Steve_Bamlett_blog

They say that it will snow tonight;
Full sixteen centimetres cold in snow,
And yet today it's mild in morning, 
Insisting that it all continues, beats
Out the bells of continuum in change
Like Tennyson's 'wild bells', ringing the old
Out to welcome the new into our lives.

But slow down wild bells, immoderately
Swelling with pride too soon. Let me still hug 
My present love some time, as long as he
Allows. But my heart wants more than little.

This morning, hearing of weather change about to come, though seasonally to be expected,  Daisy and I walked along the River Wear to decend to the confluence of it and its tributary river, the Gaunless, and under the bridge ducking beneath the sewage flow – some stuffs flow forever, however we try to contain them – encased in one huge rusting  pipe, into the Bishop of Durham’s Auckland Park.

Inside the park, we see it preparing for tonight’s official opening of the now Annual, but this is only its second year, AGLOW event. See one of the signs below, standing beneath that austere chapel on the hill  – the Bishop’s own personal reflective space – a closed nave overlooked by cantilever angels inside it, as closed as the sewer pipe but no longer to an enduring flowing thing, the sea of Faith having long retreated. The Bishop has long fled too to safeguard a few more church secrets, whilst children are weighed in this Church to be of lesser worth than those dark secrets of the cloth and under it.

It’s difficult not to be cynical about the vulgar show, but let us try, even though a Santa’s  village in preparations for the night looks shamefully like vulgar Cristmas commodified, at least in the full light of day.

The ‘Lady Witch’s Hut is somewhat of a shock, wondering why the thing is gendered thus when intended for the child at the age where candy gloss and lit-up walking sticks pretending to be made of sweet candy rock are aglow. After all, we know such sweet provision will sell at high rate in Santa’s village below it: that village too aglow, like the fires of perdition, with stalls branded by more lights tempting purchase appeal for a number of tacky products – no doubt including reindeer burgers (poor Rudolph).

But today, I chose another way of seeing the colour and the flounce, one not so gendered.  Below the Lady Witch’s Hut is a Dale dotted with cones amongst the trees, a community of light painted with blue snowflakes in defiance of those real ones we are expected to see tonight.

In a Dale a secret community
Of wanton elves fake love beneath a near
Gibbous moon that we expect to shine on
The fall of white snow and reflect back blue
Light on those trans beings, decked with glitter
And mock colours of the night so gaudy,
But demanding yet humanist passion
From all of us, who like proud difference
Not erasing 'sameness'. Above them a tree
Like a queen in drag shows their bright glitter 
Balls to all, to affirm that here it stands
Shedding some wild joy, where once none was, under
Clerical frocks sinning in the sad dark
Of a vestry, not proud to be itself 
But shedding shame all round instead of joys
In which children sparkle.Knowing there's no bonds
On what they'll become as they grow up proud.

It is just a thought but I know my loved husband would have been a proud father, as would I had laws not been cast by dirtied minds that see the capture of children by such as we instead of those masked by church institutions who hide their shame, for shame it is to abuse and not protect children.

0ut of the imagined darkness, sun still shines. No clue yet of it shedding it’s white cold burden. My husband rings me to say his temperature has dropped to norms and that may be the antibiotics will work this time, and though he will never be home with physically as strong as his love remains strong.

When the clouds gather as they say they will
I will expect that whatever falls this night
Will bring rainbows shining o'er that dark hill
🌈 🏳️‍🌈 🌈 🏳️‍🌈 🌈 🏳️‍🌈 🌈 🏳️‍🌈 🌈 🏳️‍🌈 
And love be vindicated forever
Even for the time we need to grow back
Together. There's a lot in a snowbow
That will set Geoff and Steve's  hearts full AGLOW.

With love

Steven xxxxx