Not Just A Vampire’s Friend – Week 48 #52weeksofnaturepoetry (Fundraising for RSPB)

Cult classics feature their likenesses

in every other scene,

encouraging rumours of blood-thirsty beings

partial

to sinking their teeth into human veins.

And while, yes, Vampire bats do exist,

they’re native

to Central and South America:

weighing just two ounces,

their subtle feeding habits

don’t even disturb their prey.

Now, swing your attention

to (the often overcast) British skies,

and listen as I tell you

of the wonderous night-time furry fliers

woodlands and old buildings

readily hide.

Microbats, they’re dubbed,

as on the whole, they are rather small.

Don’t be fooled into thinking

they’re a single species, however,

for the term encompasses seventeen families,

diverse in every way –

from ear length to where they roost,

nose shape, and fur colour, too.

(And for those of you concerned,

they’re insectivores, all.)

Echolocation, that mystical-seeming skill —

with it, they navigate

the all-important hedgerow paths

between sheltered sleeping quarters

to feeding grounds,

where they zoom, zoom

to snap up flies, moths and gnats.

Yet threats lurk everywhere,

sometimes in the shape

of a misinformed homeowner,

fearing wires and woodwork

will be gnawed.

Forced awake and shunted out

during hibernation,

precious energy reserves deplete

until the bats

can go on no more.

This poem is part of a project I’m doing to raise money for the RSPB, a UK wildlife conservation and protection charity. If you’d like to help, please share this poem to encourage others to take joy in nature, and if you have the time and means to donate, you can do so here. Let’s help keep our wildlife wild!

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Pine Marten – Week 47 #52weeksofnaturepoetry (Fundraising for wildlife charity RSPB)

Cream bib, dark coffee face and fur;

initially, you might murmur, ‘Stoat.’

After all, martens are scarce now, rare.

Mainly lying low in Scotland,

favouring highlands

where their natural habitat remains;

once they boomed

well past its borders.

Look again, hone your focus, take note:

cat-like features and size,

bushy tail,

how comfortably it climbs trees!

(And leaves sweet-smelling, coiled scats,

blue in summer from bilberries.)

Curious, independent, nimble.

A social being?

Not so much, unless it’s time

to partner up.

But the season isn’t yet right

for yowling on the evening air.

Its stomach calls for food,

and to that it must attend.

There it goes, popping

from its resting spot

(snug tree cavities are wonderfully comfortable,

don’t you know?),

and wanders through the hectares

of rich forest

it’s claimed its own.

On the menu? Small mammals.

So beware those semi-retractable claws,

little ones!

A cuddly face masks our hunter’s prowess.

Underestimation

often leads to dinner.

This poem is part of a project I’m doing to raise money for the RSPB, a UK wildlife conservation and protection charity. If you’d like to help, please share this poem to encourage others to take joy in nature, and if you have the time and means to donate, you can do so here. Let’s help keep our wildlife wild!

A Sadness Of Green – Week 46 #52weeksofnaturepoetry (Fundraising for RSPB)

Excitement livens my breath.

I’m headed back,

into the woods full of memories;

hours spent trailing behind our family pooch,

zigzagging, scrambling

through ferny tongues, thorny tangles

and thick ivy tendrils.

High-fiving trees that reached out to catch me

when I slipped, often, in the mud.

She rests at home today,

sun too determined

for her paws and dark, greying coat

to fend off.

Yet my longing for familiar adventure

isn’t dulled. 

That is, until I catch sight

of her favourite path.

Opened out, cut back.

Bare.

So bare and stark

that it’s a stranger, an unknown entity

I’ve bumped into

on the way to my actual destination.

Except this alien place,

with its look-alike trees –

reminiscent of beautiful oaks

I once paused                   to catch my breath by –

surrounded by dry, cracked soil

instead of elegant green skirts,

is no stranger at all.

Just a dusty, sad friend

I wish I could care for,

but who is being held, encouraged to fade,

by keepers I cannot reach.

This poem is part of a project I’m doing to raise money for the RSPB, a UK wildlife conservation and protection charity. If you’d like to help, please share this poem to encourage others to take joy in nature, and if you have the time and means to donate, you can do so here. Let’s help keep our wildlife wild!

