When I had poems published in The Peacock Journal, I was asked to add a short definition of ‘beauty’ to accompany the poems. Here are the three definitions.
Beauty 1 - Still On a hill above Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. Winter's leafy waste still carpeting the empty woods. Snowy patches still on the elbows of the Ore Mountains, fending off East Germany. Still colourful the grand Victorian spa hotels in the narrow valley below where mineral-drenched spring waters quench tourists. Above, private jets ferrying rich Russians, beautified, molded bodies. Still luminous moss on the grave stones in Hrbitovni cemetery where three still figures squat, hidden in hoods. Under a leaning yellow willow tree, a Czech woman in a red coat sits still, staring into her Sixties, long black hair like the fine, forlorn branches tickled by cold March fingers. Two boys walk past, just cubs testing strength, elbowing and flicking each other; never still with never-men giggles. Beauty 2 - Refusing to Be Beaten Refusing to be beaten: dwarfed by decades but dressed like a teen in a bright bikini, blonde hair, outrageously large sunglasses. She went up an elevator in a shopping mall while a young couple came down, looked down, noticed, sniggered, whispered about this youthful soul refusing to age appropriately. The aged beauty saw the young couple, knew exactly what they said, what they thought, but carried on going up. She adjusted her glasses and cracked out a reddened smile. Beauty 3 - Just Children Beauty is a brilliantly blue November day that make the roots of winter wither into forgetfulness. The orange and yellow trees in the city park are so brightly colourful you forget the slow death that paints them. The continually falling leaves, filling the air with fluttering action. The leaves on the ground, fossilized in the frost. The sound of laughter: an adult snapping arms at falling trees, being a leaf-eating monster for his toddling son who giggles and runs, all limbs in waving steam-engine motion. The fact that this is a German garden, the father and son are Chinese, and I am an English observer reveals how we are really all just children delighting in the passing world.
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When you left me, I didn’t panic. Not at first.
There was disbelief and a refusal to accept the truth. I just calmly retried our connection. Something faulty but easily fixed. There are lulls in every relationship. After the tenth try, the worry whipped up inside. You had left me without warning or explanation. What had I done? The silent emptiness gnawed at me. I could no longer check in on you, satisfy my addiction with fidgeting fingertips, use you at my favourite sites, deny that this was an obsession. The loneliness leered at me through buffeting windows, empty sites. I called many times for help from people who have known you longer than me - your friends and mentors. I begged for help, explaining what little I knew of the cause of our break-up. There were a few words of consolation from your so-called-friends, empty promises by people who claim to be experts on how your workings and whereabouts. But they don’t know you like I know you. Too late, I was told, try again tomorrow. The tomorrows mounted up and the same empty promises that you’ll return when you’re ready. A monstrous thought stalked me- you’d never come back. What did you expect me to do? I had to find you somewhere, or someone like you. So yes, I admit, I scoured the neighbourhood and found a free partner elsewhere. We met over coffee. I was just temporary, I promise. Just a short taster to fill your gap. I would’ve paid anything to get you back. I offered money, I made deals with experts, appointments, everything I could to change to get you back and keep me away from my coffee dates and risk of infection. Then on the third day I woke up and an idea slithered out: I could fix you myself and bring you back. It was as simple as changing the cable. Once. Twice. Fingers crossed, mumbled pairs, phone in my hand rubbed like rosary beads. Then you returned in a flurry of lights. There was leaping, cheering. I kissed your plastic body and we were reunited over vacuous emails and fake news sites, full bars and sighing denial. Early July and I am stunned by the emptiness of the air. The cuckoos have gone quiet, have gone. Why didn’t I realise sooner? Too busy locked inside hiding from heatwaves and vengeful evening storms. I suddenly miss his confident bell ringing, his reminder that nature persists despite our best efforts.
