Dowry

So now is the time my worth to measure
And yet I fear the purse is light,
Then I must draw on further treasure
With which to aid me in my plight.
Now add to coin the things I know;
Of herbs and roots and how they heal,
To wash and weave the worsted cloth and sew.
Or cook and serve the finest meal.
Still not enough! Yet with further power
I seek to seal this, become your wife,
For just as pollen delights the flower
Our seeds might join and spring to life.
For no deal in silver can match the worth
Of such love that issues from out sweet earth.

Rob Knee

PIECES OF DARKNESS

Hard towers penetrate the cloudburst Norfolk sky
high on high, forthright,
plying their inuksuk trade:
signposts for travellers in the mist and rain

Griffins crouch in the furrows behind the priory
and towards the silent sea
turning dreams to stone
 
There is mystery here

In the sacred sunken field a lower sentinel
among the huddled trees and lightning
guards instructions from another world:
words from the beginning
breath on breath, brooding
no longer quite secret

Footsteps are revealed
stealing through the subtle stubble
of history, blending into the landscape
hard to see
in any weather

Let there be light:
pieces of darkness
listen, but fail
to understand

Tim Lenton

Discovery at Paston Church

In unexplored space
between what is known
and what is unseen

books become bricks
building a secret, unexpected history
higher and higher
over centuries

Set aside like finished fields
the records remain
not dead but sleeping

and at the root of it all
the music of years emptied
and thrown away

Now all this bursts into light
singing and dancing
a new body
a kind of resurrection

Tim Lenton

CONTINUUM

Somewhere
the suck and rush
of shingle,
chill salt-fret
rolling clammy
in off the water,
a shawl round
the shoulder of land
shrugging off
the worry of the sea.
Stare into bright white
and your eyes
dot with lights,
spots of black
becoming
skylarks,
their trills
ribboning sky,
always, now, forever.

Kay Riggs

AS YOU ARE, SO ONCE WERE WE

Some of them took sanctuary here.
Under the altar lies John Paston,
and under the carpet Erasmus
captured in brass, though others are gone,
leaving empty shapes on naked stone.
Dame Katherine looks out of place
with her marble frills and flounces,
for this was never a wealthy church;
only a few cave paintings. St Christopher,
ghosting through the whitewash, holds
a doll-sized Christ as he wades through
a flowery mead of mouldering plaster,
and three proud huntsmen with their hawk
confront three skeletons, while we
are kept at bay by spider threads
looped along from one pew to another.
I want to come back here by candlelight,
to kneel, and chant responses -
                                          Outside
fresh air and heavy-scented roses.
We gaze up at the rough flint walls,
a few rogue stones, some borrowed from
an earlier Anglo Saxon ruin;
a patterning of bricks on the tower.
‘This church is like a patchwork quilt,’
you say, suddenly remembering the one
you have, that your grandmother started,
her careful stitches linking the pieces
together, and still at the back of each
its paper template, a snippet of words cut
from her old letters. It’s quiet out here
in the churchyard, and somehow
we have come full circle.

Dot Cobley

Pages

Oblivious to history’s cut and paste
we crowd into our towns and cities,
stepping over limestone setts curdled
with little crinoid ossicles and
fragments of broken shell,
slabs of axe-dressed rock
in gunmetal greys and blues,
flags of granite flecked
with feldspar crystals- pages like these
posted from the past, tesserae
lending glimpses of a lost mosaic.

Dot Cobley

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