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Tuesday, 18 December 2018

Rosehip Advent ~ a poem

Rosehips at St Nicholas Church, Newington, December 2018

Earlier in December I attended the most welcome Quiet Day reflecting upon the seven 'O Antiphon' prayers or chants, also known as the 'Great Os' and the 'Magnificat Antiphons', led by priest, poet, musician, and chaplain of Girton College Cambridge, Malcolm Guite at The Royal Foundation of St Katharine in Limehouse, London. These prayers, whose origin is unknown but have been existence since at least the 6th Century if not long before, are read through the last seven days of Advent in deep relationship to and either side of Mary's defiant canticle, the Magnificat, sung as she accepted the challenge of birthing and mothering the Holy Child; 

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my soul rejoices in God my Saviour...

He has shown strength with his arm; 

He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty."

This is not Mary, meek and mild. This is a fierce call for radical change, not a request but a demand, not a plea but an expectation. As Rachel Held Evans writes in her, 'Mary, the Magnificat, and an Unsentimental Advent'; 'With the Magnificat, Mary declares that God has indeed chosen sides.'

I wrote a little about Mary's subversive prophecy, and how it has inspired many in their fight for justice, in the Novena for the Fallen Through here.

And each of the 'Great Os', written to hold Mary's Magnificat in prayer and power, call in Advent (the time of waiting) to a name of Christ, to one of his attributes written of in Scripture, the first of which is Feminine; 

17th December ~ O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
18th December ~ O Adonai (O Lord, O Secret Name)
19th December ~ O Radix (O Root)
20th December ~ O Clavis (O Key)
21st December ~ O Oriens (O Dayspring/O Light)  Beautiful indeed for Winter Solstice!
22nd December ~ O Gentium Rex (O King)
23rd December ~ O Emmanuel (God With Us)

These too are songs of longing for what might be, to what is coming to be, to what already is. 

You can read Malcolm Guite's tender and powerful poems in response to the 'O Antiphons' beginning here. They are both beautiful and thought-provoking. 

And here is mine; my own fierce and defiant call for change, and for a Spirit threaded through with frost and fox-fire.

Rosehips, Kingsclere, Hampshire. October 2018.


Rosehip Advent


O Come, as Child of Promise in a rose hip’s seed.

Come, as Child of Edge and Liberty.

Come, as whore, as outcast, refugee.

Come as displaced child in a sinking boat.

Come, homeless in a doorway without a winter coat.

Come, as arms dealer, pimp, and pedlar of Austerity.

O Come, to us so blind we cannot see.

Come, as tyrant and oppressor too.

Teach us that our opposite is not the opposite of you.

O Come, and birth the World Turned Upside Down.

Come, King of Kings who wears a peasant’s crown.

Come, as defiler and defiled,

Come, trailing grace notes as heron wing and wild.

O Come, as fox fur and flame’s flight.

Come, as frost to break our frozen fallows into Light

Come, as darkness birthing mercy’s seed.

Grow through the cracks in every place of violence and greed.

Let every cell and atom sing in your Key.

Give starling, wren, and sparrow their authority.

Come, as Root of hawthorn and of briar.

O Wildflower Worker Come, as Wisdom’s starving child.

Come, in the places no one thought you would.

Although the ancient stories make it clear.

Take shape in every place of rage and fear.

Come nettle-leaved to cleanse the bitter blood.

O Come, be born with us, in us, and, for Christ’s, sake stay.

Help us see we still have time to go home another way.

(Jacqueline Durban, Advent 2018)




References: 









Further reflections on the O Antiphons can be found on Julia Holloway's website at http://www.umilta.net/sophia.html

and Malcolm Guite can be found speaking on 'Waiting on the Word' in Advent at St Paul's Cathedral here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w8ey2q28ZY&t=74s
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Wednesday, 15 August 2018

When Grenfell ~ a poem


Yesterday was the monthly silent walk in solidarity and community with the people of Grenfell. Touching times, as ever. There is so much to be found there which is an inspiration for how to live more deeply and lovingly in the world, how to stand firm in the face of corporate indifference, how to keep hope alive in a world which so often suggests that it would be easier to let it die. It is both a privilege and a blessing to stand beside them in my own small way.


