Yesterday I wrote about something which has been on my mind for a while – not in a troubling way but in a mysterious and creative way. Yesterday I also had a great chat with a poet friend of mine and among other things we spoke about writing poetry; I used to write a lot of poems, but somehow lost confidence or lost interest. Over the years I have written a few small verses, about spades and thermos flasks, but nothing concentrated.
A little while ago I wrote about a recurring image I have, a fascination I have with light through trees on water… and somehow because it was such a powerful image to me, when I wrote my piece it suggested a poem. I worked on it, and a poem arrived. It dawned on me that maybe this is how I could write poetry again… not self-consciously sitting down with my poet’s head on to write some deathless verse; maybe I should write as I write, and from that a poem might emerge, just as my recurring image emerges! My poet friend who I very much admire was encouraging.
I’ve been thinking about what I wrote yesterday, and I’ve taken it and reworked it and a poem – the first draft of a poem has emerged…
A glimpse of dark water
I’ve been thinking of a memory –
…or maybe it wasn’t,
of a pool – or maybe a pond,
which I used to pass, speeding along a motorway.
The pool was in a wood;
there was a clearing, and, in a flash,
I’d glimpse dark water as I passed
Something protruded from the water.
My memory sees it as a head,
a Roman or Greek or maybe not,
a man with stone curls
mouth agape,
blank, empty, eyes
Or was it?
Perhaps it was a concrete post,
which maybe, in the past, had held fence-wire,
or maybe a notice?
I can only remember it as a head.
I seem to remember a book…
There was a pond or pool in tangled wildwood.
Did I really? Or is that another misremembery?
I read a book called Mythalgo Wood,
Robert Hodstock, which held a mystery;
But searching now for information,
There is no mention of water woods light and trees,
only Mythalgo lakes,
no thing about a head…
Maybe it was a different book… maybe a film?
Maybe I should write of the possibility of this image,
the pool within a tangle of briars, undergrowth and trees,
the head of a statue protruding from the water.
Maybe I should write something differently.
© Lois Elsden 2018
∗The book is actually called Mythago Wood an it’s by Robert Holdstock
Here is a link to what I wrote yesterday:
I have just discovered, knowing previously nothing about Robert Holdstock but imaging him as an elderly American, that he was in fact English, born in Kent in 1948, and died in 2009 aged only sixty-one, tragically young from e-coli.
Lois Elsden 