Well, winter has finally arrived in Devon. I have braved the school run over to Dulcie's seat of knowledge - taken them (three red faced little charmers) the safe, less icy route, then slid down the black sheets on the embedded back lanes on the solo route home. We have a full house for this weekend's 'Trickster Myth' gathering of the year course, up in the snowy wastes of Dartmoor.
I am still working on those essay deadlines, but come next Tuesday all should be done. Had time to make some new paintings- see above. They are about 4ftx4ft, (bar the green one which is bigger) and still wet with oil. At the same time i have heavily revised "A Branch From The Lightning Tree" for its spring release on White Cloud Press. All has been tightened up, with about a new third added - specifically on the nature of myth - telling.
I am also delighted to be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Silvia Plath, Pablo Neruda and many others in a new poetry anthology about the mighty pig, " LOW DOWN AND COMING ON" ed. James P. Lenfestey on Red Dragonfly Press - just out. I will try and post the cover up. let's move from my humble scribbles to a real poet, Galway himself.


The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.