Spring to Sea – Paintings by Bob Aldous
and poetry by Myra Schneider

Painting and poetry make good bedfellows. Here we see the poet Myra Schneider respond to the paintings of artist Bob Aldous.
Collaborations between poets and painters are not new. In fact there is a fashionable movement of responding to painting through poetry. The late art writer John Berger, in his seminal book ‘Ways of Seeing’ reminded us that images come first, then words – ‘but when a poet creates a poem in response to a work of art then the words become another way of seeing.’

SPRING TO SEA

It begins deep down, wombed in darkness –
so many beginnings take place in darkness.
It emerges from a mountain cleft, is embraced
by light and slithers downwards over stones
and grass in runlets which seem random
but soon it’s a purposeful stream, a river.
Boats dream on it, bridges arch their backs
to span it. At last meaning singles to opening out. It gives itself to the measureless blue of ocean.

STREAM

It emerges slowly from the fog of unknowing,
widens in this place of quiet and mirrors
all the twiggeries straggling from a flock
of shorn trees. Pause here for a while
and you’ll find too the water reflects grass,
the black line of the bank, a silent bird
dipping for food. And as shafts of light
penetrate darks in the thicket, you’ll see
how wildness seeks for pattern.

SALT MARSH

A somewhere of land and water as far
the eye can see. Look at the reeds
bedded in silt, how their upward canes
strive to stripe the sky. Follow
the darks of those long liquid lanes
into the drifting uncertainties of mist.
The melancholy of distant bird cries
will tug at your feelings and always
there is the searching for mother sea.

TEMPLE UNDER THE SEA

Under the sea, in terrain where little light
penetrates, sharks and spider crabs roam.
If you look, you’ll find, among rocks clothed
in sargassum and seagrass, a scattering
of columns, some proudly upright, some toppled.
Once this ruin was a temple. It stood on dry land
and rose into the blue of sky but the ocean
has bestowed on it a strange beauty
and is urging you to dive into the world below.

THE BLACK WAVE

Look, ocean indigo with anger,
ocean rising up into huge crests
which spew fury, ocean bellowing
at the thin-lipped land crouched
behind it. Look, clouds sweeping
through sky eager to marry these waters.
The black wave threatens annihilation
but in the fathomless dark something is stirring
and it fills you with wonder as you gaze
at the ceaseless seagull-white layers.

BLUE

The sea has been dreaming of blue
for days and at last the weighty clouds
have parted. Azure is pooling in the sky.
Look how the deeps and shallows
lap it up.  Already blue has infused
these waters with enough light
to quench the grey uncertainty
below the surface. How the sea
rejoices in glittering blue life.