Tiger and Lotus, collage and paint
To Do This Thing
To Do This Thing To do this to such a thing that was, this morning, so fine a thing, so red and real a thing, so running free a thing; to do this thing to such a thing so that now, this evening, it is no more a thing than a mud-mangled thing, bedraggled…
Biz Johnson
A note from Ann Johnson about this image This was one of the first paintings I made of Biz – over 20 years ago. She arrived in our garden at about six months old and we were immediately enchanted. Thus began my painting of cats – further inspired by the wonderful Tess who arrived a few years…
That Cat
That Cat whose fur is slid to where your fingers spread; whose purr splatters specifically you (as if only you matter); whose fish-food platter is left for manky after The Great Show of Hunger; who’s disposed to dribble, nibble bits of digestive, make quiver live creatures like shrews; who eats these in the loo on…
Cat’s Tenth Year
Cat’s Tenth Year Currently, his meat must come with gravy. Give him fish in jelly and it’ll turn to flies. He’s had a phase of biting bare legs at 3am as you sleep-walk to the loo. The purr wakes you, then the pounce. He draws blood, mad blooder, creature of the night! In spring, when…
August Caterpillar
I stand by the apple tree, my attention caught by a big fly and a caterpillar sharing the same leaf. They are both steady still. Waiting, I wonder: who will move first? It is the caterpillar. It raises a face with fringed eyes. It has a yellow stripe down its inch-long body. The caterpillar sways…
Imagining the Full Hundred
I want to realise identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth. GANDHI I Making Elderflower Cordial Creatures can get very small – their smallness comes as a big surprise. These tinies are flecks of distress, sprung pell-mell from the elder flowers now I have squeezed the lemon juice there. Is…
Making tea, November 4th
Making tea, November 4th Look at this keen moon, out already at five o’ clock. A Greenwich Mean Time moon means tea time keeps its hour, later. At the sink, I chop and think idly about the colour of veg and the mildness of November. We say it’s wonderful for the time of year and…
The Near-Death Experience of a Cartesian Philosopher
The Near-Death Experience of a Cartesian Philosopher Animals he regarded as automata … devoid of feeling or consciousness. Men are different: they have a soul – Bertrand Russell on Descartes There was a man who saw the soul as for man alone, so dogs and the poor rest must go without. He made a shout…
Brother Francis
‘Bird Garden’ Brother Francis We buried the bird and believed that God was crying with us, for the rain lasted only as long as the ceremony, which you led with your pocket-sized Psalms. Serious we were, circle of bowed heads, hair school-parted, breakfast not yet. Mummy, why? we wept: broken bird in a soily…
