Camino Poems (Work in progress)

In the fields

Gods are like crows.
Or perhaps,
crows are like gods:
sharp, voracious,
at once jet black and iridescent;
quarrelsome lovers of shiny things;
loyal and unforgetting, even unto generations;
gift takers, gift givers,
thieves, both transactional and just;
raucous, proud, loud,
grating out their blessings,
and their warnings, without song;
messengers, gossip-mongers, auguries;
hawk-drivers, rain-bringers, scavengers;
harvesters of life, and death.
A part in every story,
everywhere we are.

Un-blythe spirit, hail!

I carry with me the melancholy
of knowing how to name the periwinkle,
and the cowslip, and the scent
of may in a hedgerow,
with my eyes closed against the sun.

These recognitions place me
within a life, mostly, now, unlived;
that was for me, already,
only a childhood-holiday homage
of my parents’ youth.

I remember the pride of knowing
all the country weeds;
my delight in how it pleased them
that I cared to learn, and share,
these no-longer-ordinary things:
not just petal memories of different days,
tap roots that bind the soil,
and will not die.

I no longer trust the throughline
of this country knowledge.
In a world that does not mark the spring,
I only feel the changing of the times:
the wilting of a daisy chain of lives.

In an age where children,
who have never heard a skylark,
must still parse Shelley for a passing grade,
this knowing has no meaning
to anybody, anymore.

*With thanks to PB Shelley

To my young friends

I can do nothing for you, anymore.
My doing is done.
It is put away, with my one remaining
smart jacket and my kitten heels.
(I did my doing in different times).
They’ll still do for a funeral,
as the need arises.
All I have for you now
are words and time.
I can proffer you advice,
but not advancement.
I can give you presence,
if not presents.

We will all soon see if it is enough.

Forest Bathing

The mountain on my left,
the river, old and silent, on my right,
the trees between, bright with spring
and the early morning light.
The sun, just climbing above the cliffs,
has not yet dried the leaves,
much less the ground.

And I am underwater in the trees;
in the coolness of mosses,
the sharp and twisting currents of the ferns;
a rippling green light overhead
and all around, a green
that seems to reflect back
more light than it drinks;
the froth of dandelion clocks,
telling no time but now.

And I am washed by birdsong;
the rhythm of yaffle and cuckoo,
the chink of chaffinch,
the eddies of dunnock and thrush.
The wind stirs, and last night’s rain
and blossom petals fall together,
silver-black and white along the road,
like a celebration.

And now come winking starbursts
and a moment of sky as water in the sun.
And day has come.

This is a spring
that is still raw dough,
moist and rising,
not yet baked into summer
by days of sun,
though this will come.

I have packed away the parts of my father
that served me so very well, in youth:
“a mind like a steel trap”,
so many colleagues said, of both of us,
in different decades, different worlds.
They have gone into the drawer
with my jacket and dress shirts:
too good to throw away, to meaningful to gift,
Perhaps even to be brought out,
for some future occasion. Maybe:
”God is good and life is long”.

Although I pride myself on packing light,
I bring with me the burden of my losses,
not upon my back, but in my chest.

I feel them the heaviest in the sweetest times:
in the scent of elderflower, that takes me straight
to childhood-summer hours,
chasing grasshoppers and ladybirds
at the allotments, while my father planted beans;
when the dogwood flowers
and I recall the rending, the ending
of my first true love,
or when the thyme is heady, heavy with bees,
and the sun is warm and low,
and all of those with whom I would have shared
a glass and stories into dusk are gone,
some from all the days, others just from mine.

My heart is full of them, and there is room for more:
as many more as Time and Life allow.

The path less walked

Two trails diverged in a green wood,
and sorry we could not take both
we whipped out our app and chose
(unsure, but reckless, early on a sunny day)
the unmarked trail.

It was both sparsely blazed and untrodden.
Other pilgrims had preferred
the tamped and stony clarity of a forest track,
to the impression of a way, almost overgrown
with clover, with buttercups,
with sedges and with rye,
yet still suggested by the trees
and the edges of the eglantine.

We pushed ahead, our ankles drenched
in last-night’s rain, caught on leaf and bud;
through the hum of flies;
the rustle of small things in long grass,
scratching as we passed.
Crane flies went spindling. Wasps throbbed.
All was a profusion of small sounds
and burrs and catching seeds.

