1. |
Stories on Your Skin
05:04
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This is your life, it burns within.
It’s hidden underneath the cover of your skin.
The layers are there, for us to wear.
We live with loss, all our days.
There’s no telling when our stories will change,
Life comes and goes, it’s all we know.
Chorus - Don’t hide the stories on your skin,
There’s life within, so tell them.
Don’t hide the stories/scars on your skin,
There’s life/beauty within, let it shine.
Along the road, the traffic zooms.
But I am looking where the hawthorn’s in bloom,
There’s beauty there, it’s everywhere.
Bodies crowd, onto the train.
Faces blank me, eyes all looking away,
But I’m smiling through, cos I know how to.
Storm clouds in front, bright blue behind.
Sun is lighting up a rainbow in the sky.
Swifts dip and glide, black bellies catch my eyes.
I stop the car, to watch the sight.
My eyes are filling with tears of life.
I give thanks and praise, for these days.
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2. |
Imbolc (Lights Coming)
04:01
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Light’s coming, days changing, light’s coming, days changing.
Up on the edge, up on the edge, up on the edge.
The light is growing.
Trees moving, earth shifting, feet slipping, body sliding.
Up on the edge, up on the edge, up on the edge.
The earth is shifting.
Moon shines and shadows fall, stretching out the days.
I can feel the life emerging. Darkness is erased.
Sun shines and light grows, stretching out the days.
I can feel my body responding. Darkness is erased.
Light’s coming, days changing, wheels turning, earth is waking,
Up on the edge, up on the edge, up on the edge,
The wheel is turning.
Buds bursting, birds singing, sun warming, soil thawing,
Up on the edge, up on the edge, up on the edge.
The birds are singing.
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3. |
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Every night under the moon, checking that she is alone.
She unzips all her skins, placing them on the ground.
Letting them go and flow like a weight slipping off.
Skin one bears the stretches of youth.
Skin two bears the scars of first loves.
Skin three bears the deep cuts and incisions, of the surgeon’s knife,
drawn down her body to the place where her life force resides.
Skin four bears the holes of grief.
Skin five bears the marks of motherhood.
Skin six bears the creases of laughter that flowed
from her belly and womb like gold.
Skin seven bears the lines of healing.
Skin eight bears the traces of knowing.
Skin nine bears the signs of aging on her face,
as she moves through her phases, moves through her phases,
moves through her phases like tall grass that blows in the wind.
The last skin clings to her still, unchartered and unadorned.
She dances like a child again, naked and free,
under the light of the waning, winter moon.
She moves through her phases, moves through her phases,
moves through her phases like tall grass that blows in the wind.
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4. |
Ditches and Ramparts
03:21
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Today the hillfort’s on fire, the gorse flowers are glowing.
The broom is dancing like flames, petals shining and growing.
Round and around and around we go
Ramparts are full of the imprints of life through the centuries.
My footsteps tracing the pathways, once guarded by sentries.
Above me kites are a-circling draw my gaze to the sky.
The clouds are shifting and breaking and catching my eyes.
On the horizon the hills are all shaping my view.
Brown Clee and Titterstone and Corndon Hill too.
Each step takes me backwards in time
Each step takes me forwards in time…
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5. |
Common Land
07:11
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Waves crash upon the beaches.
Tides roll onto the shore.
Take a last look at this horizon.
Never see your home once more.
No more ploughing of the furrows.
No more planting of the seeds.
No more threshing in old Wright’s barn.
No more commons for your needs.
No more toiling in the fields.
Travel the roads as a carters way.
Till you horse gives up his pulling,
and you find a new place to stay.
Swapped the open skies of Suffolk,
for a city full of smoke.
Industries darken the horizon.
Find something in this hole to give you hope.
Loading coal at the pit top.
Got to buy enough food to share.
There’s a wife now in your bed who warms you,
and a baby on the way who needs your care.
Crushed between the weight of shunting waggons.
Your children carried on the family line.
Now I’m finding out about your story,
and how the journey of your life is linked to mine.
Waves crash upon the beaches.
Tides roll onto the shore.
I’m standing looking at this horizon.
Seeing it through your eyes once more.
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6. |
Black Feather
04:24
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I head for the commons along the old mill road.
By the side of the broads where the water channels flow.
Past the heron stalking in the reeds,
to the place where I watch the hare and deer feed.
Found a black feather on the ground, held it in my view,
saw it’s shimmering colours of purple, green and blue.
On through the fields fingers tracing the top of the corn.
Added my voice to the birds singing in the dawn.
Harriers gliding lazily overhead,
as geese descend into the lush reed bed.
Days turn into years now and time seems to run away,
I still have that black feather and remember that beautiful day.
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7. |
Water
03:40
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Water rushing over the land,
Water running down from the hills.
Water moving under the ground.
Water sinking deep below the town.
Water rising up from the wells.
Water seeping onto the fields.
Water filtering down off the Edge.
Water where the pilgrims used to tread.
Water where the birds come to drink.
Water emerging from the source.
Water flowing out of the spring.
Water where I lay my offerings.
Water oozing from the deep.
Water where the old stories sleep.
Water in the womb of our birth.
Water cradling the earth.
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8. |
The Ancestor in Me
04:14
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The ancestor in me is white haired and wrinkled.
She holds me in her gaze and shows me my first breath.
Chorus - I see her footprints in the ground beneath me.
The ancestor in me is red haired and full of fire.
She walks upon the land in a cloak of moss and leaves.
The ancestor in me is young with raven hair.
She moves across the tundra in a land of ice and snow.
The ancestor in me has long hair the colour of corn.
She sits in a circle of women and wears antlers on her head.
She’s old and wrinkled, she’s young with raven hair.
She red haired and full of fire.
She has hair the colour of corn.
