Emily Garnham Wright: BirdsWords by Frances Thompson

	Emily Garnham Wright BirdsWords, by Frances Thompson

Home Galleries: Sculptures Wall-hangings Pictures Watercolours and Greetings Cards Biography Exhibitions A Walk in the Woods - BirdsWords Contact Purchasing Work Links	In response to A Walk in the Woods poet, Frances Thompson wrote: A Walk in the Woods with BirdsWords Frances Thompson, 2006 A long finger of beech lifts a fern, holds, drops, lifts it again. Fern waiting for the moment to pass. It passes. Who knows them, the beeches with their long fingers, as winds shift, as creatures visit and leave, rise and fall, and the weather fuelling, chilling, killing? Who knows their long standing, their sense of place, roots that finger the earth as lightly as leaves touch air? I’m not a bit curious. not a bit not a bit I’m not a bit curious. not a bit not a bit Is feeling a leaf like when I touch your finger? Jamie was weaving bluebells, when ... ... helter-skelter in from the west, came a belt, a welter of weather. Out of Pacific, Sargasso, Atlantic, Malin, in came the drift, came the weather, to Fastnet, to Hartland, to the Pickwell leaf, spinning it loose, flipping it over the threads that spawned in the woods tra-la, helter-skelter, a wild welter of weather - came the wind, to the cherry, the ash, to the beech, to the beech with a hint of copper, to the moth, to the owl, to the grub in the old man’s beard - came the rain, washing the last primrose, sluicing bark, blessing sorrel and chickweed, violets, daisy, drenching mosses, painting lichens, oiling the wheels of ferns, ushering bluebells celandines wild garlic anemone foxglove cowparsley germanderspeedwell, red campion, nettles and docks, yet unborn dandelion clocks, and all the flowers that bloom in the spring tra-la and creatures great and small - came the rain, keeping its word to the weed, cow weed, relic of woods of yore - came the wind, to dash and tear away leaves, elliptical, feather-veined, spatulate, isobilateral, lingulate, oblong, ovate, serrate, trifolate, umbilicate, blowing and throwing a six o’clock shadow of dead blown pine-needles nobbled in net - came the weather to the web. Once there were days when the air was glass and trees didn’t dare to breathe. The Green Man stood, not moving a tendril, not blinking, though churches and the forest midges wooed him. On such a day the buzzard hung high, the hare and the shrew hid. Your heart thudded. Was it a thorn? Ananse the trickster? The witch in her gingerbread house? The big bad wolf? Can’t see the wood for the trees are too near. Can’t see the wood for fear, for a bird whose hush-hush name is Fear ... have you been to the doctor? too cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap pardon? have you been to the ... have you been to the doctor? too cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap pardon? have you been to the ... Whatever the weather, we are at home in our throats. In sun we flute, we are piping pulse, wood-wind, flageolet, horn, kazoo, sax and oboe hullabaloo, piccolo honed, clarinet crooning, we whistle and ebb our cadences hanging in queries that want no answer, wane too soon, like ... ... Ariadne, abandoned, who leapt for the blue loops of days, for the nights’ purple loops, crazed, forlorn - she whose canny twine had lured her lover out of the maze. Sane only when folded in silken dreams of his unfurled ship that dipped off into the night and slipped away over the edge of rose-pink dawn. we’ll get it back for you, we’ll get it back for you we’ll get it back for you, we will It only takes six moves to touch anyone else in the world. One two three four five six steps around the earth. Remember your father, watching for you. Pack the old, unfurl the new. Too late. Fathoms down with the fishes he lies, tra-la. One two three, so near, touch me, four five six, I’m here. wait wait wait wait wait weeda weeda weeda weeda ark ark The fox destroyed the pheasant’s nest, her own webbing and tracing, her basket and brood, but how does the smiling fox step now under human-scented creels of green moons in the moonlight? What of Old Brock who snorts in the rooty known made weird, and the cat on her long nightwalk, and the cool, inquisitive deer? Twerp! deliver it here! deliver it here! Home! Home. Knit and purl, knit and purl. Wool jerks off the ball, crawls on crafty clockwork fingers and needles, to loop, betray, encounter itself and fall into a fullness of flats and hollows, to hold baby-warmth in wintry weather. Squirrel, rat, dog, ferret, rabbit, woodmouse fieldmouse stoat vole weasel and shrew, what yarns do you spin with filament fibre fishnet and fish - What are they to you? What is it to you? to me in our habits, cut fine, of warped and wefted windshields worked by finger and steel that we place between the self and the weather, the thought and its silence, the eye, the object, the feel, wearing our habits of coming and going, choosing, doing, forgetting? Our drift. Our tenor. Admire my motif - a streak, a strand, a strip, a seam, it’s mine. Do you follow my theme? My train? Have I lost the plot? Is this the way to be drawn? very nearly walk walk walk walk walk how much would a pocketful of food be? how much would a pocketful of food be? how? Follow the track, tread back to the woods ravel, unravel the mind, unthread old mantras, weave to the new. Unpick old riffs, let them fit and fret connect, lock, interlock, meet and betray, lose and find lacework, lattice and trellis, openwork, closework, webbing and wind. Dovetail and grid, finger and thumb, shoulder and elbow and knot to a twist, trip on your own trap and pitch, netted, into yourself, then lean and shift and veer and wing dangle and droop, let go, and look! it all comes right in a way in the end. Time to begin. we will, we will, we will
For further information or commissions contact: Emily Garnham Wright Incledon Cottage, Georgeham, N. Devon, EX33 1JN, ENGLAND email: emily@emilygarnhamwright.co.uk