#52weeksofnaturepoetry Week 2 – Rambling along the cliffs

Our boots squelch, balance entirely dependent on

flapping arms and the promise of bird song up ahead.

Through the foliage below, silver and lapis

can be glimpsed.

Tide slapping the cliffs, spraying salty blisters.

They pop

just as the mud bubbles under us do.

Talons hover at eyeline; the huntress studies,

carefully, carefully. Dives.

Our attention is caught by

a rustling in the undergrowth

before we spot her ascent.

Beaked or whiskered, the noisemaker eludes our curious eyes.

Disappointed, we take

another step

and land in the view beyond:

green-gold-red and brown, flecked with neon lichen.

I whistle, attempting to mimic the motley of calls and responses

flitting from branch to branch.

Perhaps I can even entice the wind to tell me its secrets.

The trees join in, adding their groans and grumbles.

Great-grandparents chortling at mere youngsters.

This poem is part of my #52weeksofnaturepoetry project to raise funds for UK wildlife charity RSPB and to encourage an appreciation for nature. If you enjoyed it, please consider sharing/reblogging and/or donating to the RSPB via my Just Giving page here.

Help keep wildlife wild.

A complete ramble, plus the first piece of writing I had published…

Hi everyone, I’m happy to say I’ve now finished the revamp, line edits and proofreading I was doing on one of my books and sent it off to my publisher.

I’d like to say it was a pleasant experience – and parts of it were, like getting acquainted with my characters and falling in love with the world all over again – but on the whole it made me question every aspect of my writing ability, particularly my grammar. I didn’t know it was possible to spend hours agonising over the correct usage of was and were (look up subjunctive mood, and you’ll see what I mean – technically the rule is fairly simple, but I have oodles of self-doubt), but apparently it is. Even after I sent the manuscript off (after reading and re-reading and fretting back and forth), I was still worried I’d got it wrong (‘it’ being the entirety of my grammar usage).

So my conclusion regarding having to do line edits and proofreading on my own work is that I never want to do it again. Hopefully, this was a one-off scenario and whatever is happening with the editing team at my publisher gets sorted, so I won’t have to. Still, I honestly felt like I was losing my mind.

The other side of it is that now I have finished, I’m not sure what to do with myself. Which is a little ridiculous because I know full well that I need a break, but for some reason my sense of self-worth and achievement is so thoroughly linked to my productivity that I can’t shake it. I think I was relieved for all of ten minutes after I hit send, then the overwhelming heaviness of ‘What am I going to do now?’ hit me and I spent a good few hours stimming and being lost in my thoughts.

Anyway, now I’ve expressed my thoughts on all that, it’s time for something a bit lighter. I thought I’d share with you the first piece of writing I had published, which is a poem I wrote when I was ten.

My primary school encouraged years five and six (I think it was both, but I’m not quite sure) to write a poem for an anthology called Poetic Voyages, created by an organisation called Young Writers. I think quite a few kids in my class submitted a poem, but only some were chosen. This is the cover of the one my poem is in, as there were separate anthologies put together for each region. It was published in 2002:

On the back it says:

Young Writers was established in 1991 to encourage the reading and writing of poetry by young people.

Young Writers’ books nurture interest and confidence by giving young people the opportunity to see their work in print in a series of regional anthologies.

The books represent a generation of voices having their say on a wide range of themes from home and school to the environment and sport.

These anthologies are a showcase for the writing talent in schools today. 

And here’s a bit more info:

Lastly, here’s my actual poem in all its glory…

(The note about whisky in the last line was supposed to be in brackets, but my pa said it’d look better without. I still think brackets would be more effective.)

It’s interesting that, considering the wide range of topics I could have written about, I chose to write about ghosts and school. Perhaps my ‘ghost’ was actually a metaphor for how terrified I was at school (if you haven’t seen my previous posts, I was severely bullied at school by one of my teachers, and quite a few of the kids too. It was not a happy time for me). That, or I’d just been watching Ghostbusters or The Frighteners. Who knows.

 

Memory lane

Path revisited,

same words, same steps, same feeling.

Echoes in the ground.

 

Oh…I’m autistic

Greetings, everyone! Today is apparently the day for a long(ish) post about things on my mind.

In late January, I was formally diagnosed as autistic, and it’s taken me a while to fully process it. Though I knew I had many traits and spent last year writing things down while I was on the waiting list for assessment, it still came as a bit of a shock to me.

