BurnedThumb

Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer


ivy


  • Ivy on the Poetry Path at Corbenic

    This has just gone up on the Corbenic Poetry Path near Dunkeld. It is in a beautiful spot, overlooking the River Braan.

    sculpture in red sandstone, ivy shoots rising to engulf a wooden arch

    It was inspired by my poem Ivy:

    Ivy
     
    It is the vigour that amazes –
    the lithe sprawl over the rockery,
    the spring and spurt up telegraph poles.
    Stems in pin feather up as fast
    as April’s hatchlings, become a cloak
    of pentacles, witchy jade-veined green
    full of sparrow’s nests, barbed with feet
    like caterpillar’s feet, dug right in.
    Its extravagant adaptability
    and hospitality to bees
    make it seem domestic.
    It is not. Its massed and twining weight
    will bring down oaks, and institutions.
     

    From Wherever We Live Now

    Thank you, and many congratulations to the sculptors Adrienn Gorbe and Gheorgita Bori, and to Martin Reilly and founder of the Poetry Path Jon Plunkett. It looks absolutely wonderful, and I am very imatient to see it!


  • Christmas Ivy

    ivy

    Here’s a Christmas poem which I sums up where I find the heart of this time of year – a value for the small, ordinary facts of physical life on earth.

    Christmas
    The alchemy of myth –
    the stars and angels, the earth’s
    return to light, green ivy,
    the quickening sap in the tree’s
    deep heart, the cattle
    kneeling in frosty fields,
    the robin’s song at midnight –
    all refined to the bare particular
    fact of a birth –
    that night, that inn, that boy.

    Not everyone is finding the facts of human life particularlt friendly just now. A lot of people are facing serious medical uncertainties, and everyone caught up in the accident in Glasgow yesterday will find it hard to throw themselves into the festivities, but I hope that everyone who reads this will find the holidays a time for peace, rest, and the comfort of family and friends.



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