The Beach of the Cathedrals – Glenn Hubbard

 

The pseeping of pipits. The ticking

of robins. The flicking of redstarts.

Is the curtain-raiser.

 

Descend to the sand to walk up

dark naves. Arches and stacks

of schist and layered slate.

 

Stop to peer into the cracks and caves,

the patient work of tireless waves. Wait.

To hear the drip of fresh water.

 

Blue mussels in dense colonies.

Clenched goose barnacles in clusters.

Safety in numbers.

 

Near the shore

note the pools.

How they shelve.

 

Imagine the sun-tempered cool

on a day in July. The slide

in from the soft edge.

 

The sand sucks at the soles

of your shoes. Ascend,

the sound of the sea dissipating.

 

The pseeping of pipits. The ticking

of robins. The flicking of redstarts.

Is the send-off.

 

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Glenn Hubbard has been writing since 2013 and lives at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama near Madrid. He has written a good deal of nature poetry over the years, inspired by the flora and fauna of both Spain and the UK. Some of this work has been published in journals such as Words for the Wild, the Dawntreader and Sarasvati.

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May 25, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, beach, birds, creative, creativity, elements, Galicia, Glenn Hubbard, landscape, Lugo, nature, place, poem, poet, Poetry, sand, sea, senses, shore, Spain, sun, water, writing 1 Comment

A Summer’s Afternoon in Castile – Glenn Hubbard

 

Endless August afternoon.

Vegetation yellows.

Seed heads

sizzle and pop.

Their beaks

open wide,

distressed,

beside themselves,

the small birds

are overheating.

Only the kite,

tirelessly circling

above the exhausted

earth, endlessly

adjusting the angle

of its forked tail,

appears unaffected.

 

Then a breeze arrives like a blessing

and in the tiny pools spangling the river bed

the pond skaters ride the ripples

while the dragonflies, momentarily spooked,

rise and stand off a while

until the rushes come to rest once more.

Up above, the leaves of the poplar

tremble, sparkle and click.

Down below, the dozy dogs

prick up their ears.

And out on the stubble,

the never-knowingly-not-nibbling sheep

raise their heads

in slack-jawed, dumb surprise.  

 

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Glenn Hubbard has been writing since 2013 and lives at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama near Madrid. He has written a good deal of nature poetry over the years, inspired by the flora and fauna of both Spain and the UK. Some of this work has been published in journals such as Words for the Wild, the Dawntreader and Sarasvati.

January 30, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, birds, breeze, creative, creativity, earth, elements, flight, Glenn Hubbard, heat, leaves, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, rest, senses, Spain, summer, surprise, water, weather, writing Leave a comment

Carnota – Elizabeth Gibson

 

We are in a glass dome of summer – pick us up and shake us,

and pollen-dust will swirl around us. The delirious strip of sea

is the other side of our zip: we curve and arc into each other.

Life is reduced to blue and green, with dots of pink and yellow,

and all I could ever need for fullness again is this sea and sky,

these hills of foxglove and gorse, and long Galician granaries,

their stone frames warming lizards and cats. We stop, to sprawl

among the brittle mauve patches of seaweed, watch dolphins

spinning like cogs, in and out, in and out of the wave machine.

Hey, I see a whale – well, I see spray – but no-one believes me.

We find the corpse of a small creature – a porpoise, maybe,

all beak and curve, now brittle with sand. Across the meadows

are chubby brown goats, and foals gulping from patient mothers

whose fringes tumble like kelp. It all keeps circling in on itself.

 

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Elizabeth Gibson is a Manchester writer and performer, and the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Her work is often inspired by her travels, as well as themes of queerness, community, body image, and mental health. She has recently been published in Aurelia Magazine, Giving Room Mag, Lighthouse, Popshot, Queerlings, and York Literary Review. She is @Grizonne on Twitter and Instagram, and she blogs at https://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com.

August 10, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: A Coruña, animals, Carnota, colours, creative, creativity, death, elements, Elizabeth Gibson, Galicia, landscape, life, moment, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, sea, Spain, summer, travel, UK, writing 1 Comment

Octopus dusk – Elizabeth Gibson

 

in the hills above Vigo, Galicia

 

Perhaps I look lost up here, heavy and alone – but I have the pines and firs,

and I wander down the slopes of the mountain campus, catching Pokémon.

