Chronicles from The Door Near the Floor

Here I am, at last, attempting my first Churchmouse After Hours Coffeehouse blog, coming to you today from the little mouse door near the floor.

Our second meeting, after February’s Beginning Coffeehouse, focused on water. Co-host Cynthia Woodman Kerkham started us off with Seamus Heaney’s poem “A Drink of Water,” and the imagistic lines “She came every morning to draw water/ Like an old bat staggering up the field.”

Falcon Ottara sang “Mendocino” by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, his lovely voice filling the space around all of us, and hence we were off, into the water and watery places, “Talk to me of Mendocino / Closing my eyes I hear the sea.”

We had watery poems that touched on ocean, rain and tears as I shared Galway Kinnell’s poem “Crying” from my son’s much loved book Poetry Speaks to Children. You can hear Kinnell read it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kti6m_1VjGs.

Pamela Vine read Steven Ross Smith’s poem “Oceans Salted” and spoke about how the sounds in the poems are watery, “the family of sounds that make up poetry, are the sounds of water.” Steven Ross Smith is now a local to Victoria, so it was great to hear his poem. Ann Hopkinson read John Mansfield’s “Sea Fever” and Rhona McAdam read “Water Gardens” by Sean O’Brian. Rosalind Taylor read a favourite of mine, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” Langston Hughes’ first poem, written when he was 17, “I’ve known rivers:/ I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.” He sounds ancient and wise in this poem, beyond time, really. 

Dorothy Cooke played her gorgeous harp, the song from Gaelic titled “The Mermaid” and Harinder Dhillon embodied Joan Baez’s song “What have they done to the rain.”

“Just a little rain, just a little rain.”

There was something akin to the sound of rainfall, the rush of waves, the small drop of water hitting the large pool to our afternoon and I thank everyone who came and shared and listened.

Yvonne Blomer

from the Door near the Floor

[*door image by HarvestDecorations on etsy. mouse image titled “Drifting Away” by Charlie O’Blue]