Skip to main content

Grandmother's Footsteps

This is a time of sudden growth, and nothing seems to grow faster than brambles.

I'm reminded of that children's game, when the challenge is for the approachers to see how close they can get to touching you in the few moments you're looking away, those long arms extending just far enough before their weight tips them towards the ground, to start all over again...

And I think how quickly the post-apocalyptic world would be covered by looping hoops emerging from wood and hedge, from each and every edge, reaching ever further, even venturing into water, deterred by nothing much...

Perhaps this was the original world, after or at least outside Eden - a landscape criss-crossed by arching brambles.

You've got to have a certain admiration for the bramble, so determined it is.

And well-equipped - what with that ability to progress in prostrate, clambering or flying mode, all those arms and weapons - hidden prickles on leaves, thorns on stems - the huge number of varieties equipping it for all sorts of situations, those inviting fruits which make it attractive to man, bird and insect, thus ensuring maximum spread of its seeds...

More dots, which somehow seem appropriate...

It's not easy to fight.

I tussle with it every year.  Armed with heavy gloves, secateurs, fork and billhook, like a medieval peasant going to war, I think I'm winning, but even then it gets me with a prickle or two, if not a slash across the face.

It will go on much longer than me, not to say us.
I know it will win eventually.


I am a bramble


I am a bramble
well-armed and booted.
Ready to go
any time at all

when you’re not looking
I’ll travel on.
We don’t hang about
you wait and see

I’ll fling out my limbs
over the gap.
I’m tender tipped
to grasp the earth

fanning my fingers
every point ready.
I will take root
nearer to you

and start again.
We are connected
and all go back
a very long way.

Just turn away
and one of these days
you’ll be surprised
at our advance

to reclaim all
that once was ours
before you arrived
to hack us back.

Till then I’ll continue
feeding the flies while
preparations proceed
to trip you up.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rake Daddy Rake

  As with lots of good stories, there are many versions. Basically this one's about a pair of Wiltshire yokels raking a pond for kegs of smuggled brandy.  They feigned lunacy when surprised by the excise men, saying that they were trying to rake out the full moon which was reflected in the water.  Their ruse was successful. The officials had no trouble in deciding they were lunatics, so left them to their raking. Interestingly, the Lunacy Act of 1842 defined a lunatic as someone ‘afflicted with a period of fatuity in the period following a full moon’. I suppose any time falls into the category of a 'period following a full moon'.  As for fatuity, that might include all of us on certain occasions, not least since it's not stated how long 'a period' is.  Perhaps then we're all occasionally lunatic... Be all that as it may, on this occasion the lunatics (I've put inverted commas round the word and taken them out several times) outwitted the sober and sane, ...

The Three Hares

  The Three Hares We continue on our way running, running, running around held together tip to tip so I can hear what she can hear as well as her. And the other follows me in front of her – we are joined up by our ears so we follow, lead and follow running, running, running around we continue on our way. Running, running, running around – no cause for worry – what's to come has already been. The future's past – watch us here – we're going nowhere – the last is first and first is last. Our present moment sees us still although we seem to race – running, running, running around we continue. On our way running, running, running around hearing your persistent questions – why do you keep on asking? We cannot tell you any more. May you share your senses and find soft silence at your centre which is so close, while you go on running, running, running around. The turning of the year, with the various thoughts about the past and the future that c...

The Beginning of Time

  Which beginning of time [the Creation] according to our Chronologie, fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October in the year of the Julian Calendar, 710 [i.e. B.C. 4004].   The Annals of the World (1658), p.1 Archbishop James Usher 1581-1656   Yes, anything, even time itself must start somewhere, somewhen – a beginning at a point in time is not an easy calculation   when nothing was and something is, with so much yet to come. All of which we now know well – us who had our own beginnings.     Time began on the night before the twenty third day of October four thousand and four years BC. Do not ask what may have occurred   in those earlier blackberry days. October's a month of beginnings and ends. The swallows have flown.  The fieldfares are here. My sums are done.  Now to make a new start. I spent some time – time again! – searching for an appropriate picture to precede this poem...