WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE

Look at you, with your pastoral charms,  ripe for the picking curvaceous and smooth, pale green and firm,  large, pyriform bottom. Your sweetness is sickly,  but always bearable, to me. In full sun, you tend to blush, flush, your naked skin a rosy pink. I spin you around, admire you from every angle. Shapely, exquisite. A gentle squeeze leaves dimples,  barely imperceptible indents on your thin outer layer.  Your pale white innards, once hard, compact, when rolled between my tongue and the roof of my mouth,  now a mushy, grainy consistency. Your juice oozes between my teeth, sweetens my gums. No crunching here, just slurping. Sticky juice trickling down my chin and arms. I’ve devoured your pastoral charms. Simone Chalkley Image by Vitya Lapatey

  I am Bombus ruderatus , son of a murdered mother, husband to a feisty woman with a sting in her tale, and together with my cousins we are the humble bumble bees, and we will have our revenge in this life.+   You will recognise me as the aerodynamically challenged insect that bounces from flower to flower.   Draw near and I will tell you a tale that began aeons ago but nears its climax in these modern times.   When the world was young, we all lived in harmony. We the pollinators sipped on the nectar that the flowers offered as payment for our insemination services. The fruits of our labours culminated in sweet honey to feed our colonies. The fruit lure that swelled and encased the pollen impregnated seeds attracted the animals which fed upon the life-giving food, and they in turn dispersed the seeds in their dung or as an agent of locomotion, moving them from one place to another. But then the monkeys came. They pillaged the flowers and fruits indiscriminate...

    The theme for this particular section of the session was ‘cutting something out’.   For no reason that I can fathom, the first thing that came into my mind was a clear memory of my Dad using his walking stick to hack away at long strands of bramble which were encroaching onto public footpaths.   I suppose really it is more of ‘cutting back’ than ‘cutting out’, but what’s a bit of semantics among friends?   Thinking about it now, I should have just supplied my Dad with a pair of secateurs – or perhaps that would not have been so much fun! Cutting Back the Bramble   Thwack! Out struck the cane, the staff, the walking stick with the curved handle. My father’s big hand securely grasping the base of the curve. Thwack, thwack. Take that. Cut it back, thwack it back. Thwack the woody stem once, twice, thrice Until it yields. Cut, thwack, cut it back, Clear the path. Make way for walkers, For pushchairs, For bikes. Cut back t...

  In bijou bloom shops, focused bud browsers bustle about, fuzzy baskets brushing between blossom stalls. Hovering and murmuring in dancing chats, Ambrosia is straw sipped and sap zipped, in shopping sacks. With full panniers, the buzzy market foragers carefully wing balanced purchases to sisters, aunts and nurses. Flowery pollen for bread, fine nectar for honey, jelly for bee babies humming in the cocoon of the colonial home. Sarah Tickle  

  Foxgloves bristle, stems shuddering and shimmering And a big fat hairy arse wobbles out from the lilac purple bell Bulmm Bulmm bzoo boo buzzum bzzle bzzle Bzzlp Bazzup!   And there he pushes, leaps back out with legs a blur Hovers, legs heavy with with puff yellow puff collars dangling and wangling Catching the air oh so briefly then Woho! Here we go! Hmph! Bumph! Bullawazzawazza!   Back in! Head, first up deep into the purple Sending the paper cone a quivering And the surrounding lilac barnacles all abuzz and shivering Sending them all a flutter - plfplfplfpflppflf   This one’s a victory! Plenty to take in this one!   He’s ramraiding the insides of the flowerhead It’s joyous carnage and frenzied, fruitful destruction Wooar!! Bzz bzz bzz bzzuh!   And then he’s off The big bumbling heavy arzed blunderbuzz Launches into the warm summer air 
 Swerves across the garden wall Along the chapel roof 
 And away... ...

