Poet, Essayist, Liturgist
LONDON SNOW
the snow never settles
on Oxford Street,
there is no blanket
to hush it to sleep,
too many cars,
too many feet
in a hurry to be
Wherever,
their hands full
of the bustle and clatter,
no time to look
at the things that matter,
no time to reach down
cup the divine
then throw it
at someone else.
– Gideon Heugh
Exciting news – the proof copy of my book arrived this week! It’s still a couple of months from release, but here’s a little sneak preview for you.
THE GREEN LANES
Busyness is prodding me again –
goals and projects and get-up-and-go.
But if I am still,
and I close my eyes,
I hear another call:
the rumble of the distant hills,
the whisper of the wise trees,
the old ways, the green lanes
say, Here.
So I get up, and I go.
– Gideon Heugh
So 1 Feb was National Time to Talk Day – aiming to break the silence around mental health issues. Better late than never, here’s a poem I wrote recently about a mental health issue I’ve suffered from.
OWL
I know your form, anxiety,
I know your shape,
I know the wounds from which you’re born
and the black noise you make.
There is a field, laid out
in the hollow hours of the night,
pressed upon by snow,
silent as a held breath –
suddenly its fabric is impaled
by the screaming owl
surging down
like an apocalypse;
it snatches the small lump of life –
unknowing then all-knowing at once –
and with a whump of its wings
flies home to darkness.
Again the field
dare not breathe.
Let me tell you
what anxiety is like for me.
– Gideon Heugh
Do check out https://www.time-to-change.org.uk
I do not know your name
wild singer,
or if you are as lovely
to the eyes
as to the ears.
But as winter wraps its pale fingers
around me, around everything,
your voice makes the gloom
irrelevant.
Your flourishes and your trills
and those notes that rhyme with holy
are laying something to rest within me,
yet I do not know your name.
I suppose that not everyone,
if anyone,
knows the true name of God.
I doubt he is diminished by the fact.
Listen to his messengers,
those wild singers.
– Gideon Heugh
We are of the dust,
grounded in dark soil
and the quaking of a new world,
sighed into being by a greater wonder.
We are of the dust,
cloudy and awkward
and entirely, astonishingly sacred,
sanctified by a love beyond our wildest dreams.
We are of the dust
yet filled with shimmering glory –
intoxicating holiness not just pouring from heaven,
but rising up through our dirt-covered roots.
– Gideon Heugh
I take a journey outdoors
looking for a wild song
but when I get there I find
that all the wild’s gone
the hares are all missing
and the badgers have been shot
the fox has been ripped apart
by the bitch of some toff
the trees are being shredded
the hedgehogs splattered
the bees made extinct
as if they never really mattered
the hills aren’t alive
there is no more music
whatever life we find
we exploit and abuse it
there are no more fish in the sea
but it’s stuffed full of plastic
we pretend that the end of the world
isn’t really that drastic
the fields are empty
but it’s heaving in the bars
we don’t know how to live here
but we’re trying to get to Mars
our waste is piled up
on every concrete smothered street
you can’t hear the birds singing
but you can read a hundred tweets
on that life-numbing screen
that’s made you its slave
by the time you look up
there’ll be no more world to save
– Gideon Heugh
Gideon Heugh 