8 July 2022: July Update

Today brings a swelter of visitors to the Abbey Courtyard, most armed with ice-creams and looking somewhat dazed by the unfamiliar temperature. I like the overheard remarks that drift past…’But you’re from Texas’….’yea but the heat is different there’…..and I am wondering if there is any truth in that. I think we should celebrate a Texan in Bath remarking on the heat. It’s cool inside Stewart Edmondson’s woods….

 

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Altertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Everything Is Waiting For You by David Whyte

Cool too by the sea….

They say on a hot day, tea is good, which for me, involves ceramicist Chris Keenan, on a daily basis….

It is a good time for a cool walk under the stars

It is this way with kindness:
someone plants in someone else
a bit of beauty.
a kind word, perhaps, or a touch,
the gift of their time or their smile.
and years later, in that inner soil,
that beauty emerges again,
pushing aside the dead leaves,
insisting on loveliness,
a celebration of the one who planted it,
the one who perceives it, and
the fertile place where it has grown.

Kindness by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I like to go in the late evening to Kingfisher Point. It’s very quiet, and I recall summer days in rural Galway. Lovely to see the cygnets growing. Barely a sound as they dip and feed amongst the rushes.

The bicycles go by in twos and threes –
There’s a dance in Billy Brenna’s barn
tonight,
And there’s the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
Half-past eight and there is not a spot
Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
That might turn out a man or woman, not
A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.

I have what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation.
A road, a mile of kingdom. I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming
thing.

Inniskeen Road: July Evening, by Patrick Kavanagh

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Thank you for reading.
Aidan