The Day of Saints - Day 34, Ia

Cold winds between the heavy rain downpours.

It was hammering down with rain when I reached St Ives. I had been planning the visit for about a week, thinking I could get some landscape photography in whilst I was in the area, but in the end this was not to be. The heavens opened, and I had to be contented with looking around a couple of relevant-to-this-project churches as fast as I could.

In recent weeks there have been some momentous things going on in the world. There have been global climate protests, people killed trying to migrate country in packing containers, tempestuous and difficult situations in the political sphere, and an increase in such bad things as increases in foodbank use, knife crime, and racism. The following poem was written in response to some of these, perhaps with the pouring rain as a backdrop akin to tears, but also taking the legendary story of Ia's arrival (on a leaf swelled as she cried on the seashore), as an inspiration. It also borrows something from Lewis Carroll, towards the end.

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FOR IA

Saint Ia's Tears

I stood at the shore and I cried.

First, I cried about politics

And my leaf became variegated,

In places red, somewhere greying-blue or green, orange,

It began to divide into,

about-to-die-cotyledons,

And no-longer-willing-to-try-cotyledons

Until it tore itself apart.

Then I cried about the environment,

And my leaf looked all round,

But there were no others,

And its once vivid oliveness turned to crisp bread,

Baked dried and brown.

So I cried about homelessness,

Wanting the leaf to furl and curl around me,

To enfold me gently into a space to call my own,

Or to share as I chose not having been swept up

but its structures would not bend.

I started crying about hunger

And I saw on my leaf long lines growing

Along which once nutrition had flowed

A photosynthesis of relief moments

That were tapering to a thinner end.

I cried then about children,

Those little buds that did not grow,

Leaving grieving,

My leaf appeared russet and green, deeply bruised,

Was it fall, or was it pushed and quickly cut

to be left a frayed

raw edge of life ending?

I cried tears about xenophobia;

They added in salt to injury,

But they shielded me like a wall of translucent glass

Through which I squinted to see,

Difference,

Coming over here,

Stealing our leaves,

My leaf, room only for me,

I will defend it on my beaches.

And I cried about the migrants, all at sea,

Would the leaf stay buoyant on the brine,

Fit me in, though fragile, flimsy?

As it was promised, would it hold water,

Or sink down, overthrown

by 'Real-world' economics

and the weight,

Of expectation,

misdirection

betrayal,

grief?

I cried like Alice;

We all did, and you did too.

'Til like the sea, it grew and grew.

Now carry me.

Carry us.

Over.

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Ia, on a banner in the parish church.