This month's walk was smaller, which had been expected over the summer months, but it is so often the case that when we break a habit it is hard to go back to it, even when we want to. I hope that people return after the summer holidays and, if you have ever thought of joining in the walk, please do. It takes place every 14th of the month, gathering at 6pm at Notting Hill Methodist Church, and walking from 7pm. You can check the details on the silent walk Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/GrenfellSilentWalk/ I know that it matters so much to those who continue to fight for justice for their loved ones that as many as possible stand with them. News moves on to the next thing. It is so easy to forget. It matters that, this time, that doesn't happen.



And here is a maybe-finished poem which has been going round and round in my head as I walked over the last few months. With thanks to John Clare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Gerrard Winstanley, Gerald Manley Hopkins, and Terry Pratchett for the borrowed lines. I hope that they wouldn't mind too much. It was done with much respect for their own journeys with the Land.

When Grenfell

When Grenfell,
when green fell,
when the green heart fell,
they dropped it and we picked it up.
They call it protest, we call it love.
And I am walking hand in hand with John Clare
who walked the land as prayer
and saw it lost,
the fences raised, the green ways dust,
and we have tied defiance in our hair,
and ceased to weave with toil and care
the rich robes that our tyrants wear,
know this earth was made a common treasury
for every man to share.
Because there is no justice, there's just us.
And we are all peasant poets here
we will not give way to fear.
Gerald Manley Hopkins, pray for us;
let kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame,
reclaim the blaze that wrote their names
in ash, turned hope to stone,
took their homes.
Just another Enclosure, 
another Land Grab,
another Clearance, 
another little tyrant with his little sign shows 
where man claims earth glows no more divine,
but this glow is not going out.
Our silent footsteps fan the flames,
keep live the spark,
community becomes the still beating heart, 
and where the green heart fell we pick it up.
They call it protest, we call it love.

(Jacqueline Durban, 15th August, 2018)


References:


Terry Pratchett, "There's no justice. Just us." https://www.azquotes.com/author/11842-Terry_Pratchett/tag/justice


'As Kingfishers Catch Fire' by Gerard Manley Hopkins 


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Sunday, 29 July 2018

New Family: On Falling in Love with Steve Mac Gwylan


In recent days we have received a great blessing in our lives here at the hedgehermitage; the presence of a fosterling, a herring gull fledgling who we named Steve Mac Gwylan. We have been told that many people who find gull chicks nickname them ‘Steve’, as in ‘Steven Seagal’ but the reasons for naming our own Steve were far less prosaic, or so I pompously like to believe. ‘Steve’ was for our neighbour, in whose garden two beautiful speckled olive hatched herring gull eggs were found earlier this summer, and whose face lit up when Mr Radical Honey half jokingly suggested Steve as a name for our new ground-level resident. We didn’t have the heart to change his name after that. ‘Mac’ was for ‘mackerel’ (Steve’s first meal in our company), and ‘gwylan’, the Welsh word for ‘gull’. It was a name that suited him well.


Steve Mac Gwylan first appeared in our lives a few months ago when he hatched on our roof where his parents raise their chicks every year. Usually we see two chicks but this year, quite late I think perhaps due to the spring storms, s/he was the only one. Our neighbour found two egg shells in his garden over a couple of days, one being played with by a fox, and so it may be that our resident corvids took the other chick to feed their own. All part of the beautiful web of things. Steve first appeared in clear sight on the roof on the evening of 26th June, backlit by the setting sun. He was already quite large by then, not the usual molecule of fluff that we first catch a glimpse of. He looked like an angel standing there and quite heroic! We have watched him grow over the last weeks and it has been a pleasure, although he did quite like sitting right at the edge of the roof which was rather nervewracking…


And then, last Friday, Simon went out to start Miss Stefi Spring-Green, the hedgetemple van and found a slightly bewildered and disheveled feathered being next to our neighbour’s fence. 

