GERDA MAYER WRITES:

When I was young, I was determined not to turn into a professional refugee. Willy-nilly though, that is what I seem to have become.

I was born in the Sudeten, the once-German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia. I came over at the age of eleven and, as I was surrounded by English speakers, my reading had caught up with my own age group before three months were out. In any case, I was reading Browning’s Pied Piper to myself and, came the summer holidays, What Katy Did. Conversely, my mother, in a letter from Prague, fretted that my German was deteriorating.

If I had caught up linguistically, poetically there was a time-lag. My first English poem, written at the age of twelve was no better than one I had composed (in my pre-literacy days) at the age of four (proud parents had entered this into my ‘Baby’s Diary’) and a poem I wrote at the age of sixteen was on a level with one I had written at the age of eleven, just before leaving home.

However, a change of language is only one of many handicaps that may beset the aspiring poet. There is work, a lack of privacy, living on the margin of things and, yes, even courtship, to hinder and distract one.

I have written extensively but not exclusively about the past. The past is profoundly with me. My first return visit to my home town was deeply moving – and quite productive!

Yet ultimately I’d like to be thought of as an English poet – however obscure a one. And to end on a cheerful note – I have written square poems, pointed poems, star-shaped poems – my poems have been a-round.

Fragment

My father lifted
a mouthorgan up
to the wind on a hill

and the wind of Bohemia
sighed a few
frail and blue notes

man and child
in a harebell light
frail ghosts… faint tune

Gerda Mayer
                      Fragment, first published in Ariel, 1971

“his uncluttered pleasure in simple things”

- Louisa Young

photo by halfmoon

Horizontal sun

crosses hills and quarries

on, over the light shed,

through trees onto dale

rolling into haze.

Here, at the top of the climb

in pause of looking

that question of inward

and outward journeys

echoes combine.

Winter dark

trudged out

Gift of light

at darkest time of year

that moment

something glimpsed for now

beckoning deep

beauty cold severe.

- Andy Delmege, Wenlock Edge, January 2012

My mind is full of a huge wodge of stuff that I need to spend time examining and to let sink in and to sift, but two things shine out for me, things I had not really noticed before or which have been brought much more to the fore.  One of these is that in amongst the darkness and difficulty we see glimpses of God which we must pay attention to and which can give us the strength to keep going.  The other is that  sense of call that many of us felt to our particular churches and communities, something else that makes it possible to stay and flourish when things are against us.

This brought to my mind RS Thomas’s poem The Bright Field:

Plenty here for me to reflect on about how it applies to the difficult and complex life of the city and to the deep, quiet joy of ministry here.

Three recent walks give much food for reflection.

Mike and I try to walk once a month.  We’re both in a position where we supervise other people.  Our walking is an essential safety valve, often a chance to let off steam and frustration, and an opportunity for peer supervision.  We usually spend a day walking in the countryside, drink a pint en route.  This has become an increasingly central and important discipline, something that adds to thriving as well as surviving.

This time we walked 14 or 15 miles of a route from a booklet I had found: The Birmingham Greenway.  This leads from the northern edge of the city at the TV transmitters near Blake Street Station to the southern boundary at Coughton Park between Longbridge and the Lickeys.  As we both know the south well, we walked from north to the centre.  This is a way of walking which is about conversation, support and challenge while getting exercise and exploring a place.

The second walk was a poetry and landscape workshop which Bharti gave me as a birthday present on Wenlock Edge.  There’s a really good description of it here by Helen James the poet who led it.  This was a way of walking which was about going slowly, of looking and listening deeply to the landscape and what is within.  The walk, for me, was comparatively short, but I am grateful to be introduced to new ways of walking, one which is very much about mindfulness.

The day was a real gift in terms of poetry.  I’ve begun writing poetry really for the first time as a result of the long Camino I did a couple of years ago and through this blog and some of the people I have met while blogging.  The workshop has really increased my confidence that I have a poetic voice.  I also came away with a draft of a poem ‘light shed’.  I’ll share it with you when I have worked on it some more.

The third walk was with my friend Paul.  He is a very experienced hill walker and it soon became clear that he is much fitter and faster than me.  We had an excellent day in south Shropshire.  A bright day with sun, cold wind and ice.  This in many ways was walking as pure exercise as we climbed Caer Caradoc, the Lawleys and the Long Mynd, scrambling down icy descents, me doing my best to find the balance between keeping up and not falling over.  I feel much better for having done this and it has spurred me on to think about increasing the distance and difficulty of the routes I walk.

Much to mull over with the prospects of another year of good walking and writing.

There is also a shorter version in the current edition of Fairacres Chronicle, a journal that I find deeply nourishing.

I’m very happy with this.  Keeping tastes of the Camino alive until I go again.  And memories of a bottle of wine arriving with each solo meal.  Salud!

Howard Thurman

In these days around Christmas

we can be struck by a number of gaps.

This year, there is one that is very much on my heart.

This is the gap in life expectancy.

In my context of outer estate urban Birmingham

we have found that the life expectancy in the poorest parts of my parishes

is ten years less than in the most affluent parts of the city.

This, more than anything, for me forms the basis of

‘Together with Elderly People in Weoley Castle and Bartley Green’.

As a number of Churches come together to explore and plan for

the Birmingham Winter Night Shelter

I am reminded that life expectancy for homeless people

is around 30 years less than for the general population

and, if we look further, that there is a gap of around 30 years

in life expectancy

between people in western countries

and those in the poorest countries.

This gap is, literally, a matter of life and death.

Let’s pledge ourselves to close it.

For Those Who Have Far to Travel
An Epiphany Blessing

If you could see
the journey whole
you might never
undertake it;
might never dare
the first step
that propels you
from the place
you have known
toward the place
you know not.

Call it
one of the mercies
of the road:
that we see it
only by stages
as it opens
before us,
as it comes into
our keeping
step by
single step.

There is nothing
for it
but to go
and by our going
take the vows
the pilgrim takes:

to be faithful to
the next step;
to rely on more
than the map;
to heed the signposts
of intuition and dream;
to follow the star
that only you
will recognize;

to keep an open eye
for the wonders that
attend the path;
to press on
beyond distractions
beyond fatigue
beyond what would
tempt you
from the way.

There are vows
that only you
will know;
the secret promises
for your particular path
and the new ones
you will need to make
when the road
is revealed
by turns
you could not
have foreseen.

Keep them, break them,
make them again:
each promise becomes
part of the path;
each choice creates
the road
that will take you
to the place
where at last
you will kneel

to offer the gift
most needed—
the gift that only you
can give—
before turning to go
home by
another way.