He writes of course.

And reads.

Before I came here, I veered from grandiosity (I am going to get the second novel started) to pessimism (I have nothing new to say about wild places.) So far, neither extremes have been realised, but I am daring to believe that this retreat is doing exactly what it needed to.

I decided to do the old notebook thing- capturing random thoughts and phrases. Letting them come to me and trusting that the well is not dry – no matter how often I have taken water before. Which of these words go on to be something else, who can say, but they are gathering.

Yesterday’s blog post was an exercise in taking some of these words and threading them together as thoughts. I then reduced them again in this poem, distilled them perhaps.

I wonder what meaning the poem brings if you read it first, and only then look back at the expanded thoughts that created it?

(I should add, this is also a ‘sketch’. It is certainly not a finished poem. I will pick at it, shift it about, perhaps take whole lines out or reshape them. But this probably won’t happen soon.

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Small spirit, big spirit

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I pick pebbles, thinking about democracy

I tend fire, wondering is light could be made for less

I stand before war graves on an island called peace

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I ponder all those big theologies (like some pound shop Socrates)

That loom over my small conversation like steeples, or gilded minarets

Somehow, one does not cancel the other

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Spirit has no shape

But know when it comes (even

If it was always there)

We know it in the pit of us

In our tiny hairs

Not experience, but meaning

Not meaning, illumination

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Big spirit is the big sea, as wide as grief

It is night sky. It kicks just where pain is greatest

It is chaotic joy. It is a child rolling downhill

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Small spirit is bunting flitting in and out of reed beds

It is sudden gust of wind and a tearprick of kindness

It is seedling, a dog at heel, it is waves in the middle distance

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The poet also walks a lot, out in the incessant wind.

The saltier the air is, the better.

This is what it looks like in these parts…