Story: 8. ) The Poplar & the Creek / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight; A Book about Books

       The Poplar and the Creek

  We look for that which we know not. The intrinsic quest is always there it never leaves us. It is why we read books. But it is strange how we feel nearer to those unknown riches in the wilderness, in the outdoors, in the garden; or anywhere outside. And perhaps we haven’t fully realized the extent to which having an outdoor arbour in which to read can add to one’s life. I have found it quite amazing how the place where we read a book can add to the stretching our self-set limits and widen our lives.
   Down by the tidal creek at the bottom of the steep grassy hill that our house is built on is a huge poplar. It looks about a hundred feet high. It towers above the house. This grand denizen the valley below used to dominate the view from the back windows, but in recent years an oak has shot up and blocked our view of it. Sad, because I used to delight in the sight of its shivery leaves flittering and sparkling catching the sunshine in the breeze.     The poplar’s great roots line the bank on the opposite side of the creek and travel underneath its bed for quite a long way. At the base of its wide trunk is a large cavern-like hollow; and up in a crevice of it safe above the flood line is a square red tin. The delights of a dreamer are in this ‘treasure chest.’
   This lone, tall poplar is a favourite thinking-and-writing place for me; just as our book-hammock is a favourite resting place in the hottest part of the year. With many manuka trees on either side of it, the creek below at its feet and a grazing paddock behind, it makes a lovely hideaway spot for an hour.
   I lean against a convenient chair-shaped curve in the trunk. My legs stretched out near the edge of the bank just above the sparkling water. I let go the inevitable pressures of the day to accomplish ‘this that and the other,’ and listen to the singing of the creek as it flows close by me. From far side from upstream it comes running in tiny rapids, then swirling and curving it pours into the little pool below the steep bank where I sit. Slowly it is eating away at the bank. Flooding from heavy rains has taken some of the earth away and the great strong roots of the poplar are more exposed now.   I have taken the tin from its hiding place. It is beside me, open. It is a lot rustier now and the red is fading. But it is still sufficient for its work in providing sustenance; in words now rather than in confectionary; though sometimes there is something physically edible in it, like a bar of chocolate, etc.! But the main nourishment it offers is its books. Among them a notebook for river-writing. For this place is a catalyst for creativity, as well as a place for afternoon reading.
   The sound of running water combines with the sunshine and the warmth of the ground and up through the midst of me, like this great tree, living waters rise from my roots till they reach my mind, there to pour out a kind of liquid light, lambent and pellucid, that opens into life and thrills. These living waters teach me. They show me pictures of myself that are so true they change me and I see through the mists long formed by the obscuring thoughts of this world’s habitual thinking. A welcoming of truth, sharp and clear, takes the lead and I see through the veil something in the living world around me mirroring the living world within me and my life is enriched.   Two books are in the tin, as well as the notebook-diary and biro. They are on my lap. I keep a choice of two or three non-fiction books here because I never know what this one hour’s respite will dredge up in my waiting midst. I don’t always feel like writing. Often I read a bit of one book, and then lay it down to read the other. Occasionally, and quite like magic, I find a deeper catalytic sparking between the content of the two books. They ‘marry,’ in some curiously coincidental way, and I am amazed.
   I stop and look up. I gaze vacantly. And continuing in ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ (Dylan Thomas) I am strangely warmed. Lines of thought, like ethereal strands of gifted gold filter through in an inner sunshine and there’s a rising of joy in sudden insight and I grab my notebook and scribble a moment. Although what I write, usually has little to do with the subject matter of the two books I am reading, but it is like the trajectory of an inner object of light, on its sudden flight within another subject altogether, flying inside an ever increasing seeing-space within expressing a parallel in another sphere and in another dimension.
  These are the ‘thought-comets’ which ‘quicken’ life; that burst upon our mind and energize our spirit in our otherwise plain existence. They are our treasures, for a while. They feel amazing when we capture them. But afterwards they seem to lose their initial sparkle as they are no longer new: we have assimilated them into the body of our consciousness and they are now a functioning part of our wisdom and knowledge. But their coming was vitally important nothing else could have accomplished that particular ‘leap’ and renewal adding to our understanding. It was a unique moment in time and a spontaneous linking of one thing with another: the flash of truth bringing life.                                           What delight there is in taking time out to sit by a stream, to listen and think; a book in one's lap; a book which lives here, in a tree. And what delight there is, too, in throwing open the shutters of our windows and looking out and reading between the lines of the book of life.   
 