Then we burst through a cloud of midges,
biting and dancing in the thrall
of a rose and honeysuckle hedge:
all thorns and blood and sweetness…

And there we were, back,
upon the proper, gravel road.

*With thanks to Robert Frost

On the hills

Com trails cross the moon through,
in a one-blue, morning sky,
as if impatient with its lingering,
braised and melting in the warming day.
The lace, the tracery of grasses,
twining and braiding in the breeze
that rises with the sun as the air sheers,
are mesmerising to the eye.
Lythe, they deny any camera:
requiring presence, not only attention;
their intricate, near-silence fluid,
as the sound of birds, noisy in the trees,
whose songs demand the opposite.

Camino Blessings

I think it is about belonging:
I think I walk because the motion
brings me a three-fold peace.

One - there is no shame
in unmooring for a journey.
It is the necessary first step
that gifts a thousand miles.
And if, perhaps, you were to be
generally unmoored, then
being ready simply came
that much easier to you.

Two - every day is a clean slate.
There are no memories
(of grudges, or of kindness).
There is only the current meeting:
a chance to be how and who you are,
or hope to be, today,
the honest grace of ignorance,
purer than any forgiveness.

Three - the constant gift of hope;
the possibility of every corner;
the proof that all things pass
(on or through or by) under an endless sky;
the certainty that, somewhere,
everyone is home.

I have heard that Jains sweep
the path before them as they walk,
so as to avoid hurting any ants
that might be in their way.
I do not know if this is true,
but as I stumble along the Way,
seeking sure footing,
or the best path around the mud,
which, far too often, does not exist.
(Sometimes the only way is through).
Or, as I try to weave between
the shady side in heat,
the sunny side in cold,
I find myself also stopping
and starting and leaping and turning
to avoid the small things living there.
Looking out for myself, I see them:
ants (small, smaller, tiny),
slugs, bugs, beetles, things
with more (or fewer) legs than I am used to,
pedes, both milli and cent.
Things that are glossy, matte, iridescent.
Things juicy, crunchy, winged,
Things digging, dragging, calling, fleeing,
trying to find food, not become food…

And I get it. A life is a life.

Limits

He won’t eat wild strawberries,
or cherries from a tree in a lane
chanced upon, upon a journey,
nor likewise plums, nor bilberries
of provenance unknown.

It is the one, and very specific way,
in which he is not brave:
this man,
who chose a life with me
before we knew I had a life to give;
who deals with bugs and internet security
and taps my foot beneath the table
when I talk too much, or am too strange
(though I do wasps and taxes);
whose confidence and candor are the scaffold
of a life where we can thrive.

Wild fruits and berries - this, is the line?
I can live with that.

Endless

There is a crag, like a butterfly
at rest among the trees,
drinking from the mountain.
There is another, like the tiered fungi
on the spongy trunks of valley pines,
grey and cream, unexpectedly crumbly,
a biscuit dryness in a damp and glossy shade.
There is a bank of scree, like a lost river,
the great grandfather
of the scrambles at my feet;
shale chiming,
like the sweeping of broken plates
after a wedding, or a First Communion.
There is the sound of rushing water
and the coolness of its sleep
in silted pools between the rocks,
where mouthless mayflies bloom
and dance and drop within a day,
never knowing drink or song.

And I stop
and take a sip of water from my pack,
beneath the sun, as endless
as that can mean upon the earth.

Today is yellow and heady with Spanish broom,
sweet and glossy under a white sun.
Faded poppies shiver in the haze,
nodding black pollen onto amber flies.
Rusty ryes and sorrels rustle
as they wrestle with the weight of seeds,
carrying all their tomorrows
on bowing narrow spines
Peas ripen in pods still paper-thin,
swelling and translucent with the light,
like the sausage-shaped balloons that might
be twisted at a party into puppies for the kids
(and for the young at heart).

A sky so flawless it is at once clear
the clouds that build above the hills
are born of this world and its chemistry,
as I am and the wheat and even the sublime
and fragrant Spanish broom
that smells like heaven, and is golden
as a child’s crayon-sun.
The wind, born
of the tension between earth and sky,
pulls the moisture from my face,
indifferent to knowing whether it is sweat or tears.

