Go tell the bees.

Apparently, when the monarch dies, the royal beekeeper has to go and tell the bees of their passing. They have to ask the bees not to fly away and to keep making honey. Because, a new monarch will be along shortly who will look after them just as well as the last one. True story.

Anyway, I thought I’d write a poem about this bewildering event. And, in doing so, may have inadvertently stumbled across the title of my next collection of poetry!

By David Milligan-Croft.

.

Go tell the bees

The queen is dead!

.

Go tell the bees

That their mistress has passed.

.

Go tell the bees

Not to journey to the spirit world.

.

Go tell the bees

The spirits have already welcomed her there.

.

Go tell the bees

The living need them here.

.

Go tell the bees

Not to stop making their precious honey.

.

Go tell the bees

That a new master is coming.

.

Go tell the bees

His name is King Charles III.

.

Go tell the bees

That he will take care of them.

.

Go tell the bees

The queen is dead! Long live the king!

.

* * *

.

Go, royal beekeeper,

To Buckingham and Clarence.

.

Tie your black ribbons

Around the white wooden hives.

.

Knock gently upon their roofs

And whisper into their cells,

.

That their queen is dead

And they shall not believe you.

.

For, she is here, they will proclaim.

Alive and well,

.

Tending her hive,

As she has always done.

.

Liberty

By David Milligan-Croft

.

A butterfly flew in from the Oasis garden

To the dimly lit cafe interior.

Realising its mistake, it immediately did a U-turn

And headed back the way it came;

Only to be met by a transparent wall.

.

Freedom was so close, yet so unfathomably far.

Its leopard-spotted wings beating hopelessly against glass.

.

I cupped my hand and trapped it between pane and flesh.

Gently, I closed my fingers around it, creating a cage.

As I walked back through the patio door,

I could feel its delicate wings frantically beating 

Against the prison of my palm,

Desperately trying to escape my clutches.

.

Outside, I slowly unfurled my fingers 

And watched it soar into the bright cerulean sky.

.

Hawks over Haworth

Hawk hovers over

Wuthering moors, searching for

Cathy’s eidolon.

Reflections on Lockdown #1

Howdy doody folks,

How’ve you all been doing under lockdown?

I’ve been doing lots of art.

Mainly sketching, painting with acrylics and photography.

Today, I thought I’d focus on portrait sketching. Most of it is in pencil, some chalk pastel and a little bit of charcoal.

You might even spot the odd bit of Amazon packaging for canvas when I ran out of paper.

Reference wise, some of them are life drawings, a lot from photographs and a few from other people’s paintings.

Apart from it being good practice, it’s also very good for your mental health. And, let’s face it, we all need to look after our noodles. Especially when Barack Obama stares at you like that all day.

I’ll post a few of my acrylic portraits at some stage. They’re a bit more experimental. With the emphasis on ‘mental’.

Follow me on Instagram: @milligancroft

Remember folks: Art is Medicine!

Toodle-pip.

Now, I am not.

What with the Coronavirus and all this isolation, it’s given us all a lot of time to think about things. Some positive, some not so much.

I’m not a religious person per se, in that, I don’t subscribe to any particular theism. I guess the closest I would come is Pantheism. Even then, I have my own theories about it. In fact, I wrote my own Creation myth to go with it! (I’ll post that at some point in the future.) Or will I? Because the future doesn’t exist. Or, does it? Is everything predetermined… whoa! You’ve got me off track.

Phew, that was close.

We could’ve been here for hours discussing that particular conundrum.

What I do think about a lot is death. Don’t go! I don’t mean that in a depressing way. More of a philosophical one. What happens when we die? Is there an afterlife? Does such a thing as reincarnation exist?

What’s that got to do with Covid-19?

Well, a lot of people have died from it. And nature seems to be thriving since we’ve isolated ourselves from huge swathes of it. So, what is the point of us? Is there one? Are human beings as insignificant as a dandelion? (Or, significant, if you’re a dandelion.)

I dunno. I don’t have the answers.

