August/September 2016 - Elizabeth Rimmer.

August/September 2016 - Elizabeth Rimmer.

Elizabeth Rimmer.  

Elizabeth Rimmer has been widely published in magazines and on-line. Her first collection,Wherever We Live Now, was published in 2011 by Red Squirrel Press who also published her second collection, The Territory of Rain, in September 2015. She was awarded the honour of Makar of the Federation of Writer (Scotland) in 2016.She is currently working on poems about herbs, wild landscapes, and music as a response to personal grief and social upheaval.

She blogs at www.burnedthumb.co.uk. 

 

Walking the Territory

 

In this place I write

here, and here only,

to know this egg-shell,

fern frond, worm-cast,

this cloud, blanket-stitched with sunlight,

this river, its dimples and eddies.

 

In this place I write

this now and never again moment,

this here, new-known,

known over and over again,

the depth of it, the wealth,

the complex intensity.

 

In this place I write

the dialogue we hold with the earth,

a continuous exchange

of love and fruitfulness,

almost unconscious,

grounding, creating

the landscape of home.

 

In this place I write

this terrain - how water shapes it

through rain stored up

in the peat banks,

the weight of ice,

its grinding slowness ,

how rivers swell and drain,

lay down and shift the sand and clay,

shape and transform.

 

In this place I write

these rocks - igneous, sedimentary,

basaltic, overlaid, broken,

weathered gold and grey -

the big lump of Ben Ledi,

the sweep of Abbey Craig.

the folds and hollows of the Ochils,

the waterfalls, the mills,

the silver mines and spoil tips

greening over dust and slag of coal.

 

In this place I write

the slow growth of moss and lichen,

the wear and the interchange,

the melting, dissolving.

In this place I write

this grey of sky and how

it gives rich lustre to the green,

makes the air soft and mild.

Leaf here mellows beside

the blossom on the apple.

 

In this place I write

with inwardness and attention, 

the meaning and the purpose

quietly growing

from deep understanding –

a poetics of blood and earth and fire.

In this place I write

to make from this here

and this now a poem,

a silken clue to thread the maze

feel the thrum of other hands

touching, laying hold of it,

taking the weight together,

lifting it into the light.