                               *

Story: 5. ) Shipboard Reading / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight; A book about books

 Shipboard Reading    

   Shipboard reading was sparsely spread between shipboard chores; there was always so much to be done and there were few spaces left in the day for ‘doing nothing;’ (which is what reading was considered to be during our days at anchor in the little coves and bays of the islands of the seas.) Of course, one occasionally read the pilot books – seamen’s instruction books concerning the waters one sailed in – if one didn’t want to be shipwrecked, that is! But when there was time in the evening and kerosene to spare I could fill the cabin’s gimbaled lamps and read and escape.  With no engine, no battery, no electronics, on board our tiny ocean going sailing yacht, there was no power, of course for books in dimensions other than paper and cardboard. And we were none the worse for it; except when we were shipwrecked off the Sahara Desert – (we hadn't read the pilot book for that area!) – for we couldn’t contact anyone to come and rescue us!
   But in easy going days when we were at sea I could sometimes tie up the tiller, get her self-steering by the set of her sails, and bring out a book and read to my heart’s content in daylight hours – with one eye open, for a look out at the ocean ahead, of course. You never knew what might be there: a basking shark, a whale, a ship, or another yacht; (or the Sahara Desert!)  Lying in the sun listening to the song of the sea creaming past us, the reflecting water, glinting its own story of the sky, the skimming fulmars and shearwaters the near-land cry of the wheeling seagulls, I could read and dream and not get seasick. Wonderful books were read this way! Their excellent worth made evident; for they quickly bore a much-loved look; caught by the sea spray when we crashed into a wave they flew off the cockpit seat into the scuppers and got wet. But, unlike electronic books, (except those in watertight cases, I suppose?) they survived the ordeal and lived to see another day at sea decorating our shipboard bookshelf, which told a tale in itself, of who we were and how we lived, and what we liked.
   Shipboard reading was great! An escape upon escape! 

 

                                                                  *

Rhyme Time

  

Were I a sailor of life’s open seas

I think I’d take this book with me to read

But where will it take me, where will it lead?

What will its substance work in me to feed?

Up through the clear skies, on through the light

Taking the best from each new book I find

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight; Part 2;

The Placemark Poems, # 6

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

The Placemark Poems / Where Am I?

  

Where have I reached in that inner place

Through reading this book, thus far;

Have I found its treasure yet, and applied it?

In even its most distant, misted concepts

Have I seen the writer’s intended message 

Learned the precepts its many-sided light reveals?

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight; 

Part 2;

The Placemark Poems, # 5

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like Two Silver Herring Fish

A book is like . . . 
Two silver herring fish
Sleek, alive, darting free:

Published with hope and love  
Sent into the sea of the world;
Given to the four winds: 

Food in the hands of life 

Written with an inner life: 
Two are in a book of one;
It was two that were needed 
To feed the multitude:

For the life that breaks to give
The power that ignites the book 
And multiplies its reach 

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight; 
Part 1, # 40

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a Choosing of Life

A book is like a choosing of life . . .

Pick up a book, about anything,

And if your heart is pure and true

You will find even in its unpleasant bits

Something to teach you, if you let it in, 

Without any preconceived judgment within;
And soon a greater wisdom found,
For having gained . . .
By losing what you thought you knew   

  

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1, # 39

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a Skillful Archer

A book is like a skillful archer 

Straight aiming a certain central message

As an arrow swift to seek its target

Dispatched from an inner taut stringed bow 

In hope to see its bull's-eye in a reader; but

Can an arrow find a way through a forest

Unless it first come from a pure aimed bow?

Can it strike my heart its own needed blow

Unless it first has stricken he who sent it? 

Light and life come only out of dark and death

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight

Part 1  # 37

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a Ring of Fire

  

A book is like a ring of fire . . . 

It can take me by surprise

Strike in my inner fiber

A refulgent circle:

Its amaranthine promise

Immured, locked in

As concealed inside its self

Hid betwixt two covers

As the lined crystal light

Inside a plain grey geode stone.

In prismed script:

Life caught, and split . . .  

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 36

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a Whispering of Wings

A book is like a whispering of wings; 

Strange the sighs that rise up in me

Lifting from the stealth of life upon the page

Unhurried meeting of minds in what I read;

Discoveries of insights, echoing within,

Where they have lain asleep, waiting to be met

If only from the dawn of time, lapping round

The standing stones, beneath the unknown seraph

That in me guards my heart, in whispering, life

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 32

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a Sword being pulled from a Stone

A book is like a sword being

   pulled from a stone . . . 

A sharp thought drawn from a book:

A sword drawn from a stone

A double cutting edge 

A message received with no offence

But it is the young who believe 
The childlike heart which finds 
Excalibur . . . 

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 25

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a Moonlit Path

A book is like a moonlit path . . .

   that by a single thread 

   extends it reach;

A moonshine-beam, 

   a knowledge line to succor me;

To shine, at whatever point I am 

   wherever I may be,  

To instill its wisdom in me deep 

   enthrall me with its beauty rare,

Provide me with a guiding path 

   straight amidst my dark, by light                  

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 21

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project