from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Thursday 22 September 2022

poem for the autumn equinox: while nothing changes, everything does


 



While nothing changes, everything does
Autumn Equinox 2022


At dawn, after the stars and crescent moon, the sun

is back in the east, peering through the laden chestnut trees
into our bedroom.

In the night, scores more apples fall, and we eat our own
peaches for breakfast.
            Just now a new ladybird, so small
I could barely count its spots, landed on my arm.

These moments are lifeboats. 
    
                                    Such abundance, and
it's taken me till now to learn I don’t need to earn it,
deserve it, or strive for it; I can simply revel in beauty.

Nothing has lost its significance for me; it’s just
that, ageing, I crave it all less.

Of course
        the tragedy of the world continues.


My friend says ‘Five swans flew past this morning.’
My friend says ‘Surely this is enough.’






© Roselle Angwin 2022

 

 

 

 

 

5 comments:

  1. "these fragments have I shored against my ruin" TS Eliot

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, that's a perfect quote! Thank you. I'd forgotten it. Which poem?

      Delete
  2. It comes at the end of The Waste Land and I discovered it the other day.
    The wonderful Michael Sheen's comments on it can be found on his 'twitter', if you Google the poem (you don't need Twitter to do so).
    Eliot, I think, needs to be read either really REALLY slowly, or really REALLY quickly...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah thank you! I must reread it. I read the Four Quartets over and over; been doing so for years, and I get more out of them every single time.

    ReplyDelete

Blog Archive