What I do know is that human beings are made of energy. We can’t live without it. That’s not my opinion, it’s a scientific fact. Another scientific fact is that energy can never be created nor destroyed. The atoms that created you and I came from the Big Bang. And they will not go anywhere, but back into the universe. That means, the atoms that make up you and I have been pottering about the universe for the past 13.8 billion years! God knows what mine have been up to. It can’t have been good.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the energy that keeps you and me alive maintains its sentience once it leaves our bodies. But it did make me think of a poem.

It’s one I wrote a while ago and came to mind because of what’s going on in the world. How quickly and easily life can be arbitarily snuffed out whilst other life thrives. Perhaps the question is not, does human life have purpose? But, doesn’t all life have purpose?

Now, I am not.

By David Milligan-Croft

 

I am an electron.

I am an atom.

Now, I am not an atom.

I am a star.

I am a white dwarf.

I am primordial gloop.
Now, I am not.

Now, I am molten lava,
Coursing through the juvenile earth.

Now, I am not.

I am a rock.
Marble, to be specific.

From the cliffs of Massa and Carrara.

Now, I am not a rock.

I am an amoeba.
Now, I am two amoeba.

I am sky.

I am cerulean-blue sky.
I am cloud – I am rain – I am river.
I am
w
a
t
e
r
f
a
l
l,

I am ocean.

I am vapour.

I am a droplet of dew on a monkey puzzle tree.
Now, I am not a droplet of dew on a monkey puzzle tree.

I am a puzzled snow monkey in a hot thermal spring.

I am a tiger.

I – am – a – tiger.

Waiting.

Watching.

Padding.

Creeping, slowly through the long grass.

I see you with your spear.

I. Am. Tiger.

Now, I am not.

I am a slave.
Skin flaking from my red-raw back
Like cherry blossom petals.

Now, I am free.

I think I am a Greek.
Therefore, I am not a Greek.

I am a hoplite.
My dory has shivered,
My hoplon is buckling.
Now, I am not.

I am a foetus.
I hear my mother’s muffled weeping
From somewhere close by.
Now, I am not a foetus.

I am the darkness
That envelops you.

I am a judas.
All that have gone before
And all that will come.

Now, I am a magician.
Now, I am not a magician.
Ta-daaaah!

Now, I’m a daddy!
I cradle your delicate life in my trembling palms.

One day, I will be your father no more,

But, for now,

I am.

A Walk Among the Gods.

I’m going through a bit of a Greek mythology phase at the moment. I’m fascinated by the myriad of ‘minor’ deities they have to represent nature – they literally have thousands.

While going for a walk in the woods down by the river, I got to thinking about ancient Greece and – if I were alive back then – how many deities I would be walking amongst.

So I wrote a poem about it.

Hope you like it. Stay safe and well during these turbulent times under lockdown.

A WALK AMONG THE GODS

By David Milligan-Croft.

On my morning walk, the goddess of the forest

Spread her roots before me to form a stairway,

So that I may walk down the steep slope of the valley

To where the river naiads skittered above rocks,

Meandering over Gaea’s flesh toward the open arms of Thalassa.

The sun goddess winked and flickered through the branches,

Scintillating off the peaks of the river’s crown.

The sky goddess held up her sister

Enveloping her in a lustrous, cerulean blue cloak.

The goddess of the wind chastised the reeds on the riverbank,

Tousled the leaves in the trees and held aloft the birds,

Who sang their song to the nymphs and protogenoi,

As automobiles droned in the distance, oblivious to the rapture

Of the forest.

New Tanka Poem

I’ve been without t’internet for a couple of weeks due to moving house.

Whilst staring out of the living room window and pondering my new environment, this tanka poem occurred to me.

There’s something very calming and meditative about watching a murmuration of starlings. I feel lucky and blessed have witnessed one.

 

A murmuration

Of starlings swirling in and

Out of the early

Morning fog. Like avian

sceptres – were they truly here?

 

Arc in the Park.

I’ve been helping out on a project for the past six weeks or so. It’s a collaboration between Arc and The Whitworth Art Gallery.

