Our chair, Susan, led a Nature Writing and Meditation workshop as part of her residency with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, at the Gosling Sike site. Not blessed with perfect sunny weather (this is Carlisle!) nevertheless the writers were shaken by the wind, and serenaded by birdsong. Feeling part of that great whole inspired Jude Davison to write this poem.
Stately soldiers
Stand guard over this place
Watching and waiting
Inviting, so patient
So calm, all knowing
Their deaths – a thinly veiled crack
A doorway perhaps…
Between here and there
Form birth to rebirth
With death in between
Surrounded by new
A clamorous crew
Virile and young
Reaching and yearning
So much to be done
In such a small season
And old time itself
Benevolently watches
It all transpire
The same every year
A constant renewal
Of growth and of death
A foreverness season
In every breath
So what to be learned?
What to be gleaned?
From see to shining season
Of this cycle wheel
Perhaps hope is the message?
Love is the lesson?
Life knows itself
With no second guessing
Can we take what we see
Around us each year
The growth and the harvest
The darkness, the light
And know we are held
As the plants and the trees
In the arms of a great gardener
Who holds it all right
And then very gently
Puts weight to the wheel
And once again
Life turning with ease
Carlisle Writers' Group 