healingwords: poetry for the soul

This moss covered tree was part of a hedge marking the boundary between two fields in the hills above Carno in Wales. It had a feeling of deep age and I wondered about the history of the people living here, who had walked along this line or crossed between the trees.  © 2019 Jacqueline Knight Cotterill.  All rights reserved.  

There is something of magic about rainbows, despite knowing the science we still stop to stare and smile at a rainbow as the sunlight splits into colour. The idea of the pot of gold at the rainbow's end remains beguiling.  © 2019 Jacqueline Knight Cotterill.  All rights reserved.  

My dear friend Elaine sent me this photograph to bring some nature into the hospital room. She is my mother's water nymph who lived in our garden since I was a child. After the house was sold Elaine took her in and she now sits on a beautiful Welsh hillside beside running water.  The poem inspired by this story is written as a sonnet, not a form I usually use. I am doing an online poetry course with the inspirational and brilliant poet and tutor Wendy Pratt and this was one of the challenges. To read her poetry and thoughts I have added a link to her page and a new one set up by Jacqui Rowe who posts beautifully crafted and moving daily haiku. https://wendyprattpoetry.wordpress.com/ https://17haiku.wordpress.com/ WATER NYMPH It had to be done, the house had to sell, emptying daily, lives bagged and removed, little by little the house now a shell, stripped of their presence, its heart removed, saving the precious, my fragile soul bruised. I walk in th...

Soon after my father died I spent a few days with dear friends in their hillside home near Carno in mid Wales. A beautiful place where surrounded by their love and nature I started healing. This poem was inspired by our walk in the Hafren Forest, by the river where trees, tears, childhood memories and myth combined.   HABREN'S TEARS Here in the now time, midst wooded familiar, etched stones of ancestors,  North people, brooding, in my blood, my bones. Walk in the Hafren,  glimpse ghost self, dancing through shadows of pine brushed ink strokes, plimsolls slipping on jewelled moss quilt. Consoling boardwalk, meditative step on step memories lapped by gurgling waters, skipping on slate, bubbles rising, the infant Sabren at play. Light fades into gloaming, damp enveloping, wrapped in mist shroud, melt into brume, bearded forest consumes. Caught tight in stillness;  sorrows drowned in Hab...