“A safe familiar retreat, secure from life’s long reach” – discover Jenny’s inspiring South Downs poetry
March 21, 2022
For World Poetry Day, we celebrate the wonderful work of Jenny Arach, a talented poet of Ugandan and English parentage.
About her poetry, Jenny says: “I write through the lens of the Sussex coastal landscape which has long been a favourite area for me.”
Enjoy! We hope these poems inspire you to get creative and pen your own odes to the South Downs 🙂
The Matriarch Landscape
The South Downs ancient landscape,
ever present against the seascape.
Looming large, strong matriarch
English mother, African aunt
She is the everyday feature.
Beauty overtaken by functional nature.
Recognise her in the
gorse and hawthorn.
Impenetrable thickets and
interlaced finger digits.
Aged joints, swollen and arthritic.
Limbs twisted and misshapen,
fingernails jagged and thickened.
Dry, sun and wind rusted hair.
Eyes now cloudy, vision impaired.
Tattooed with varicose veins and lichens
on branches bent in relentless winds.
Backs stooped under life’s weighty burdens
In the snarled, gnarled furze and thorn,
space for gentleness, love and warmth.
Get closer, bend lower,
enter the secret shaded enclosure.
A place of sanctuary and learning,
licking life’s wounds and healing.
Where her scolding tongue,
like the snag of the thorn,
serves as a lesson well learned
The calm port in a storm
Source of wisdom for life’s breakdown.
Lender of last resort
Holds off creditors and predators.
Provides protection, food and shelter.
A safe familiar retreat,
secure from life’s long reach.
Landscape of my mother
Sky and sea surround
of Indian blue sari gowns
Framing the crochet green
patchwork of downs & denes
White puffs of embroidery anglaise,
float above Kitenge cloth bouquets
Once, young girls so pretty,
Now strength and resilience are their beauty
Women from all continents of the world
mould their landscape where life unfolds
The south downs common land
mirrors the story of any Woman
Her rolling green hipbones,
protective white cliff backbones
endless feminine curved forms,
entwined in sweeps and turns
High and over inclines and dips
sheltered valleys between wide hips
Dimpled shoulders to rest on,
soft hollows to bed down on
Wavy skyline of rounded bosoms
that place of a woman
A quiet nurturing peace
where sorrows and hurts release
Exposed scars of white chalk
Of these there is rarely talk
White jagged gashes and chasms,
turbulent labour and caesareans
Badges of sacrifice and suffering
Disfigured by rough cutting and stitching
White chalk mines and quarries
Scars of oven burns and mastectomies
Disembowelled by hysterectomies
Trauma of abuse and batteries
Chalk absorbs tears and pain everyday
Empowering her, come what may
Poems copyright of Jenny Arach
