Beltane (The Rise of an April Leaf)

The rise of the subtitle ("Rise of an April Leaf") implies the fall and in this poem the leaf at its unfurling nervously considers its mortality and all the things that can go wrong. The second voice representing all the things urging it on - sun, spring etc - riffs on the old moral 'he who saves himself loses himself'

Puckered,
Helpless,
Grizzly,
Clenched
Ugly as a newborn face;
Scared to let myself go:
And where can I go
Except towards death?
And what if I grow
In the wrong directions,
Abnormal or twisted,
And how do you do it anyway?
Thoughts crumpled,
Feelings crushed.
Perhaps I’m not even a leaf?
Just scared to stand out
From the crowded branches?
So what am I? – yellow?
Or just painfully shy
Soft virgin green
Closed against the urging sun?
Do I have to do anything?
Will I just become – me?
Or do I have to force myself out?
Safer to sit tight;
But then I get scared
The rest of the branch
Which had seemed so wooden
Is unfolding faster;
Best to let go then;
But what if my flower
Hardly out of bud
Gets pollinated?

The May blossom light
Of the still warm evening;
The birdsong high
Above distant traffic:
The Sun become mild
And expansive, beaming:
The breathless wind:
All give their answer:
He who saves his dances

Will never be a dancer.

© Gareth Calway and first published in 'Encounter' Magazine in April 1987.
Watch the video on YouTube youtu.be/0K8LiK9rFlA

I Sing Of A Maiden: Magical realism from the 14C

I sing of a maiden That is makeles; King of all kings To here sone che ches. He cam also still There his moder was As dew in Aprille That fallit on the gras. He cam also still To his moders bowr As dew in Aprille That fallit on the flower. He cam also still There his moder lay, As dew in Aprille That fallit on the spray. Moder and maiden Was never non but che; We may switch a lady Godes moder be. In celebration of spring, equinox and Annunciation, and with the magic of the Middle English poetry as real as the real is magical, we sing you our setting of this exquisite 14th century lyric. Like our local church, this lyric is 700 years old and still singing. We sing it in a 14th century style and recapitulate in a 20th century version marking the genesis and septuacentenary of that (and other such) church. We wrote the Early Music style tune on the harmonium it's performed on and the Modern rock tune is built on an arrangement of the famous Jack Bruce bass riff on Cream's "Sunshine of your Love". The paintings are Fra Lippo Lippi's Madonna and Child, Far Angelico's Annunciation and Gustav Klimt's Mother and Child.

April Poem Of The Month

Look, I have come through

I hear a moan - of the earth, but unearthly -

On the other side of the wall.

I creep round, girding my loins from some horror.

"A lamb's having birth!" pipes a child, beckoning.

I join the haggle,

Watch the quiet kindness of humans

As the lamb's bud-horns lock her

In the coffin of her mother's womb,

Watch them wrestling with spindly legs, dashing for aid,

While, irrelevant but insistent,

A turkey courts hens round our shins,

Feathers at full sail, twirling in absurd vanity,

Tattered, matted, red-sore raw and ugly beyond belief.

A man returns with a lifeline of coarse string.

A woman helps him coax birth

From the patiently groaning ewe.

The lamb is dead on the hay.

They lay it at the mother's mouth for her to lick.

"Is it all right?" asks someone, stupidly.

I knew it from the start.

....But the lamb stirs.

My heart shouts with the joy of it.

Life!

Stubborn, hopeless, quivering

Life!