From the Cornerstone Readings

A Blackness

As clear as night

wings like ink

drawn in non-flight;

more positive than anything

is that Rook on the rooftop opposite.

Its wide-nosed beak

scans feathers

for insects or dirt,

coat clean and brilliantine,

upstaging the Jackdaw

hidden in slate—

charcoal

indistinct

like a so-called Eskimo

wrapped in sealskin

or centuries of a misconceived othering.

*

Rook really took the biscuit, though;

all the colours swam into him,

absorbed their differences

to nothing,

a negative-positive

to outshine the Sun,

a blackness that turns day

and night

back to light.

Nalini Paul

 

Nalini Paul

***

Chrys Salt's tribute to Adrian Mitchell -

With Adrian at the Peace Festival

if you saw him running it was because he’d spotted truth in the crowd and was chasing it if you saw him smiling it was at a good deed waving from a balcony if you saw him jumping it was in a playground with all the other daft kids on the block raising anarchy if you heard him singing it was girls and boys come out to play if you saw him laughing he was laughing he was really laughing if you saw him waving it was to say HELLO come in and join the feast of the human race if you saw him writing it was a love letter to the world on the day of its crucifixion if you saw him dancing it was to a Beatles tune about giving peace a chance and waiting for that moment to arrive

Chrys Salt

***

BUS PASS

I waited anxiously at the bus stop.

Two old ladies behind me

and a younger woman with a child

behind them formed the queue.

And when the bus arrived I panicked.

I encouraged the elderly ladies on first

then I motioned to the young woman,

discretely falling in behind her.

I wanted no association with these

old women – for we were leagues apart –

the mother and child much preferred

with my bus pass sweating in my palm.

I dreaded the bus driver’s eyes

as I dreaded the pad for the pass.

I felt sure he would question my age

as I felt sure I would fumble the pass.

All things pass, of course. It happened

without a word or the faintest of fumbles,

my pointless exasperation grounded in the vanity

of an uneasy, newly retired, senior citizen.

James Aitken

***

Geneva, August 2010 (from Gold Tracks, Fallen Fruit)

the wild sail of the water fountain

flaps a sheet of light across the Lac Léman -

from the cathedral bell-tower

it looks like a thread of torn lace

round the city’s wrist

Geneva rooftops (photo Morelle Smith)

 Scotland, East Coast, August 2012

passing through a narrow tunnel

that winds between the banks of sand –

no warning - the flat sea has spilled over the horizon -

it’s as if the dunes first protected you

then pushed you out

dunes, sea (photo by Morelle Smith)

Morelle Smith

After the Readings 2012

While last year's readings were memorable for taking place under grey skies and sometimes teeming rain, the weather this year could hardly have been better. In the new venue, the Cornerstone Bookshop, we read in an old stone building, full of books of course, and with light coming in through an arched window, as you can see below.

Fr Meslier at his desk

I sharpened a new quill today

shaving the pliant bone

fallen from the wing of a sky-

wanderer, its feathers shaded

mist-grey to rain-grey,

gave thanks so lovely a thing

had come into my keeping,

its balance between finger and thumb

the poise of flight.

In that moment I was out

of myself, the sky above me

drawing me on and up

blue on blue on blue

without end.

A C Clarke

A C Clarke reading at the Cornerstone Bookshop (photo by Morelle Smith)

THE MAGIC APPLE TREE
‘Comfort me with apples’



Cherry blossom pink and apple blossom
white or apple blossom’s deeper pink
as in Samuel Palmer’s magic apple tree
created for immortal Avalon
or for a taste of wisdom from the muse
from Venus, Friday’s child, with strongbow cider
fermented for a feast at harvest home.
Now hidden on a misty Scottish coast
old apple trees survive and are restored
each one to give its quintessential taste
in gardens of Lindores, its ancient abbey:
a gift to every sense and to more life
for birds, flowers, insects, thriving where
the apple reigns, cherished, venerated.

Tessa Ransford

Tessa Ransford (photo by Mike Knowles)