St Andrew's Remembrance ( A poem )
Channel: Chew Valley Films
Date: 02/03/2021

This poem was written by Steve Day who spent 34 years writing poems, music and books on jazz in his cottage by Chew Magna churchyard. He left the village in 2021 and Chew Valley Films commissioned him to write a poem to mark this time of change. 
It is performed in the churchyard that Steve knows so well. 

Here is the poem:


St Andrew's Remembrance

St Andrew's, Chew Magna; saltire cross
flag fluttering a not-so-ragged ribbon of
a fisherman a long way from the sea and
soon to be from me.

For thirty-four years I’ve watched over
this quiet granite weeded green garden
of remembrance, inhabiting the life ever
after Dhammapada. *

Seasons: snow bound and frozen, late
Spring-forward sprinkle the purple crocus
christening Chew Court Corner by a turned
and crooked stone,

summer shadow and light lined detail,
and come The Fall the great old weeping
ash shedding leaves as organic confetti in
October’s raincloud.

Belief has carved the living and the dead.
Loaned to the soil and whittled out of the
yews. A ghost-free grave marking nothing
more than memory.

Yet we who have rooted ourselves to
this peaceful place of love and tranquillity
eventually will have to go toward the bells
tolling us to Autumn.


* Dhammapada    A small book distilling buddhist teachings.