He started in early May, an unmistakable nursery rhyme song, complete and faithful. I live in a small village atop a wooded hill outside Lugano in Switzerland. Enough of the woods nestle the apartment blocks and villas to give the cuckoo a choice of stages for his repetitive posturing. When he first sang, I was a boy again, living on the edge of Epsom Common woods where cuckoos were a distant, tree-suffocated sound; a promise of something fleeting and stranger amongst all the wary resident songbirds. Here in Montagnola this African migrant proudly calls a partner in the famous crime: laying eggs in smaller songbird nests, kicking out the existing eggs, fleeing from the scene before the first mother returns to cock a confused head at an outsized egg. An egg that reflects back our own nature for aren’t we being cuckoos to the Earth? They are secretive birds; tricksters afraid to be uncloaked, the confidence scam revealed. I caught a glimpse in late May as he bolted past: part pigeon, part sharp-bodied hawk with a surprisingly large spotted body and short, hurried wings. He fled to the depth of a tree. Throughout May and June, a cuckoo was always nearby whether we were at home, high up in the Alps, on the edge of Italian lakes. Always the same herald of summer from a select number of prominent trees, the song deliberately changing in pitch as the weeks wore on. He was the loudest sound of the evenings, perhaps to keep the lazy evening at bay as Midsummer exposed the moon. Now I sit saddened by the vacuum of noiselessness. He has left with his mate, and their egg will have gifted grieving parents an oversized adoptee. I realise the true message of his song: the fleeting nature of all gifts in life; be aware before it is gone. Throughout the quickly darkening evenings and the reluctantly lit mornings of winter, a tawny owl was our companion. The owl had several regular hooting-spots in the trees that triangulated our block. Never seen, this night-ghost cloaked in the blur of the night and the silhouettes of trees.
When I heard the owl from our third floor concrete tree house, the space around shrunk, turning everything into tree. Time reeled back to boyhood; the thrill of such rare sounds that hinted at something secret and hidden in the woods of childhood. The tawny owl’s hooting is different to what you think you know. It’s not the recognizable ta-wit-ta-woo of storybooks and cartoons. The call is strangely strained and fast, scared, even, scared to reveal the secrets. One unusual February evening, our hooting friend suddenly had a rival. In the darkness he began his normal declarations only to find, a few moments later, a distant reply, a rumour of the trees complaining of dusk. Over the next thirty minutes, the reply grew stronger as the rival male moved in. I lived intensely in between the hoots, hesitating to breath, conscious of the seconds being counted in feathers. Almost exactly at eight, the owls were in competition: a flurry of calls, a race to see who would win to summon that great milky eye from behind the eastern mountains. As suddenly as they started, one stopped, then the other. By eight-thirty there was an odd, exhausted silence and the gloom of adulthood returned. Questions hang in the air and the moon demanded attention. The last owl for the winter was in the Piedmont area of Italy. I opened the window and heard a sad screeching scarring the early March night. Somewhere close on the langhe hills a barn owl was calling, moving, calling, clawing out its night’s territory, terrorizing the vineyards with ghosting wings and merciless beak. On the crests of hills stood illuminated castles and churches, constellations of village lights as if upturned towards a grape-speckled sky. I closed the window, surrendering to the unknowing of the frosting night, grateful to the owls for reminding me of secrets that can still be found. He sings one evening in late June from atop a tree in the village centre of Montagnola, a few wingbeats away from the former home and museum of Nobel prize winning German poet, author, nature lover and painter Hermann Hesse.
The blackbird’s voice is one of clear trills and triumph, of watery music and melody. He sings boldly and beautifully as if there is no such thing as climate change, ocean acidification, deforestation, the sixth mass extinction, plastic contamination. He sings and I feel forgiven. Though not the first bird of the famous hymn, he certainly sings as blackbirds have sung for thousands of years. He sings and time is torn away, for it is almost an identical song to the blackbirds of my childhood: those boisterous, proud singers from atop trees where Epsom Common woods fringed a few brief meadows ringed with roads. Every morning and evening, a blackbird sang. One in particular sits conducted into my memory. On the far corner of Braken Path road there was a tall conifer tree, the stage for one especially trembling blackbird. From this perch he broke mornings and molded evenings; his singing was the herald of the day, permission for all other birds to begin. I could hear him as I crossed the meadow to my friend’s house and as we set off on exploratory woodland walks. Always heard long before he was seen, but he could be spotted: a black prophet of happiness with a sunshine yellow bill. He has become a mythical bird who sang all the notes of my endlessly short boyhood summers when there was no future, no fear, no causes for alarm, just time to plan the morning’s adventures. No adulthood, no time passing, no loss. I can still hear him singing, and it’s his genetic cousins that sing here in Montagnola, Switzerland. A slight variation in notes here and there, a more operatic range, perhaps, as suits this region. But he sings and I am reminded, and then I realize how much time has passed with the fracturing mornings and evenings of middle age. I wonder how much time we have left to listen to his songs. |
AuthorA poetic-essay style blog with a limit of 365 words. 365 like the days of the year - my name being one of those days! Archives
March 2020
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