She leads me to the hill,
and down through dappled woodlands.
Shows me the pool and points to my reflection.
And I see the ancestor in me.
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9. |
A Lifetime of Digging
03:46
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He winds the clock and sets the time,
Spent years down the pit since the age of nine.
He checks his fob watch and moves the dials.
Escaped the cave-ins and the trials.
A lifetime of digging, a lifetime of digging.
The clock chimes each and every hour.
Saved up for in wages of toil and horror.
Carved bird on top with eagle wings.
Soars out of the dark coal face and sings.
Friends died underground in early graves.
Put down his pick, took up a spade.
Won trophies at the village show.
Proud of the produce he could grow.
Retired with a lifetimes stack of coal.
Extracted from that blackened hole.
A miner’s life was all he know.
Digging the coal and soil too.
The clock still chimes on my mother’s wall.
Tells my great granddad’s story there for all.
See him in his waistcoat in my mind,
Showing me how to tell the time.
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10. |
In Suspension
04:08
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Don’t call me, cos I’m in suspension.
Away where the world can’t find me.
Lost in thought, or lack of it…
You’ll find me, under the trees.
Feeling my heart beat, with the movement of leaves.
You’ll find me, on top of the hill.
Looking down on the land, contented and still.
You’ll find me, by the babbling brook.
Making an offering, for all that I took.
You’ll find me, with the swifts on the wing.
Screaming my song, for all to sing.
You’ll find me, by the warmth of the fire.
Feeling the heat, of my heart’s desire.
You’ll find me, with my hands in the earth.
Planting a seed there, giving thanks for my birth.
Don’t call me, don’t call me…don’t call me,
cos I’m in suspension.
Away where the world can’t find me.
Lost in thought, but not for lack of it…
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11. |
Bone and Stone
02:47
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I slipped into a world of fur.
Shook off my upright stance and skin.
Prowled through the undergrowth.
Revealing my true self within.
Field and forest,
hill and hedgerow.
Rock and river,
bone and stone.
I slipped into a world of fur,
and found a wealth of riches there.
Of squeaks and caws and howls and barks.
A different kind of song to share.
I slipped into a world of fur,
let go my kind and found my kin.
The warmth and softness of my pelt
breathed me back to life again.
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12. |
In Different Worlds
04:12
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Oh, the water flows so deeply.
On its way down to the sea.
No matter how we change its course,
it always finds its way back down to the source.
And time is running fast now.
Away from where it began.
Flowing on its chosen path,
and I think of all the years that’ve already passed.
All the places that we’ve been to.
All the times that we have lived through.
All the people that we’ve known.
Without even seeing how the dice were thrown.
Years that we can’t rescue.
Time that’s already gone.
In our different worlds existing.
Seems like fate doesn’t bare resisting.
Where will it take us?
Where will we go?
All will become clear one day.
I’ll trust it to be so.
Oh, the water flows so deeply.
On its way down to the sea.
No matter how we shape its course,
it always finds its way back down to the source.
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13. |
Doggerland (Oceans Rise)
04:25
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Out as far as I can see,
horizons stretch in front of me,
over hills, down to the sea.
Looking out across the miles,
land shaped in many styles,
let’s make camp and breathe awhile.
Follow the herds as seasons change,
down the valleys, across the plains,
over the snow-capped mountain range.
We have all we need to be free.
Land shapes our lives, waters rise yet we survive.
Moving onto fresher grounds,
forward where the food abounds,
the telling call of game resounds.
One day the land began to shake,
a gentle stream became a lake,
the water rose in a vast earthquake.
No way back across the sea,
this is now our place to be,
forests full of ancient trees.
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14. |
Rock
03:57
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Crouching low against the enormity of the ancient trees,
a miniature world of delicate perfection steals my gaze and brings me back to ground.
A rock, gnarled, fissured and cracked into a myriad of textures,
sits quietly like an aged idol in a stone trough composed of molecules as old as the earth.
It holds this space with such certainty.
Implacable, unmoving, solid.
Quietly providing a place for new life to begin.
This miniscule community of tiny luminous ferns,
of unfurling brackens in radiating curls,
of pimpling sedums in a spectrum of colours,
lights up the space in a twinkling fairy-like chain,
of oranges, reds, greens and golds.
But it is the velvet softness of the deep evergreen mosses,
holding onto the last drops of rain, which forces me to touch now.
My fingers pressing eagerly to explore their springy, spongy flesh.
I realise then, as I trace the rings of pastel lichens beginning as the moss ends,
That this rock is in fact, razor sharp and brittle.
To touch could tear flesh and feet raw.
This uprooted and bleached body was once part of a bed of coral,
Riddled with holes from anchoring anemones and tunnelling sea creatures.
Now it rests here in another universe of light and air.
And despite all the drama of the manicured landscape garden,
It is this modest little rock that sets my heart a light in a thousand flickering beats.
Praise to you oh Rock, brother from the deep sea.
Once bathed by salty oceans,
caressed and impregnated by corals.
Listen now to the creatures of the air.
The deafening bird song of feather and flight.
Feel the warmth of father sun and sister moon looking down on you.
Embrace the shift in body and soul now as you stand upon the earth.
But remember still the crash of all those years of rolling waves.
How long has it been since the earth exploded into life?
Forcing up hot magma and peaks of lava.
Cooling the gasses into the seas and birthing the primordial soup into being.
How many cycles of our earth rotating in space
did it take to create the deep oceans and all of their creatures?
Here we both sit then.
Joined in this place by a sudden welcome shaft of sunlight after the drenching rains.
Basking together in quiet and peace,
Comfortably silent.
Me sitting on the nearby bench, you in front of me,
Simply enjoying the warmth of a new day together.
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Jo Jukes & Rick Wilson England, UK
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