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  • Ruth Gilchrist
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  • The View
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The View

Ruth Gilchrist

The Garden
Closed in I am safe.
A still, small thing
swaddled in carapace
nursed in rich familial humus.
Suckled amongst exotics
citrus, peach, pineapple.
Knowing no wind or rain
until by chance an incantation
affects a glance,
magnified in glass; a view
and I am charmed.
I grow
a longing to awake.

The Meadow
Unbound I celebrate
a wide haugh.
New faced and dew kissed, I witness
sweet vernal give space to early orchid.
Then summers wings and timothy dancing
move the heat and I am giddy with creation.
These days are long with purple flowers waving 
and limbs grow strong in rich alluvial soil.
A chanting stills my drift 
and a star eyed forget-me-not
tempts me to the glittering water.

The River
Unmasked I am exposed,
a sapling played with in white water,
soil torn from root.
I am pregnant with idea,
but loud-mouthed fish
and critiquing boulder 
could drown me with their chatter.
Water might be warmer into a winter
but few prosper in shifting gravel.
It might take a frog with hiccups
or a thought with wings
to save me from the river.

The Woodland
In community I blossom.
Confident, limb to limb amongst a choir, 
some ancient, some new. 
Leaves collaborate, usher
ripening seeds to glow.
Grafting to the light
we tether our dreams,
journal them between the rings.
At the end 
content to fall 
cradled into the earth.

The Structure
Closed in I will be safe
to be bound, unbound, 
unmasked or forgotten
passed hand to hand, 
compared and reformed.
Critiqued or acclaimed
caressed by voice.
Mycelium to be worked into and out of
always part of the structure
the beams, the pillars, the table
the window frame that holds the glass
the glass that first magnified that view.

Ruth Gilchrist

Tags:

Walter Scott 250

About this poem

Tom Murray says ’Ruth is a poet who uses symbolism with remarkable effect to illuminate the growth of the writer Scott.  ‘A still, small thing.’  A seed fed and watered by its surroundings till ready to imaginatively explore the wider world, to venture beyond the ‘Closed in I am safe.’  Ruth connected with Scott through visiting Abbotsford House, Scott’s home, a place where his creativity flourished.  Ruth says. ‘The Abbotsford glass house is in quite a delicate state but some old panes remain. A muddle of ideas came clear in the moment I imagined what the view must look like through the old bubbled glass.

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Ruth Gilchrist

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