The little gull almost immediately approached him but then went under the van, which necessitated him being coaxed out with some tinned mackerel so that we could drive away. I fear that the mackerel sealed our fate.  We know well not to touch baby birds, even if they are on the ground and seemingly vulnerable. It is all part of their growing and many will spend time on the ground being fed by their parents after leaving the nest. It is more by luck than judgement that they land somewhere safe from predators. This fledgling had certainly not done that but we are used to young gulls being on the ground here as they nest all over our estate and are zealously protected by the adults as they attempt their first flights. We expected to be divebombed by this chick’s parents and relatives but nothing came. We felt concerned but decided to leave him. He spent most of the afternoon wandering along the path between our houses and, when Simon returned with me from my afternoon out and opened our garden gate, the bold little gull just walked straight in! We felt responsible for him after that.

We happened to have recently bought some long, shallow storage boxes and so we filled one with water and the being by now known as Steve Mac Gwylan was soon drinking from it and sploshing around. He seemed well, although one of his wings was drooping slightly, and happily accepted a further offering of mackerel. We contacted a wildlife rescue centre and they advised keeping him in a shed, or other safe place, overnight and then seeing how he was the next day. When I told them that we don’t have a shed they suggested popping him in the bath so that he could “chill out”. And so it was. Along with our neighbours we spent the evening cooing over him, whilst he stayed close to his newly discovered pool of water, and when it got dark Simon picked him up in a towel and into the bath he went. We found a large, low pasta bowl and filled that with water for his night time comfort and also gave him some more mackerel. He didn’t really appreciate the bath to start with but, after the inevitable mess that gulls are bound to make transpired and Simon hosed him down, he was much happier. He loved the water and, once the shower was running, decided that he would eat something and settle down for the night. He was surprisingly quiet and didn’t wake us until 6.30 the next morning when he commenced screeching like a banshee! I found him to be a fine alarm clock!

 When he woke us Simon got quickly dressed and took Steve Mac Gwylan out into the garden where he spent a happy day exploring, trying out new foods, finding shady places to relax, stretching, preening, and practicing flying (quite unsuccessfully!). He disliked the slug that he sampled early in the morning, which caused him to spend some minutes wiping his beak on the grass in disgust, but did enjoy a range of tiny beetles and other scurrying things. His ability to spot tiny movements was quite incredible and Simon reflected on what the gulls might be able to see even during flight. They must experience the minutiae of life in a way that we can’t even imagine. Our new fosterling also became increasingly brave and confident with us. He spent some time sitting under Simon’s legs and by my foot and seemed to enjoy being close to one or other of us. Some of Simon’s family visited during the afternoon but Steve Mac Gwylan was unphased, especially as by then he had discovered his own reflection in our garden mirror. His parents occasionally visited the roof but paid him little obvious attention. It did seem though that he was communicating with his mother (or perhaps father, of course) from the bathroom in the morning and now and again during the day. She would often fly over the garden, where she must have been able to see him, and he would gaze up at her which he never did with any other gulls. We felt that we had been entrusted with his care, that his parents knew us to be of good intent.







We thought that Steve Mac Gwylan was doing well and would soon fly so decided to keep him safe whilst he gathered up his wings. Simon spent much time observing him; how he would tuck both wings over his back to rest on his tail but that, as he relaxed, his left wing would slip off. Simon felt that his tail feathers were perhaps not fully grown yet and that his wing muscles weren’t entirely developed. Certainly Steve had a fluffier head than the usual fledglings we see and there had been reports of too-young gulls abandoning their roof nests early because of the heat. On Saturday night when it was time for Steve to return to the bath he didn’t need to be picked up. He hopped into the house and, with some slight encouragement, took himself up the stairs! What a remarkable little bird! Gulls really are such intelligent creatures.

