A walk from Bolberry Down to Bolt Tail.
Lovely to be out in the air ( it was very windy ) and to hear the sea. The surging waves against the shore were dramatic and the clouds played marbled patterns across the surface of the sea.
When it rains
Summer Solstice at Stonehenge
The Heel stone marks the rise
The crown of the year
The sun in its meridian
Held momentarily clear;
Statistically recorded
Longest day of light
Waning days till Yule
Bale fires alight.
Mystic ritual performed,
Ancient Norse procession,
The light of Earth’s existence,
Mysteries of succession.
The sun reaches its zenith
Upon these ancient stones;
Our planet in quiet alignment
In beauty is honed;
Connects something intangible
Deep in DNA
Responding to those questions
Of Neolithic way.
Older than we can fathom,
None can reason how?
Spirituality reawakened
To ask the question now.
The orbit explained with physics
Around this central star;
The planetary alignment mathematical
Seeks order out of chaos
To be predictable.
Questions still unanswered
Evoke such mystery
Of time long discussion
Summer Solstice agreed
A spectacle indeed.
Whatever belief or none
Put science and faith together;
From this our wisdom comes;
The power of our Earth
Is drawn from things above,
But the greatest thing of all
It was made with love.
Ruth Partridge
Haiku: Mizzle – a definition
Only in England known
Endurance of mist and rain
Dense blanket of grey.
To understand
To understand I have to place
my feet
In someone else’s shoes;
To smile and walk beside
Is not a lot to lose.
Music
So true
Music
Compromise
Nothing’s ever perfect
Nothing’s ever right
Give and take
Empathy
We learn to see a point of view
To let things go
To see another way
We wrestle
The Acceptance of disappointment
To learn to live without
To let things lie
We pray for
humility to accept defeat
Forgiveness from
The one whose love
Will never compromise
And so
We learn
The art of compromise.
The stillness of Morning
Taking on the serenity of morning,
That first glimpse of the day
Before sullied by things to be done;
To simply ‘be’
In that moment
Suspended in time and space
Quiet and refreshed.
Alone,
Breath steadied and deliberate,
Still.
Ghost routes
A narrow length of grey
Disappears into black
Between high hedges
Well aligned.
Ferns are arched
With secrets held
In spectral stillness.
A Breath of wind
Casts
elicit conversations
Between the leaves,
Murmurs
Of time forgotten
years
By long gone travellers
Whose spectres linger there
Above the moss
And creeping ivy
That twists around
The gnarled trunks of trees.
Haunting stillness
Envelopes all and
Takes me in to feel
And breathe that history.
Ramblings -to be a writer
I’ve dreamt of being a writer since I was 10. I spoke of it at interviews for senior school . I worked hard entrance examinations. I read widely- I had a good imagination. However during school that first day of senior school something quashed that idea.
‘Stand up if you are left- handed ,’ ordered the English mistress, my form tutor. I stood at my desk, uneasy in the front row amidst a row of staring faces.
‘Left- handed people are sinister… I dislike sinister people. Sit. My first day and I was just 11. I recall one other girl standing. To this day I don’t know why my teacher said it. All I felt was complete humiliation. That same teacher never graded my work above a C- until the O level year, five years later. Out of the blue she awarded me a B- . So surprised I rang Mum from a phone box to tell her. I’d done nothing different, I didn’t know the reason.
No teacher had believed in me and my dream was gone. By then I was into different things . Though when I finally finished a science degree, I decided upon teaching. You might wonder why?
I wanted to teach to make a difference. I wanted to inspire not ridicule; to encourage not demoralise; to engage with learners not alienate . It is true every teacher shapes a life- but how we shape it is important.
33 years of teaching and I now lead literacy in a large primary school. To be the English lead is quite ironic. My background is science; I was no good at English .
I have started leading Inset in other schools and sharing in teacher groups, and occasionally at conferences.
During lockdown- whilst out on a run – I suddenly thought about writing a blog. I considered sharing my running and the nature that I was seeing whilst out in the local area .
I had no idea how it would go . Suddenly, I started writing . People read it . Nothing prepared me for the positive comments , conversations and suggestions .
Tonight as I look at the screen -it says ‘publish ‘ . I’ve published it .People read and appraise. They don’t ridicule or erase it. They encourage. I am a writer- how can that be?
My Devon Life 