Bernie explores her horizons
OUR wordsmiths are, thankfully, in full creative mode as we navigate our way through the Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown. They are producing inspirational work that helps us all build resilience to the problems we are facing.
Bernie Jordan is one such writer, she loves to wander with a paper and pencil in her pocket. She tries to capture moments and build them into prose or poetry to create vivid images and explore ideas.
She also enjoys creating fictional characters and scenes that play out aspects of life in unusual ways.
This is a new poem written by Bernie during these times of social isolation.
Horizons Replenished: A stilled horizon, a captured scene,
Hangs inside a frame of cut wood, polished to perfection.
Undulating hills, green against blue, a pure, clear sky,
Colour without movement, summer without scent.
Trapped within glass as I am trapped behind my windowpane.
Smug, silent contentment reaches me without the bite of reality. Safe in self isolation I see a single scene.
And so, I escape to the flank of Winter Hill, my gaze reaches the southern horizon where Hunter’s Hill forms one last gritstone outpost beside the Lancashire plain.
Distance draws lines of greyness; land gives way to a glow that hints of the Irish Sea.
Wilderswood forms a closer horizon, branches blur green upon green upon green.
Further west, Two Lads Hill crouches beneath a mottled Khaki cover.
Wind juggles with cotton grass and sends scudding cloud-shadows that multiply hues.
A skylark’s frantic love song draws my eyes into heights unattainable; their airy focus unsustainable settles on familiar territory, landing on the crenelated top of Rivington Pike and travelling down to the distant silhouettes of cyclists against the skyline; shifting swiftly, smoothly; descending into invisibility below the horizon.
Like the hub of a wheel, I turn my gaze, notice shafts of light bearing down on Salford’s shiny sheen where lockdown stillness reigns.
Returning home windswept, chilled, invigorated, I close the door and open my computer to download pictures; static pixels of light framed in black; scenes once seen, no longer sensed. Fondly remembered.
Life replenished in living horizons, encountered moment to moment to moment, each new nowunique and unrepeatable.
To read more about the creative community’s response to Covid-19 and social distancing visit www. allacrossthearts.com
To make a contribution, visual or written email me at stevecswct@gmail.com