Magic Path

Tags

bluebell path, dappled light, ivy, mysterious way, yew

Photo by Candia

 

Iconic Yew

Tags

icon colours, Nature's art, tree bark, yew

Rain-washed yew bark

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Yew Tree Bark

Tags

icon, tree bark, yew

… glowing like an icon.

                                              Photo and images by Candia Dixon-Stuart

All Saints, Minstead

Tags

1st Leicstershire Regiment, 55the Field Co. RE, All Saints, arils, Captain Lovel Smeathman MC, chancel, Harvest Festival, Lietenant Smeathman, Long Trail, lych gate, Menin Gate, Minstead, St Mary's Hemel Hempstead, stigmata, The Long, yew

Another re-blog because of its Remembrance Sunday

connotations)

We had to put on our heating last night, sighed Clammie.

We were no longer sitting outside Costamuchamoulah must-seen

cafe.  We had to go inside.

The mornings are now distinctly autumnal, I ventured. Have you been

blackberrying?

Not yet.  Soon it will be Harvest Festival, I suppose.

Clammie looked down at her nails.  She didn’t want them to be stained

indelibly with berry juice. The Lady Macbeth  look wasn’t one that she

sought to emulate.

Do you remember that Autumn when we visited that lovely little church in

The New Forest? I asked her.  The window ledges had been decorated with

pumpkins and the sunlight made them appear aflame, like lanterns.

What church?  Do you mean All Saints, Minstead?

Yeah, that’s right.  Do you recall how, just as we were about to leave, I

saw that brass plaque on the wall, which commemorated the death of

Lieutenant Smeathman? Its date was the very same one on which we were

visiting the church.  The twenty fourth of October, I believe it was.

Oh, that was spooky!  I remember.  Didn’t you write a poem about it, in

some sort of weird verse form?

I did, but, you know, I was looking for it the other day and I decided to

investigate the life of Smeathman.  I discovered that he was called Julian

Missenden and his brother, Cecil, had been killed on the same day, but in

a different location.  It was a double tragedy.

Where did you find that out?

It was on a site for Family Historians called The Long, Long Trail. A woman

called Carole Standeven had posted the information that Cecil and Julian

were both killed on the 24th October.  Julian had been married in All Saints

on the 1st. They were with the 1st Leicestershire Regiment Battalion and

the 55th Field Co. RE, respectively.

Their poor parents!  And Julian’s poor bride!

Yes.  She was called Gladys Monia Browne. Their father was a

Captain Lovel Smeathman MC.  Julian is commemorated on the Menin

Gate, but he has no known grave.

I wonder what happened to his wife?...Do you still have

a copy of your poem?

Yes, but I may want to revisit it, now that I have more information.

Maybe that will be a different poem.  Remind me what you wrote.

(Hants Library and Info Service photograph)

ALL SAINTS’, MINSTEAD (October, 24^th 1996)

Wedded for three weeks, returning to ask the Almighty the reason

why she was widowed, she leant on her father’s support; re-traced her steps.

Crossing the deeply eroded threshold, they entered the chancel.  Why?

One of the bells was inscribed with the motto: In God is my hope.  Now

pillars were tilting; her world was collapsing; the lilies were waxen.

Fires were extinguished in damp parlour pews and the carillons silenced.

Heartrending, harrowing scenes had been witnessed by grave ancient yews,

their bleeding of scarlet arils on the grass, an autumnal stigmata.

Nineteen were lost from this parish alone and their bows, as the Bible,

open at Isaiah said, were completely destroyed and their seed dashed.

He is not here; he is risen: the stained panel seemed to admonish.

Pumpkins, ovoid on the sills, were a tumescent harvest of blessing,

mocking her empty, unburgeoning belly.  She steadied herself in

front of the font which was prospectless, void.  But today there are christening

flowers in abundance and someone has polished a plaque with his name, so

I am aware of their story; remember Lietenant J. Smeathman:

bridegroom and soldier, who did not return from the war, but whose spirit

tinctures this sacrosanct space and who’s present, though absent in body.

Eighty two years to the day, anniversary not to be feted,

fated to visit this altar of sacrifice, I also falter.

Under the lych gate I notice a coffin could rest on its grooved plinth.

Maybe his bride at her end made a journey again through the archway,

pall­­bearers trampling confetti- the mulch from an earlier service.

Fastening the gate, contemplating the path, I leave my footprints there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since writing this poem I have discovered something even more tragic.

Julian Missenden Smeathman’s brother, Cecil, died on the very same

day.  Their father had gained the MC.

There is a memorial window to both brothers in St Mary’s Hemel

Hempstead.

Also in stained glass is the quotation: Lovely and pleasant in their lives

and in death they were not divided.

 

 

Eulogy

Tags

arils, butts, Eulogy, Fortingall Yew, Holinshed, hot cross bun, lychgate, Picts, Pontius Pilate, yew

The Fortingall Yew, photo:Wikipaedia

Of course, I said, Pontius Pilate was thought to have been brought up in

Scotland.

Oh, Candia, you’re always making out that Auld Caledonia was-no, is,

The Promised Land.  How on earth do you justify that last remark?

Holinshed-Raphael, I said.

Who? (Carrie didn’t study Shakespeare in her degree.)

The chap whose Chronicles was a source that Shakespeare drew on.

Oh yeah.  Right. (She’d never heard of him.  Raphael, I mean.)

Well, it has been mooted that Pilate’s father was a high ranking member

of a Roman delegation which was sent to negotiate with the Picts.  He married

a local girl in Perthshire and fathered young Pilate. Then the young family

returned to Rome.

Well, said Carrie.  That’s obviously a load of old rubbish. (She was munching a

hot cross bun.)

What makes you feel you are a better authority than Holinshed?

I felt a little belligerent, as I had denied myself a bun and was irritable

through hypoglycemia.

(Well, that is my story, and I am sticking to it as firmly as Holinshed stuck to

his fanciful proposition.  Okay, okay, I know he was wrong about so much,

but he just liked to pep things up for the Bard. I agree: Macbeth was probably

a New Age stay-at-home father with a fully-developed feminine side to his

character.)

All right, Carrie, I swallowed, why is it a lot of codswallop?

Because I can’t imagine anyone thinking that they could negotiate with a

Pict. Not if you are anything to go by.

Charming, I said.  You deserve another poem, my good friend.  And yes, I will

have a bun after all. With jam. So there!

EULOGY

Pontius Pilate played under your branches

in Fortingall, it’s alleged, two thousand

years ago, before he would wash his hands

of innocence.  Crimson shells of arils

broke out like bloodbeads on a thorned brow

and he trod on golden prickles, so sharp

they pierced his sandals.  Rootstock of saplings

for a future planting, you are much more

than three-in-one.  Funeral corteges

passed through your hollow trunk more easily

than camels through the eye of a needle.

Later young men trimmed your boughs for longbows.

Ancient churchyard trees abutting the butts

united sacred and secular.  In this space,

one rootball bound the dead

of the parish in a communal grave.

Portions of this yew may have been a man

the Governor knew.  Memento mori;

toxic and taxil, your lost heartwood rings

defy establishment of your true age.

Christian evergreen; Druidic icon?

You were a linchpin of society

by the lychgate of a newly planted church.

You may stand here when certainties are gone.