Ann Pilling

I keep waiting for summer to happen. Up here in Wensleydale the weather has been manic for three months, (we had summer in April). Since then it's been wind, rain, floods, storms et al with just the (very) occasional hot day. Well, we must have had a few of those because the farmers have been able to cut their grass. The verb used round here for doing that is 'to haytime'. Lovely isn't it?

Some time ago I heard the poet Danny Abse give advice about writing a poem. He talked about steeping yourself in your chosen subject, viewing it from every angle, saturating yourself in its 'thisness'. I tried to do that with my poem 'Rain'. 'Summer' is about storing precious memories up, to return to them later for consolation, something Wordworth understood so completely when he wrote  in 'Tintern Abbey'.

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.’

William Wordsworth from 'Tintern Abbey'

Rain

This rain has swilled all colour out of field and sky
grey sheep, grey grass,a new spring spews
grey foam up through a crumbling hole, the views
from our window are dull etchings en grisaille.
The river sizzles black, the beck boils brown,
trees litter the banks , a wall
of water smashes a bridge down stream,
leats thin as hair carve lines in the cheek of the fell.
I lie awake loving this rain, the print
of its hands on belly and thigh, the supreme
wet of it, the insistent beat. I want
only rain to enter me now, no warmth
of sun or moon or snow cover bedding me down
only rain and the fall of the rain.

Ann Pilling

Summer

Pulling weeds out after rain is lovely, the earth
opens like lips receiving a kiss and the stalks
do not struggle as I ease them from the ground. This grave summer
was full of rain.

Now swallows notch the wires like paper bows.
I must remember
that one great sunset, its red drops
heavy as mercury draining the sky, its imprint
intense as perfume on a cotton square.
I must breathe deep and pcoket it for winter, stuff
my hamster pouches full
of summer, and the smell of grass.

Ann Pilling.