Yesterday a group of trusty rengaistas gathered under the moon, lately tethered in Hexham Abbey, for a spot of traditional autumn moon-viewing. As darkness fell around us, we sat for four strange and mysterious hours in the presence of Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon to share what lines emerged, as visitors came and went around us. In our small crescent of chairs, clipboards on our knees, we became a human installation alongside the celestial one in the hallowed heights of the medieval abbey.
Here is the renga we made.
§
Nor She Nor He
In the ark
of the nave
a piece of heaven
*
after all the rain
are we warm or cold?
*
bring me
the ripest apple
for this night
*
mahogany harmonium
unlocked and wheezing
*
rising so slowly
and hugely above the horizon
her insides tremble
*
scurrying at the corner of the eye
scuttling at the edge of the ear
*
dazzle ships
and psyched-out sputniks
space dogs with floating bones
*
nor she nor he
walking into the heart of matter
*
I pass through
the Orionid meteor shower
to my land of forest and frost
*
some days there is only
the dark side of love
*
Holy Mary
Mother of God
help us
*
bath me in sickle light
sing me a silver skin
*
blast off efficiently
complete the orbits
and re-enter without disintegrating
*
a dry sea drowns
reckless sailors
*
in hushed voices
we dare to whisper
moon
*
on generations of stone
under a Big Bang rock
*
universal megapixels
ultra 3-D
black and white
*
unconditional
more beautiful than roses
*
in my dream journal
an illegible phrase
repeated forever
*
one thing that never changes
always changing.
§
A Renga at the Museum of the Moon
in Hexham Abbey
on 24th October 2023.
§
Participants:
Jo Aris
Linda France
Trisha Gillespie
Martin Heslop
Sharon Higginson
Alex Reed
Eileen Ridley
Mary Warner