The project was called ‘A Love Letter to Whitworth Park’ and was facilitated by an extremely talented artist by the name of Wendy Hunter and project managed by Annette from Arc.

For four weeks, the aim was to engage older people with the nature of the park and the art of the gallery. (At least, that was my take on it.) Then, via the mediums of painting, printing, collage, photography, cups of tea, poetry and prose; participants expressed their ‘love’ for the park in a variety of techniques.

The project culminated in an exhibition in the gardens of The Whitworth Art Gallery in Arc’s very own Geodome! (Which is a bugger to put up, believe me.) Thousands upon thousands came to view… okay, maybe not thousands. But there were loads. Certainly more than you could count on an abacus.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and lots of kids came along to colour in bird stencils and stick them on the tree Wendy and the participants made. They also did a nice job of polishing off all the cupcakes. (Maybe that was just my kids.)

 

Anyhoo, onwards and upwards – don’t forget it’s the Saturday Art Club at Arc this Saturday 29th July. 11am – 4pm. Free parking. Great for families/kids.

Other shout-outs and credits go to: Daisy and Francine from The Whitworth Art Gallery; Ruth from The University of Manchester; Annette and Jacqui from Arc, and last, but not least, The A-Team: Becky, Kath, Mark and Tim. (Oh, and Becky’s Mam and Dad for the sarnies and help packing up.)

 

Happy Eostre, Theresa May.

Dear Theresa,

I am astonished as to why you would be “outraged” by Cadbury’s and the National Trust dropping the word “Easter” from its annual egg hunt.

As a vicar’s daughter, I would have thought, you of all people, would know that ‘Easter’ was appropriated by Christians from the Anglo-Saxon pagan festival of ‘Eostre’, sometimes known as ‘Ostara’.

Eostre is the German Goddess of fertility and is worshipped and celebrated at the time of the Spring Equinox to symbolise rebirth (of mother nature).Though, it is easy to see why Christians would steal this festival to mark the ressurection of Jesus Christ. (As they did with the Winter Solstice and Jesus’ birth.)

Of course, every God and Goddess needs a pet. Odin had a pair of ravens called Huginn and Muninn. Eostre was no different. She had a wittle, cutesy-wutesy bunny wabbit.

But what about all the chocloate eggs I hear you bleat? What have they got to do with Jesus?

Absolutely nothing. Again, they are Eostre’s symbol of fertility and rebirth.

So, Theresa, next time you get the hump about a chocolate company ditching an irrelevant ‘Christian’ term from its promotion, I suggest you concentrate on more important things like selling Weapons of Mass Destruction to brutal dictatorships.

 

That’ll do, Dave. That’ll do.

Old farmer Cameron has been bandying about the insults at today’s Tory Party Conference.

 

 

Okay, let’s try to dissect what David Cameron actually meant when he accused Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, of being: “security threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating”.

Let’s take “security threatening” first. 

Corbyn wants world peace.

He doesn’t want to bomb Syria.

He wants nuclear disarmament.

Yes, he sounds like a real threat to me.

Next, we have “terrorist-sympathising”.

Corbyn thinks we should open a dialogue with all interested parties in conflict. These could be governments, political parties or terrorist organisations. A bit like we did with the IRA when it came to the Good Friday Agreement.

Talk, before bombs? Who knows, it could work.

Lastly, “Britain-hating”.

Like me, Corbyn has no-truck with the monarchy.

Indeed, I would like my daughters to have the chance of being the democratically elected head of state. Instead of the out-dated, eternally privileged, palace dwelling, tax-dodging, freeloaders we have now.

What I hate about that ‘kind’ of Britain, is that the public school educated elite believe they have the right to lord it over plebs like me ad infinitum.

So, Babe, before you start dishing out the insults, I suggest you take a leaf out of Mr. Corbyn’s book, and try a fresh approach to governance to create a New Britain. One that protects its citizens, (yes, even the poor ones). A country that educates its children and takes care of its sick. A nation that welcome diverse cultures and strives towards a peaceful world with fewer bombs and more dialogue.

And, no Dave, HP Sauce is not a lube.