At my summertime sanctuary at 58 degrees north, it seems that the Song Thrush Turdus philomelos is never far away, and now that I have largely acclimatised to wearing my new and effective hearing aids, I seem to hear Thrush starting into song whenever I have a rousing thought about those I’ve left 600 miles south.

As I’ve shared here, the ‘Darkling Thrush’ poem (1900) of Thomas Hardy is close to my heart, albeit a heart that seems to be taking great dives and surges at the moment, like a cormorant. Interestingly Matthew Arnold used the same word – here associated with a loss of faith, or confusion within the darkness of the human condition – in ‘Dover Beach’ (1867).

Darkling – another word poetically associated with the theme of darkness that Punam invites us to explore in the quadrille poetic form, in this week’s challenge from dVerse community, with whom I’ve been writing verse (and worse) for three years already, and enjoying the friendship and encouragement of kindred spirits, kindling kinship from the embers of life experience.

Recently I was blessed by the professional touch of a friend’s fingers on the tissue of my mastectomy scar from two years ago. With the confidence of massage training and also the delicacy of empathetic understanding this friend sounded deep into the darkness surrounding my emotional recovery, and gave me relief from it.

This has been part of a healing process that had been delayed by a sense of festering, brooding heartache (the scar is just above my heart) and the following quadrille, all 44 words of it, serves to record other aspects of the two-year healing. Please don’t worry; the only “festering” was metaphorical.

what to do when a wound festers


* Take three steps back; love

yourself deeply; smile

broadly with bumblebees;

pursue what you want in this life. Ask

for these out loud, in song and dance:

Mary Oliver's grasshopper who

crunched on sugar; wild geese

harshly calling. Now interpret

darkness: relate to stars *


© Kathy Labrum McVittie 28 May 2024