  Roger is a great collector of things said and has curated a collection of snippets of conversation - performed by Roger and Simone on January 21st and The Fenscapers first public reading on January 21st, 2022. We've had a nice time And we didn' ‎ t talk about it all day But one’s on guard the whole time. As I was yesterday! When they first made a fuss about it, you used to do it, I know you did! ​ I'm legally retired now. They say that soon retirement will last for infinity. ​ When are you going on holiday? Thursday – we’re going the day before, as the first fright(sic) is early Friday. She’s gone home for Ramadan So she doesn’t have to starve for so long each day. I can have as ​ m ​ uch fun at home as going there by train. You know my husband Mike, don’t you? He’s got big hands too!’ I didn’t say anything, but……..!! You remember what happened. He drowned in Dublin Bay! But can you drown in Dublin Bay? Well, if you can drown in a bath, I'm sure you can! I'm ...

  Speaking to a neighbour recently, I mentioned the ghostly figure of a monk I’d seen crossing a road in the village when driving home at dusk some months ago. “ Oh,” she said, “ we’ve all seen him – we think he’s a monk who taught at the local school and was buried near here.” And this evening, I thought I saw him again as I headed towards my favourite contemplation spot – a five-barred gate overlooking a broad meadow and west towards the sun setting over the tree-lined river. Leaning on the gate, I looked to see if I could spot any deer or foxes on the jogging track mown around the meadow. As I prefer to be alone with my thoughts, I was perturbed to see someone, or something, across the other side of the meadow coming towards the gate. I couldn’t see clearly what it was because it was silhouetted by the setting sun. Two long ears waggled – could it be a donkey. I stepped to one side of the gate out of sight and looked through a straggly hedge to see what it was as it drew ne...

  Photo taken at Madeleine’s Patch near Warboys: Visit  facebook.com/madeleinespatch Download and listen to our walking podcast - stories, poetry, short texts, music and sound.  It is a beautyiful collection of writing inspired by the Fens. Written and recorded by the Fenscapers, music composed and played by Chris Ellis, edited and put together by our own wonderful Colin Stevens.  It is a thing of listening beauty - but don't take my word for it: Listen here!

  Two siblings race in monsoon rain up the path in a Singapore yard; No likelihood I’d lose, the eldest by two years.     Sticklebacks dart, tiny missiles secreted in Hampshire’s chalk streams; My chilled hands drip platinum drops. A vixen pounces into feathery pristine snow. Her flicker of flame Doused through thin ice in a sluggish flow.   On an Exmouth rock pool, my shadow obscures the surface glitter; Tiny crabs dance a fox-trot into seaweed cover. Just the rain, in all its moods, on a roof or window, is a fall into joy; Many hours can pass in a blissful trance. On the Ouse Washes, a hundred swans feed in their own reflections, Fragmentary glimpses of perfection. Blossom from cherry and crab-apple powder the pools at Giverny; Bound buds of narcissi sway in papery wraps. Heard only by fish, waterlilies break open with muffled detonations; Above heart shaped platters stand their transient jewels. On a Minoan vase, 1500 B.C., dolphi...

  A bright, clear night; the moon rides high. Thin clouds racing past the shining disk which scans the landscape with pale intensity. Passing over limestone country, the Hanglands are below. Part of John Clare’s lost Heath; now an oasis in an arable land. Clare, versing in his head, walked from Helpston to be alone in this green space. Escaping from villagers who thought him strange - a lunatic!? Tonight, the moon tracks a car following the road Clare took one hundred and fifty years before. Head lights challenging the moon’s gaze; it stops by the path to the Heath, No longer a green lane; one hedge grubbed out to extend the crop. The moon lights on two people emerging from the car, escaping from a noisy party. Like Clare - they too want to be alone. Nearby, a little owl picks up beetles fallen from an overhanging oak, a badger scratches and a deer barks. The two young people thrill at the night sounds. Then, still listening, hand in hand, they quietly tak...

  My head is filled with the deafening roar of shingle being dragged back’n’forth, helpless and willing, in the raging surf slapping and sliding towards my feet. And as the pull of the deep contracts, I could sink into the glistening and dazzling sparkles of the thousand shiny black and opal agates.  But while I’m transfixed on the rolling and crashing, Buster has locked his eyes onto something moving, a dark shadow lurching through the waves, breaking the surface of the water only some thirty feet away. Smooth and proud and powerful.  It disappears and we are left searching the white, greens and turquoise blues of the waves. Buster is barking, noiseless in an even louder chorus of chattering shingle, his eyes have seen it before mine. And there it is. A sheen of grey flashes in the sunlight and then a playful flip of a darker tell-tale tail. A humpback whale. He’s inviting us, teasing us and we are such easy prey. I follow Buster and break into a run along the water’s ed...

