with you.

 

Will you lift your eyes and look with me?

 

***********************************************

One photo comes from the sharing of four

Sue sits with writing journal and pen and smiles for the camera in front of a vivid orange and yellow finger painting that she created some years ago. She is wearing her 'stunt girl' t-shirt.

 
 
Sue is rumbled eating the trick or treat sweets, caught putting a heart in a jar, writing at her desk, looking very serious while reading poems.

 

(As a quick aside... I shouldn't have told the person who asked what my stunts were in October that I unicycle while eating fire, because that was in fact a big fib and we were both momentarily disappointed!)
 

Here’s to the continued singing as the darkness lifts.

Click here to acess the podcast version of this blog.

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