 This time Steve Mac Gwylan woke us at 5am and, as Simon made him comfortable for a few more hours sleep, he noticed that his left wing seemed more difficult to move that it had been. When Steve was taken into the garden a few hours later it did seem that the wing had drooped further and that he was struggling with it. He sat on our garden path peeping mournfully with his parent above calling down to him. Simon, Steve, and Mother Mac Gwylan spent some time in consideration of what should be done and so we called the wildlife rescue centre again. They advised us to take Steve to their vets in Maidstone, about 35 miles away. The risk of taking him to a local vet was that, had his wing been broken, the majority would have insisted that he be killed. These vets would treat him and then he would be collected by the wildlife centre who would either care for him until he could be released or, if he was too disabled to live in the wild, take him to a local sanctuary where he could live out a happy life on the ground. We were told that many people would have refused to take him so far because they have better things to do! I must say that, although we knew that it was the right thing, we took him there with heavy hearts. Mother Mac Gwylan was sitting on our roof as we left preening her feathers. I felt that she knew that we were providing her chick with help that he needed but that she wasn’t able to give.

The vets were lovely and, whilst there, we also met Lorraine from the wildlife centre who appeared with a large animal carrier containing four other herring gull fledglings who had come for a checkup. She is looking after twenty four at the moment, as well as various other animals! She told us that it is hard to judge when gull fledglings are ready to fly and so, every few days, they take their charges to some open grass not too far from the beach and let them spend some time there. Some will find it in them to fly away but the others are gathered back in and taken back again a few days later. There was a time that the young gulls were released on the beach, which seems to make perfect sense, but on one occasion two fledglings wandered into the sea, became waterlogged and promptly began to sink, which meant that members of the wildlife rescue had to wade in to save them! Much better then to test out their readiness for release some distance from the water. It seems that for young gulls life begins with much trial and error, as it does for us all. Later in the afternoon we contacted the vets to see how Steve Mac Gwylan was. We were told that he had been x-rayed and that there were no breaks in his wings. Such a relief! The vet felt that he had sprained his wing, or pulled a muscle, when he ‘flew’ down from the roof and that he just needed some time to recover. He had been bandaged for a few days to stop him using his wing too much and was expected to be much better in a few days. After that he would go to the wildlife centre for rehabilitation and release. A happy not-quite-the-ending.

I must admit that the hedgehermitage feels very empty with Steve Mac Gwylan in it. He was only here for a few days but he had such a presence and gulls are such wonderful birds. It is heartening though that Simon’s instincts about Steve’s injuries were proven right and he has resolved to trust his intuition more firmly in future; a lesson that Life often reminds him of, and we are happy to know that Steve will be well and lead a hopefully long, happy, and successful life. We do though harbour secret thoughts that, one day, s/he might make his way back here and come to say hello. Stranger things have happened and he would be made most welcome. In the meantime, we feel that we have been offered a great blessing; the privilege of being trusted with a young life by wildly protective parents, the opportunity to more closely observe a being who we knew so little of in reality, and the gift of feeling more deeply woven in to the life that surrounds us here, particularly of the gulls. We have always loved them but now they are family. Our other family members here include nettle and ragwort, which I hope to write more about soon. Gull, nettle, ragwort; all unacceptable to many, often despised, thought unworthy of being given space in any ‘civilised’ garden, in danger of imminent eradication. Kindred spirits.

As for the herring gulls, most of their chicks have now fledged and so, although they will still be around, our time for being in close community with them is drawing to a close for this year. It has been a challenging year for them, not only because of the spring storms, but also because the army barracks, on whose chimney pots they have raised their chicks for more than a hundred years, have been demolished over the summer. I have been deeply concerned and distressed at the buildings being lost whilst the gulls were nesting but was at a loss to know what to do. It was only today that I discovered there are laws to stop this happening; that any building, tree, or hedgerow with nesting birds (or even birds scouting for nests) is protected between mid March and the end of August. The development company have committed a crime but, of course, the gulls are gone and it would be very hard to prove that now. And yet so much tree felling, building work, and hedgerow obliteration seems to occur between those dates. I have resolved to be more proactive in future and to know what to do before it happens. If you would like to know more you can find information on the Government website here https://www.gov.uk/guidance/wild-birds-protection-surveys-and-licences and also here http://ww2.rspb.org.uk/Images/protectingbirds_wales_tcm9-308104.pdf. I have no doubt that the developers would have an answer as to why it was acceptable that they disturbed these nests but it feels important to at least ask the question, and also to inform the local police wildlife crime officer, which was the advice I was given today by the wildlife rescue centre. Last week, my neighbour and I attended an information evening about the new estate that is being built all around us. A man there, who said that he was a tree surgeon, was angrily castigating the developers for felling many healthy 80 year old trees which need not have been lost. He said that crows had been nesting in those trees for decades, all gone. I am not quite sure of the date when they were felled but certainly the year had turned to spring. Nothing has been done on the site since. The crows could have raised at least one more family there. 