    Stools and rooms The internet miracle of Sitting and talking In remote rooms across zoom Is nothing To the ancient rejuvenating funghi net Which vitally feeds, protects And connects the giant and the microscopic. Preceding human cleverness and showing us up. Big time. Sarah Tickle

  Whisper, shimmer, whisker-like on the breath of the wind; shape shifter; preening beak, wing or feather. Hipperty hop, bibberty bop, pippety pip, what staccato breaks this fluidity, me, me me…pippet! Rhythm restored, pulsing heart, pumping life, ebb and flow, underworld, outer world, in the world, of the world.   Squid propelled, to or from, enters my sight. I follow, fins and flipper footed, accepting your invitation into the depths, to dwell a while in your watery world.   Rising to the surface for air, the pitter patter, pitter, patter of water on water, rain drops of heaven joins oceanic expanse   Snail takes cover, withdraws, retreats, hides   Yet the fern, the flower, the tendril, the thirsty stem, soaks up, drinks down, absorbs your nourishing quench…unfurls, blooming, rises to light, aligns with life, is life… Bats, elastic shudder in flight, overhead, on the night shift Moon, star, sun, you rise you fall, things come, things go, ti...

  God peered over their glasses. ‘Can I have a word please?’ Francis had known there would be repercussions. He swallowed the rising feeling of trepidation. But hadn't God delegated his authority – left the entire matter in Francis hands? It was all very well observing things from afar in Paradise. It was also all very well having 800 years of experience and the title of Patron Saint of Ecology and Animals but that didn't prepare anyone for a visit to Earth.   Glasgow 2021 to be precise.   Taking on the climate crisis that could end the world   - with a bunch of overworked, tired world leaders reeling from the shock of COVID, hosted in the country that voted for BREXIT to boot ( although Scots might disagree). God just hadn't realised the enormity of the task they'd assigned to him. Francis tightened the rope around his waist and hitched up his habit - mentally preparing himself   for God 's disappointment and the inevitable dressing down. He silent...

Shaggy ink cap, trumpet chanterelle, slippery jack and bay bollette   With your gilled petticoats, speckled domes, woody parasols and velvet jackets   You invite me to enter your webbed world of connected wonder   Like Alice, I stand on the edge of the unknown, the ‘to be discovered’ Who am I, who are you, what do I know and what, my new found fungi friends, what teachings do you hold?   ‘One side will make you grow taller, the other side will make you grow shorter’, said Caterpillar   As I enter on, venture on my woodland walk…   Helen Dye Image by Jesse Dodds on Unsplash

  Rain splatters on barren morning-chilled hillside, washing the bodies of spent fireflies down gullies towards the sea, where, joyously barking, Apollo, released from the taverna, snuffles and digs in the sand.   Doves leave cotes, landing in pine trees to snake their heads with pleasure, and watch, as the dog runs into the shallows, creating ripples that spread into the bay and lap against the rocks, who play hide and seek with the dancing waves.   Below, sea anemones cling, waving and tasting the water for food, in the eddies stirred by the sand eels, who retreat into burrows as a squid pulses through the water, towards the dolphins playing at the edge of the bay.   I stand silently on a wind-stirred headland, where the four o'clock flowers bloom, knowing that tonight, once again, the fireflies will dance in the dark. Poem by Jaqui Fairfax Image by SacreBleu on Unsplash

  Article from The Patron Saint Herald – 14 th October 2021   Crisis Talks at Earth Division of Patron Saints by Francis de Sales Photograph: Veronica   Today a crucial meeting was held above Rome to discuss the looming threat of a global environmental catastrophe on Earth, which could lead to the closure of the Earth Division of the Patron Saints Organisation.   Raphael the Archangel chaired the meeting to appoint the patron saint responsible for COP Summits.   The successful candidate will intercede with God on behalf of the COP Summit attendees. It is thought by many that whoever wins this prestigious post will be in a solid position to become Head of the Division, assuming they are successful in securing agreements with God that do save the planet.  Following the initial ballots, four very different patron saints made it through to the shortlist. Tipped as the favourites are Frances of Assisi and Kateri Tekakwitha who both hold ecolog...