Works featured in Solastalgia: in the time of Covid 2020

Covid Lockdown Haiga

ink haiku - April 12 2020

ink haiga - May 29 2020

While Weeding and Staking Seedlings

April 20 2020

 With my hands in the earth
my heart in my hands
my heart in my hands in earth that fed me
for many a year.

My soul would lie down here and sleep.
Surely my great weariness
would seep out into this good earth.
Stars would wheel across the sky
perhaps a late and waning moon.
And in the morning, the sun would rise
and I would turn my face towards it
like a plant. I would rise refreshed
having dreamt the dreamings of the land.

But in the meantime it is enough
to feel its grit between my fingers
to blacken my nails with it.
I pull weeds and stake the seedling trees.
With my hands in earth, attached as they are
to my wounded heart, I listen.
I hear myself apologising for the acts
of human kind. I apologise for being human.

But the earth answers,
‘Humans are part of what I am.
Humans have a right to be here.
Humans are part of my whole.
They just need to come back to me.
They need to lie on me and feel their true place:
that they are one small species among many
that the earth owes them nothing and gives everything
that earth is their mother and earth will
receive their bodies when they die
and because of that, they need not hurry
nor worry, nor tangle their thoughts about tomorrow.
They simply need to lie down here and close their eyes.
Let the moon shine and the stars light their nightly piss.
In the morning, the sun will rise
and they will turn to face it, like the plants
and they will know their place
in the scheme of things.’

 Belinda Broughton

Morning with Blackbird

August 12 2020

The blackbird has begun the business of the day 
pecking, pecking, and wagging her tail. 
Actually it’s a male, black with a yellow eye
but they all look like females to me, 
like busy widows. This one 
is inspecting the potted plants for bugs. 

Daylight pinkens the clouds. 
I have come from my morning ritual
of singing the world to health. 
That means you. 
Yes, there is fear and there is disease. 
Other people seem like a chemical weapon
but we still have eyes, and we still have hearts.  
We stand on the same earth and 
for better or worse, we breathe the same air.

Did you know that bits of your molecular structure 
are right now zooming through me and mine 
through you? It’s all so much wholeness actually. 
I send you good feelings. I send you love.
It doesn’t feel like a hug but you can 
take it and wrap it around yourself anyway. 
It’s warm and strong and it holds you 
for as long as you want and no longer. 

The blackbird feels it. 
See? She lifts her head.

Belinda Broughton

ink and collage on paper - September 4 2020

Works featured in Solastalgia: an antidote at Fabrik Arts and Heritage, Lobethal 2020

Edges

“Not Looking for Signs was at the publishers before the fires that took my home. My performance poem, Edges, was also (with the exception of two lines) written beforehand. I may be now more angry and also more magnanimous, but these writings still say what I intend them to say.”

Belinda Broughton

Red Heart

January 10 2020

Sometimes I get so angry
with politicians for example
or people who are not yet changed,
who go about their business, about their lives
as if nothing has changed.
I am angry with those who do not allow
their hearts to feel or their minds to see.

I am angry with those who refuse to acknowledge
that this is but the beginning
that the world has turned
that the red heart has awoken
that the red heart is beating in anger 
that the red heart is beating towards change.
There is no going back.
The transmutation has begun. 
This is the lesson of fire.
Keep up, People.

There will be yet more suffering.
There will be yet more sorrow
but eventually your anger will be
as strong as mine
and you will    stand   up.

You will stand up and the world
will stand up with you.
Our hearts will beat with fury.
The red heart will beat with ours
and there will be change.

We will stand together
ignited by anger
and
ignited by love.
How can this not be so?
Love is the seat of our anger
and love will be our healing.

Love will be the sacred water
that drowns ineptitude
that, when the time is right, 
quenches the fires of rage
that brings us back 
to our own beautiful, pumping hearts
that brings us back to each other 
that brings us back to the earth
with its red and beating heart

Belinda Broughton

Charcoal Drawing with No Name

Locally sourced charcoal on wall 2020

“I want to make friends with fire and to love charcoal at a time when the former has consumed my home, and the latter is all that remains of much of my small acreage of bush. The charcoal that blackens my home will become bio char and the earth will be more resilient for it. Perhaps my inner being is also like that.”

Belinda Broughton