 

The air turns cool and soft. I catch an octopus. I take photos of the pink sky;

they will never come out right. I catch a bird, a fish, more strange critters

 

whose proper names I never remember. I stand under the chunky building

they call a bunker, but to me can only be a boat, slicing through the tree-sea.

 

Barely anyone lives up here, only us in the student digs shaped like a spider.

We sleep in its legs, in little rectangular rooms with long, tall windows

 

giving us ribbons of view: grassy mounds with orange cats, a pond of frogs,

a night full of crickets, heavy like me, and alone – but somehow also not.

 

 

Elizabeth Gibson is a writer and performer based in Manchester, UK. She is also the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Liz has won a Northern Writers’ Award and been shortlisted for the Poetry Business’ New Poets Prize, and her work has appeared Cake, Cardiff Review, The Compass, Confingo, Litro and Strix among other journals. Liz blogs at http://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com and you can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @Grizonne.

April 26, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, colours, community, creative, creativity, Elizabeth Gibson, Galicia, landscape, Liz Gibson, Manchester, mountains, nature, poem, Poetry, Pokémon, senses, sky, solitude, Spain, travel, trees, Vigo, writing Leave a comment

Granada – Hannah Patient

 

We step outside of time for just three days

and make this place our own: get coffee

every morning at the same café, where

ageing waiters all wear neat blue waistcoats.

This city’s pomegranate-like, they say:

bursting at the seams with juicy seeds

of things to come, of things that might have been.

We walk around the town in midday heat

and everything slows down: we’re living at the speed

of unripe fruit on orange trees and buskers in the streets.

Lost in Sacromonte, we give up and watch

the whole world pass us by, the palace

on its lonely hill a solid compass point.

As night falls, we get brave and mess around:

go rambling through the undergrowth

in the belly of the town, eat tapas in

our favourite bar as the Spanish sun goes down.

We join processions through the streets

where children chant and incense swings;

get punch-drunk on the smell of it,

turn sleepy listening to the man who sings

each night, alone, in the courtyard by our house.

 

I say that like it’s ours; of course it’s not –

nothing here really belongs to us.

The next day when the sun grows restless, hot,

we pack our bags and leave for a new place.

Time speeds up once more; how quickly we forget

the peerless lustre of these Andalusian days.

 

 

Hannah Patient is a third-year English student at Somerville College, Oxford, and the former Essex Young Poet of the Year. Her work has appeared in publications including ASH, The Oxford Review of Books, Blacklist Journal and The Purple Breakfast Review. In her spare time she enjoys exploring crumbling buildings, watching detective dramas and eating chips with mayonnaise.

September 25, 2019September 27, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Andalusia, city, colours, creative, creativity, fruit, Hannah Patient, heat, memory, night, Oxford, place, poem, Poetry, senses, Spain, sun, time, travel, trees, UK, world, writing Leave a comment

Azarquiel Bridge, Toledo – Ray Ball

 

The plateau was hot and dusty.

It claimed me as clay for its baking.

 

I walked to the train station

With feet swollen,

With fingers parched by parchment and paper,

Parched by dry air,

Parched by the past I sought.

 

I seek.

 

I stopped on the bridge to rest,

To watch the water.

The river thirsts.

 

Glimmers of heat reflected off its surface.

For a moment, I saw a watery mirage of the palaces of Galiana.

 

The Tagus has never rushed.

It takes centuries,

Slowly submerging legends.

It wastes no energy as it wends to the sea.

Languid.

 

The river inscribed its banks into dry meseta,

Meandered past the temples of Romans and Visigoths,

Past the homes of Christians and Moors.

They inscribed their parchments with ink.

 

Ray Ball has a PhD in History and teaches at the University of Alaska Anchorage. When not in the classroom or the archives of Europe and Latin America, she enjoys hiking, biking, running marathons, and spending time with her spouse Mark and neurotic beagle Bailey. She has published history books and essays with several presses. Her poems have appeared in Alaska Women Speak and Eunoia Review.

July 5, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Azarquiel Bridge, body, creativity, culture, elements, energy, heat, history, humanity, ink, nature, past, poem, Poetry, Ray Ball, river, senses, Spain, Tagus, Toledo, travel, world, writing Leave a comment