Source to the Sea and Back
Mark Smalley
Source
Holy places
ferned with sacral springs,
wellhead streaming from
St. Ruan’s stooped chapel
holding what exactly?
A cool quench of clarity:
without this, nothing,
handfulls of dust, parched hearts
eased by pastures green where
I lay me down to drink deep
the brimful running gladness of green.
Flow
River recognises that
getting out of my head
aids my ebb and flow
reconnected with the wide beyondero
shushing rainsticks attaining fluency
in river tongues rounding this frowning flowstone,
threshold edge smoothed towards something
resembling an understanding.
River Meets Tide
Land drains down to the level of water,
dissolves, gets muddled,
approaching the condition of silt
smeared on my cheeks, trunks of oak
and speckled birch, sludge bemoiled,
clagtacious, deech-deep and delicious,
holdfasts unfastened, a few feathers,
a twist of orange twine.
Ocean
Light and shadows skitter shoreless
over a panaqueous world, dissolved,
unresolved, curling around a nautilus-chambered
we, orbiting this pulse, pip of a heart,
flat flippers folded,
praying through neuralgic static,
gone. Look again. Scan flat empty seas,
a greater score knock, knock, sloshing
on Earth’s dry doors.
In his poem ‘Water’, Philip Larkin imagines constructing a religion around the wet stuff, raising “in the east / A glass of water / Where any-angled light / Would congregate endlessly”. For someone whose work is often considered to be glum, I find this the most breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring image.
In early June 2024 I spent five days exploring Lizard in Cornwall with two friends, Alan Kellas and Paul Welcomme. Together we’re the Palchemical Poets, because the magic is in the friendship. We pay close attention to nature and wild places, and then try to convey something of our experiences in words and images.
The creative piece , ‘Source to Sea and Back’, results from us having paid attention to the wet stuff in all sorts of settings. For example, the source we visited was one of Cornwall’s many holy wells. ‘Flow’ follows ‘Source’, then ‘River Meets Tide’ which is the mouth of the river, followed by ‘Ocean’, but you can read my scribble any which way you like, because the water cycle turns endlessly, we hope.
This artwork distills eight Palchemical meetings we’ve held in watery places since last autumn.
Mark Smalley, Bristol
Creative writing facilitator, and environmental communicator.
Co-founder of Climate News Tracker https://climateactiontracker.org/
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