 Herring gulls are often considered a nuisance to humans and, like crows, attract much adverse publicity. That they have come into closer and closer relationship with us might be seen as a teaching, revealing to us our own folly; the amount of food that we throw away and which ends up in landfill sites and often attracting and sustaining large communities of gulls, and our wider behaviour which has led to dwindling fish populations in the sea and so driving seabirds inland. It is to the herring gulls’ credit that they are so adaptable, just as our species is. In so many ways they are our mirror. For all of that the herring gull population has decreased by 50% over the last 25 years and they have now been placed on the RSPB’s ‘Red List’ of threatened bird species. I dearly wish that I had questioned the demolition of our nearby army barracks before it happened. I hope not to be so tardy in the future. I thank Steve Mac Gwylan and all that he taught me for helping me find the strength to even consider trying. Often in this world where so much is being lost, and we often feel overwhelmed and unable to act, our instinct is to cut ourselves off, to turn away, and yet so many of us live in such distress at what we cannot unsee. Better perhaps to more deeply weave ourselves in, and in that weaving find the power in community that helps us to stand with the non-human people, whoever they may be. It may be their, and our, only chance of surviving what comes. 

Fly well, brave Steve Mac Gwylan. We will miss you.




Lots of lovely herring gull info can be found here http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Herring_Gull

and 'gull friendly' wildlife centres here http://helpwildlife.co.uk/tag/gull-friendly/
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Friday, 20 April 2018

Joseph Tubb & the Poem Tree ~ How to be Differently Alive

The Poem Tree, Wittenham Clumps, 2nd September 2012.

I wanted to write about another ‘holy activist ancestor’ who inspires me, the little known poet and wood carver, Joseph Tubb and his Poem Tree.

On the last day of August 2012 I walked through fields of Greylag and Canada Geese and followed a path of dog daisies to visit Wittenham Clumps, close to Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. 
Greylag geese, Dorchester-on-Thames water meadows, 2012.





Wittenham Clumps is the common name for two chalk hills, Round Hill and Castle Hill, in the Thames Valley. Castle Hill is the sight of an Iron Age hill fort, built on earlier Bronze Age remains, and, just over half a mile away, is Brightwell Bronze Age round barrow. At the top of the hills are small woods containing the oldest beech tree plantings in England, dating back to the 1740s. Their summits offer views over a landscape that once contained some of the earliest settlements in our land. The artist, Paul Nash, climbed the Clumps in 1911, subsequently visiting many times, and described the view as, “a beautiful legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten."

Although 'Wittenham Clumps' is generally used to refer to the entire hills, that name really refers only to the wooded summits of Round and Castle Hills, with their older collective name being Sinodun Hills ~ Sinodun from the Celtic, ‘Seno-Dunum’, meaning ‘Old Fort’, although it has been suggested that it is a much more modern play on words based on ‘sinus’, which in Latin means ‘bosom’. Admittedly the two hills do looks very much like breasts. Some of their more colloquial names include ‘The Berkshire Bubs’ (before boundaries changed they were in the county of Berkshire), and ‘Mother Dunch’s Buttocks’! The latter was named for a member of a local landowning family, which makes me smile. I’m not sure that she would have taken it as a compliment! On the summit of the hills there is a hollow called the ‘Money-pit’, supposedly a treasure hoard guarded by a raven, and a copse named ‘Cuckoo Pen’, referring to the belief that imprisoning a cuckoo would bring eternal summer. Looking out, Dorchester Abbey is clearly visible to the north. At the time of my visit the abbey was displaying a newly commissioned painting, ‘Bright Rising’ by artist Rebecca Hind, which depicts Mary as the full moon rising above a water meadow ~ freeing the divine from church walls and subversively placing her in the surrounding landscape. It was to this strange and blessed earth that Joseph Tubb, in an act of defiance and devotion, came in 1844 to carve his Poem Tree.

Joseph was a maltster, converting grain into malt for use in brewing, and lived at Lavender Cottage in Warborough, near Dorchester. He had always wanted to be a wood carver but his father convinced him, due to family tradition, to abandon his dream and become a maltster instead. He lived at the end of the Industrial Revolution, which had drawn many from the countryside and agricultural work into the towns and cities. It was also when land once held in common as a resource for all had been further enclosed by the last wave of the Inclosure Acts. Some might consider that the two things were even related! Joseph strongly opposed this enclosure and often pulled down fences as an act of rebellion. Because of that he spent a short time in Oxford gaol. Over two weeks during the summer of 1844 or 45, he took a ladder and tent to Wittenham Clumps and carved a poem he had written from memory into the bark of a beech tree on the eastern slopes of Castle Hill.
Wonderful image of the Poem Tree when she was still standing. Photo: The Oxford Times
The poem he carved in a labour of love is a prayer to his ‘motherground’, the landscape that was his home from birth until death. It describes a moment in time, woven through with the threads of history, of both worldly and religious powers ~ Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Dane, the coming of Christianity and its own demands for land. I'm sure that, had he lived a hundred years later, he might also have mentioned Didcot Power Station, which can be clearly seen dominating the landscape from the top of The Clumps. 
View of Didcot Power Station from Wittenham Clumps, 2012.

As up the hill with labr'ing steps we tread
Where the twin Clumps their sheltering branches spread
The summit gain'd at ease reclining lay
And all around the wide spread scene survey
Point out each object and instructive tell
The various changes that the land befell
Where the low bank the country wide surrounds
That ancient earthwork form'd old Mercia’s bounds
In misty distance see the barrow heave
There lies forgotten lonely Cwichelm's grave.


Around this hill the ruthless Danes intrenched
And these fair plains with gory slaughter drench'd
While at our feet where stands that stately tower
In days gone by up rose the Roman power
And yonder, there where Thames smooth waters glide
In later days appeared monastic pride.
Within that field where lies the grazing herd
Huge walls were found, some coffins disinter'd
Such is the course of time, the wreck which fate
And awful doom award the earthly great.

(Joseph Tubb)
"Within that field where lies the grazing herd..."
View of the River Thames from Wittenham Clumps

Joseph’s poem speaks of the ‘ancient earthwork’, which may refer to Grim’s Ditch, a 5 mile long bank and ditch earthwork on the Berkshire Downs, or to The Ridgeway, a 5,000 year old ancient trackway along the chalk ridge between Wiltshire and Buckinghamshire, which Grim’s Ditch forms a part of. Mercia was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and dominated England south of the River Humber for three centuries (between 600 and 900CE). During Alfred the Great’s rule (871 to 899CE) the border between Wessex and Mercia could be seen from the Clumps. I think of Joseph reflecting on the land being ‘carved up’ in this way as he carved into the bark of the tree. 

Mention of ‘Cwichelm’s grave’ is reference to Scutchamer Knob, an early Iron Age round barrow on the Ridgeway near Grim’s Ditch, which was originally called Cwichelmeshlaew or Cwichelm's Barrow and was believed to be the place where the recently baptised Anglo-Saxon king Cwichelm of Wessex was killed by King Edwin of Northumbria in 636CE. The round barrow was thought to have been the grave of Cwichelm for many years and to contain treasure, hence its changing shape as it has been repeatedly excavated but without any significant finds. I love too the description of seeing the barrow ‘heave’ in the misty distance. In my recent writing on Hocktide I mentioned that one of the customs involved local people lifting one another off the ground. I was reminded by one of my readers that this act of ‘heaving’ has its equivalents in many European spring traditions and that it was a way of proving one’s strength at the start of the year. I am sure that Joseph would have been familiar with such customs and wonder whether the ‘heave’ in his poem is a play on words evoking an image of Cwichelm’s long forgotten and ‘lonely’ barrow ‘heaving’ to test its strength against an incoming tide of invaders. It reminds me very much of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, ‘The Land’, which similarly traces attempts by incomers to take over land which isn’t theirs and comparing them to someone whose ancestors have lived on and worked it for generations. I am sure that Joseph Tubb and Rudyard Kipling would have found much to talk about.

Joseph goes on to write of ‘disinterred coffins’, referring to the 18th century discovery of two coffins on the summit of Round Hill, together with the possible remains of a Roman Villa, a reminder that no power lasts forever, as the ‘lonely Cwichelm’ could no doubt attest; that even the ‘earthly great’ will end up in the ground with the lowliest of us. Here again, Joseph touches on my own thoughts. My friend, Will, who I visited Wittenham Clumps with, was once a member of the Peace Convoy which was attacked by police at the Battle of the Beanfield in Wiltshire on 1st June 1985 whilst on their way to set up the Stonehenge Free Festival. That is a story for another day but for now I will say that I was both moved and delighted when I discovered that, when he died two years after our visit, the burial site chosen for him following a series of ‘coincidences’ was, without knowing it at the time, on the very farm that the Peace Convoy had been so brutally driven from so many years before. There have always been those who hope to restrict the common people’s access to the land. In life they are very often able to do so, but death is the ‘True Leveller’ and Will’s bones are reclaiming the land, becoming part of it. No earthly power has control over that process of beautiful disorder. Joseph would have liked that I think. 

As for the beech tree which Joseph chose to carve into; she is believed to have been planted around 300 years ago but her health began to decline in the 1980s and she collapsed through a combination of rot and weather challenging to an elderly tree in July 2012, just a few weeks before I visited. Beech trees are not particularly long living and have shallow roots so this is all part of her life cycle. In fact, she lived an amazingly long life before she fell. Once she had been found to be in a dangerous condition, as many of the trees on The Clumps now are, a crane was brought in to make her safe but she disintegrated as she was being lowered to the ground. Luckily, British geographer Henry Osmaston took a rubbing of Joseph’s poem in 1965 before it became almost illegible and this was made into a plaque, which was erected on a Sarsen stone close to the tree in 1994 to commemorate 150 years since the carving was made. Of course, the plaque, which was sponsored by the Natwest bank, makes no mention of the reasons that Joseph may have had for making such a dedicated and lasting statement, nor for writing the poem itself. We must work that out for ourselves and in that way hopefully remember him as he would have wished. 
The plaque erected on top of Wittenham Clumps to commemorate 150 years since the carving of the Poem Tree

 The tree herself has been left where she fell and will provide a valuable wildlife habitat and nutrients to the surrounding area in the years ahead. To me, she is just differently alive.
The fallen Poem Tree ~ differently alive ~ 2nd Sepetmber, 2012
The fallen Poem Tree ~ differently alive ~ 2nd Sepetmber, 2012

The Poem Tree, 2nd September, 2012

A few days after her transformation a tribute of flowers, including gladioli, was left on her broken trunk, such is the affection for Joseph and his Poem Tree, and I believe that we found a trace of that offering when we visited. 
Offerings of flowers left for Joseph & his Poem Tree after she fell in July 2012

I feel deeply blessed that I came to that place only a few weeks after she fell and when Joseph’s carving could still be seen in her bark, particularly as parts of it were soon after removed to be put on display elsewhere. And I feel deeply blessed to have touched the 168 year old carvings of a man who escaped the limitations and demands of family tradition to become the wood carver that he always longed to be, even if only for two weeks on top of his beloved Wittenham Clumps. On this high hill, rising above it all to make his stand, he perhaps found in her trees and earthworks a way to carve out just a little bit of liberty for himself and for the land that he loved. A land whose confinement echoed his own. May our own quiet rebellions echo through the years with such creative determination and brightness. 

 And what of Joseph's bones resting now in the land that aroused in him such passion for common justice? Like his Poem Tree, they have transformed, become one with the earth, dissolved the boundaries; man, poem, and tree released to do their work in new ways. In death, Joseph Tubb truly has pulled down the fence. He has become differently alive.

Just one last word ~ while visiting the Poem Tree, my eye kept being drawn to this log in the grass nearby. I was convinced that someone was lying there reading. I like to think that it was Joseph, resting at last after making his mark as the wood carver and poet that he was born to be. 


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