BEES AND BLESSINGS by Liz Manning

 

This is my farewell post after exactly 5 years on the ACW blog. I’ve been very grateful for the opportunity and all that it’s given me: confidence, discipline, practice, friendships. But when I came to the end of my MA last year, I wondered if it was time to for a new stage in my writing journey and when I got an email from Rosemary offering the possibility of long termers to step down, I took it as confirmation from God that now was the time to let someone else have the blessings I’ve had here.

So, what do I write about in a final blogpost? In the words of Hollow Talk, the evocative theme tune of The Bridge:

‘everything/goes back to the beginning’.

In my very first ACW post I wrote about beekeeping and the idea of how God ‘keeps’ us. I promised a later post about how we writers are wordkeepers – but I notice I never wrote it. Time to come good on my promise. But, as my writing has developed over the past 5 years, I’ll do so with a poem:

 

Words   buzz around    my mind    waggle      on the page

As I try to decipher the direction, the destination they are leading me to.

Sometimes they swarm

In a mass murmuration

(Other times, one slowly leads to another     and another     and another).

My job is to follow and capture them in a sack,

Pour them into my mind’s hive

Where they can make their home

And build their comb cities hexagon upon hexagon,

communities of words hanging on page frames.

Eventually I will extract their honey with a centrifuge,

 jar it in books,

And distil wax into golden light.

 

I also gave you a beekeeper’s blessing in my first post, which puts me in mind of a Biblical blessing, a favourite passage of mine, in Numbers ch. 6, where God gives Aaron (via Moses) and his sons words with which to bless the Israelites.

It’s words that my parents said often to me (and my brother too I’m sure), words that I have said over my children and still do. We had the congregation say them to me and my husband when we renewed our wedding vows. I have to admit to adding an extra phrase of our own to help make the meaning clear, because how else does a face shine but with a smile?

So it seems apt to end my last post, as I did my first, with a blessing, that also refers back to God as our keeper:

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make His face to shine upon you

And be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you

Smile at you

And give you peace.

Liz Manning lives in Cornwall and has a Creative Writing MA from Plymouth University. She is a visual poet and enjoys taking part in poetry nights. She’s had pieces published in INK and The Jesse Tree Anthology.  And she has rashly agreed to revive a local community literary festival this year so look out for news of Looe Literary Festival!

You can find examples of her visual poetry at https://lizmanning.me  along with a link to her blog at https://thestufflifeismadeofblog.wordpress.com/ .