I think I still had that small nugget of doubt, and when that was finally snuffed out, it sent me into a bit of a self-analytical spiral. I also had a massive meltdown where I simply couldn’t stop screaming — it’s an odd thing to have your body doing one thing while your mind is observing everything from a 3rd person view. And I was highly impressed at the sheer range of my voice. Honestly, I think I could give a banshee a run for their money, or a Camaar fish wife (if anyone gets that reference, I’ll give them a cookie).

I think the meltdown was not only realisation, but sheer frustration that it’s taken 28 years for people to see it, and one of my main thoughts was what would my life have been like if I’d known earlier? Would I have been bullied at school so much? Would I have even attended the schools that I did? Would I have had better advice on relationships and more understanding of why I can’t handle certain situations? Would I have felt so pressured to get a ‘real’ job that I accepted the first offer I got and spent three years struggling and pretending to be perfectly fine when I felt like hiding away and covering my hands over my ears through every shift?

But what I realised was that it doesn’t matter, because you can’t change the past. All you can do is look to the future. And I’m now in the process of getting the support I need.

I’ve also been suffering with anxiety and depression due to various other personal situations, and the whole lot combined has left me completely drained. However, I can’t live life as a complete recluse, and as much as I find it extremely difficult to talk to people — whether I know them or not — and experience a lot of sensory overload whenever I go out, I still have to do ‘basic’ things like going to the doctors or buying food.

I also know that as my poetry collection and my latest book are now out, I should be trying to promote them as much as I can, which includes going to spoken word nights. Which are nice in theory, as I get to listen to a lot of other artists, but not always so great in practice due to the sheer social nature of them.

Last night was one of those occasions, and not only was I uncomfortable the whole time, but after it was over, I felt like a group of bulbasaur had leechseeded me. I could barely walk properly, and my mind had died completely. Don’t get me wrong, I did hear some great poetry and got good encouragement for my own, but I honestly have to ask myself if that level of exhaustion, and the week or so of anxiety leading up to it, was really worth it.

Thing is, I don’t have an answer. I doubt I ever will. All I know is that one side of me wants to get up and perform at every one, while the other wants to stay home and play scrabble with my partner (who is a significant rock in my life and does all he can to keep me grounded when I feel like everything is beyond my control).

One of the definitely positive things I took away from last night was that I wasn’t the only one struggling to do what I do, as one of the other performers was autistic too. There was also a spoken word artist with ADHD and one who is Dyslexic. So the sheer amount of creativity neurodivergent people are capable of despite their struggles is something truly inspiring.

Anyway, thank you for continuing to support this little blog and my creative efforts. This post has been quite therapeutic, not only as a way of recovering from yesterday and other stuff, but also because I’m enormously anxious about a phone call I’m expecting (I wish people would give specific times for these things). But I’m sure I have rambled on long enough, so…

Kate out!

Enchanted

Three steps forwards,

the girl surely took

and on her path did find

 

the boy to wake her heart

from its frozen state

and bring clarity to her mind.

 

He spoke to her,

rambling away the thorns

on every stroll they took,

 

and never for a moment

did she feel

that he hadn’t understood.

My forehead is covered in stars

And they cover my eyes sometimes

so all I can see is the brightness they give off,

twinkling like polished, princess cut gems

only seen on T.V.

Before, my forehead

was perpetually covered in rain clouds,

black fluff that wouldn’t budge

no matter how many times I scrubbed my face raw.

Then I became friends with someone whose hair was covered

in gleeful fire demons,

his grin as swamping as theirs

but overjoyed, not menacing.

We talked. We rambled. We talked. We rambled.

And the fire demons latched onto my own hair

as finally we kissed,

running across my brow

to settle in their original forms,

usually only seen in the night sky.

The Bard

Each word is the gateway for another,

pathways opening whenever his tongue runs wild.

Flashes of white,

a grin that never falters

when he’s around me, even when the dark eats us up.

Every motion

has three words embedded in it,

a hallmark of our life and the future

we can’t know

yet will never fail to see.

Droplets of his thoughts cascade around us:

wetting the earth, the air

and refreshing the stale thoughts

clogging up my mind.

I cannot predict his tales,

and I do not wish to.

His muse is always keen to listen,

treading his rambling steps wherever they lead.