Midsummer

As we near midsummer the birds are fledgling.
Their awkward flight fills me with such melancholy.
Their gapes are still too wide, their tails too short,
but they are almost there: on the cusp,
like the moon, the fields, the days.

The verges are crowded with fruiting grasses;
with flowers, red and pink, all the blues,
purple, yellow, amber, umber, gold;
vetch and marigolds and daisies;
stacked from ground to canopy, waist-high,
while bryony and ivy snake among the trees.

Pollen and petals are piled up on the path,
an infinity of lives unsparked, feeding many more.
Even the crops have broken from their rigid rows.
Barley, lithe and yellow-green, burgundy and white,
is now a gleaming pelt that ripples on the hills.
The grey and turgid stems of summer wheat
are swelling hairless heads of grain.
Infant sunflowers are already turning with the sun.

All around me everything
has growth and youth and purpose. And I
without the place or purpose, even of a butterfly,
have never felt such loss.

First Day on the Meseta

From here, the whole world
looks like it was drawn
and coloured by a child.
The landscape is animated by the wind:
turned to field-rivers of flowing barley,
lime-green and shining like pulled sugar.

The paths are white and wide.
Wide enough for two, or even three,
to walk together,
curving pleasingly between the fields.

The fields are, also pleasingly, rectangles
of all the greens and browns and yellows
in a jumbo-rainbow pack of felt-tipped pens,
begged for on a birthday.

The trees are dark-green lollypops,
with chestnut trunks, planted where a worker,
or a walker, might want shade.
Just a few, this is no woodland scene,
but enough, so that the birds
will not get too tired
from flying between them.

The river curves, just like the path,
across the page, so that nothing,
bird or plant or field,
is too far from a place to drink.
It is the blue of chicory flowers,
a colour prized and otherwise withheld,
for fear of running out.

The farmhouses are four-square,
with four windows each,
each with four panes, so that they can open
and let the outside in;
a rectangle for the door
in lipstick red, or royal blue, for welcome.

As a child, I would spend
the whole day, making such a world,
designed for everyone,
with my colours and the see-through plastic
of geometric template from my father’s desk.

I remember the contentment of those hours;
my determination to do right
by those imaginary lives;
my earnest dedication
to those notepad-paper worlds.

And now I know, that as a child I glimpsed
the pleasure of Creator
and I am astonished that He did all this
in only 6 days.

Butterflies

I walk the Camino like a butterfly:
slower, in the cool of the morning,
restless under the sun.
Stop and scurry.
Pause and flurry, looking
for the flowers and the beetles and the ants
and the butterflies themselves.
I am still, for a moment
with them, then off again.

I am a butterfly with other pilgrims:
dipping in
(from mile to mile, or day to day)
for water, sugar, salt,
whatever they will share
of time or mind or heart.
And I am strengthened
for the journey that I make alone.

Once,
a nun, in sturdy, dusty boots
and a habit of grey and bellflower blue,
blessed me at the bottom of a chalky hill,
just because I asked her to.
I carried that blessing all the rest of the day,
shedding it like pollen
on the pilgrims that I passed.
Until only the dust of the trail remained.

Nata Raja

Many faiths, including my own,
speak of the Lord of the Dance.
Others have always honoured Him
through ecstatic movement:
beads, brocades, laces, limbs
twirling, swinging;
the stamping of feet and drums.

For me, as a child who, on a good day,
could barely stand, that God was
as far out of reach
as the ballet classes we drove my sister to
on Wednesdays: a figure beyond
aspiration; alien, reckless
in a painful, fragile world; distrusted,
offering escape, and not solution,
an endorphin high.

Even now, when I am strong enough
to walk a thousand miles in forty days,
this Dancing Lord remains, for me,
a figure of destruction, more than joy.

But, we both know I know
He knows this, and He smiles
at the vanity of my distinctions,
accepting all kinetic praise.
And, that smile
Is mirrored by my own.
Both of us knowing I am singing
on the inside as I walk.

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Inspired by our 2024 Camino Francais, Karen has a periodic podcast called "I sent you a bloody boat", personal thoughts on faith by a person who believes in thinking. Also, known as "The Reluctant Christian". You can listen to it on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts at: