Kite Flying

 

Kite Flying in South Cambridgeshire

Kite flying was a rare thing when I was a child.
Not just the crimson plastic diamond
draped listlessly over its hollowed tubular frame,
yellow flagged tail drooping
as the guide string dragged
over grassy, barely remembered hills
in search of a wild wind to set it soaring,
which it rarely found,
but as much the solitary soaring hawk

crooking its ruddy-brown wings over broad welsh hills,
its tuning-fork tail resonating to whistling air
too far for me to hear it fading west.                    

Then nature worked a rare miracle, man-assisted,
reddening the sky over the grey A40
with strong wing beats and forked tales,
white flashes of under-wing,
whistling calls,
the dour trunk road becoming a guiding line
red kites flew up into renewed existence.

Time flew too, dragging me in its wake.
Decades now into my adulthood,
beside the high chalk line edging brazenly
into the unfaltering flat of Cambridgeshire,
the clear mew of the sky-wise buzzard,
dancing proudly through the blue,                                      

is echoed by a piping call
from a hooked black beak with yellow cere.
These are broad skies, holding many feather-fingered wings
and now rouged tail forks and taut yellow legs tipped
with obsidian black as the red kite
soars into a sky wide world.

  

"Kite Flying in South Cambridgeshire" was first published in In Other Words. 

                                                                       ©J.S.Watts

Marching Further Onwards Into March

My previous March post about walking through the mud and cold of March reminded me of a poem of mine. I therefore thought I'd share a recording of me reading it for the Poetry Archive.  This blog is supposed to be a photographic experiment with words, and you've had some March photographs, so now it's the turn of the words.

Walking This Footpath in a High Wind by J.S. Watts

Landscapes

Landscapes

 

This is the landscape of others' daydreams

dinner plate flat and domesticated like a tablecloth.

 It’s too predictable to be perfectly safe.

 Small ducks paddle in its bilges

                                                      and moorhens waddle pond-toed

                 over the flat green baize of the water weed.

                Landside and the green is pruned and manicured

                to tidy perfection.

                Even its countryside is disciplined.

                an ordered game of chess played out

                on clearly delineated fields

                with rolled hay-bales for pawns.

                Let your imagination stroll off

                and it will return

                appropriately and impeccably chaperoned.

                                                     There is no chance of inadvertently

                                                      stumbling on where the wild things are.

God forbid there should be wild things.

 

This was your land

though I never saw it.

I thought you were with me

chasing the swallow's tail to the next new horizon

when all you wanted was to play hide-and-seek

                                                        in the not so long grass;

                                                      the extent of the wilderness you hankered for.

While you came and went

my eyes hungrily followed     not you

but the buzzard on its way to the high places.

My ears dreamt of the wind's drum beat

and the sea moaning for the rock heavy coast.

I climbed moorland and mountains in my sleep

but when I came down again

                                                       you were not there.

I had lost you to the hay stack fields,

playing hide-and-seek with reality:

our landscapes sundered without us noticing.

Go feed the ducks

they will need looking after.

"Landscapes" is published in the poetry pamphlet "The Submerged Sea"

by J.S.Watts

Dempsey & Windle (2018) ISBN 9781907435591

©J.S.Watts

Une Semaine en Languedoc

I've just spent a week in the south of France and very nice it was too: sun, blue sky, old buildings, old friends and vineyards (plus their "fruits" - both solid and liquid). Sadly, I wasn't able to take my camera with me, but I did have my phone. It went in the back pocket of my shorts on every walk and trip out.

What follows are the photographic highlights of the week. They are phone-camera photos. They are not perfect and some will work better in full screen than others, but if you want a wine-soaked flavour of the old village of Nezignan L'Eveque, the surrounding countryside and a few neighbouring villages, then feel free to browse these images.

If you would like to read a poem I wrote some years ago about the rooftops of Nezignan L'Eveque following a previous trip, please click on this link to the Poetry Atlas

    Storks flocking above the village church

Dead Certainty

Thursday, 3rd October 2019 was National Poetry Day in the UK. The theme of the day was "Truth". As a member of the South Cambridgeshire Poetry Stanza, I was asked to produce an illustrated poem on the subject of "Truth" for an art/poetry display in a pub in the area. I chose to illustrate a poem of mine called "Dead Certainty", which has been published in a variety of locations. The "illustrations" were my own photos. This is the image that resulted.

Harcamlow Way - a Partial Etching

Harcamlow Way – a partial etching

Time has etched out a much loved route, my feet

echoing themselves on old roads,

across the farm, beside the stream,

shaping the carved field lines,

curves and contours of the land

and then a sharp and sudden

angle onto the rising track

sloping slowly upwards into a wide

open Cambridge sky.

I walk down evolving seasons,

when the east harried winds shriek

their abrasive chill along the path,

when yellow beds of daffodils spread

in sudden preparation for the flush and roll of spring

and when three months later wild dog roses

nose the track with wedding arches, petalled pink,

nature sensing better the order of life

than recent man shaped gods.

                             J.S.Watts

"Harcamlow Way - A Partial Etching" is published in the poetry Collection "Years Ago You Coloured Me"

by J.S.Watts

Lapwing Publications (2016) ISBN 9781910855157

©J.S.Watts