School Case Studies

Passivhaus Love-Letter-Taler 

In the infant pool multicoloured lights
twinkle under foot –green, violet, blue –
and a baby reaches a plump hand down 
through shallow water to touch the stars.
I’ve swum my lengths in the lanes and now 
drink coffee and watch as a woman 
learns to float in the twenty metre pool. 
She lowers herself halfway then jerks 
back up, clutching her heart. Her friend 
shows her again how to trust in water,
how to let it hold you like a child.
Meanwhile a white-haired woman
riding a swimming noodle like a horse 
gently cycles past. Her legs pedal 
through the moonish underwater light
with slow pale grace. Now she is doing
calf raises, holding on to the noodle 
for balance. Such beauty and perseverance.
Her breasts spilling over the cut of her costume 
are buoyed by the water and dancing 
by themselves. 
               I understand the tenderness 
of the learner pool, but the building 
is beyond me – how it orients south 
to optimise warmth, how it captures 
and gifts cool to the north-facing gym, 
or how the external thermometer 
with its exquisite sensors relays data 
to the building which then decides 
whether to open or close its louvres,
move or store heat – I swear it is a mind 
that thinks. It’s been designed to withstand 
the next eighty years. And what will you find there,
dear future swimmer? Some of the babies
splashing in the infant pool will perhaps 
be doing slow lengths then. Dear ones, 
I wish you perseverance and gentle effort.
I wish you health. I wish you love 
that responds like this Passivhaus -
that offers to cool or warm according 
to your needs; and I will the water 
to cradle your future bones while we 
who are here now sleep.

Solar / Star-Taler 

Row upon row of silvery-black panels,
      tilt toward the house of God
             which is the sun.
                                  .
There’s a microscopic world
      we can barely even imagine –
             blazing photons that stream 
across ninety million miles of space
      to shower these thin glass planes 
             with a billion small shocks, 
bright abundance that falls 
      even through cool northern skies, 
             even on our dullest days – 
gold so plentiful we cannot catch it all,
      but spread these panels like nets 
             beneath a tree of golden apricots
or apron-skirts catching yellow windfalls.
      And I think of that German fairy tale
             of the little orphan girl
who gave away everything she owned – 
      her loaf of good black bread, her clothes – 
             until she stood in a dark wood, 
not a stitch to cover her nakedness
      teeth clattering, praying hard, 
             who found herself suddenly arrayed 
in finest linen, and all around her
      falling star-gold – motes
             she spread her skirts to catch – 
so many coins she never hungered 
      or was cold again. The poorest countries 
             are rich in sunshine. 
This is what I wish for them.	

vi Heartsong 

Always may there be a stand of balsam
set back from the river, and a mama beaver 
emerged from her nest into early dusk,  
grooming her punky, wicked fur,
steeping her tail in the water & eating,
the noise of her chomping like kissing; 
& always her kits will be slipping  
under the fringe of the willow to reach her,
and almost with a sigh, almost with a shrug 
she’ll turn and waddle up the bank 
dock a branch and trawl it back 
to where they bicker & play & feed in their recess 
of water & reed; & the bliss of their dwelling 
will rest on the evening, it is here.

v Song of the Riparian Zone

Come iris, come moor grass, come sphagnum and sedge,
come water mint growing round the beaver-lawn’s edge;
come aspen, come willow, come guelder, come hazel,
come hawker, come mayfly, come blue demoiselle;
come otter, come bubble-mouse, water vole and shrew,
come pearl-bordered fritillary and silver studded blue;
come yellow hammer, warbler, come dipper and teal,
come stone loach, come stickleback, lamprey and eel,
come spangled reed beetle supping air through a straw
for the river keeper is returned once more.

vi Heartsong

Always may there be a stand of balsam
set back from the river, and a mama beaver 
emerged from her nest into early dusk,  
grooming her punky, wicked fur,
steeping her tail in the water & eating,
the noise of her chomping like kissing; 
& always her kits will be slipping  
under the fringe of the willow to reach her,
and almost with a sigh, almost with a shrug 
she’ll turn and waddle up the bank 
dock a branch and trawl it back 
to where they bicker & play & feed in their recess 
of water & reed; & the bliss of their dwelling 
will rest on the evening, it is here.

iv Beavers on the River Otter

Watch as they re-meander 
the straitened river
rewet the meadow 
till it is part mire
a mosaic of pond and bog
and cropped beaver-lawn;
river keepers
thinning the wood
letting the light back in.

If It Runs Drop Everything Repair The Dam

Watch as they re-meander 
the straitened river
rewet the meadow 
till it is part mire
a mosaic of pond and bog
and cropped beaver-lawn;
river keepers
thinning the wood
letting the light back in.

iii Song of the Dam / Intuitive Hydrologists

water is a shapeshifter 
       that can brim ooze weep 
percolate through stone  
       that drips trickles evaporates
into invisible air
       hard to catch 
impossible to corral 
       yet this is our vocation – 			
to keep a fluid steadiness 
       in the lush & green-shoot places –  
& water is all our husbandry: 
       how to dam & brace 
how to shore it up with sticks & stones & mud 
       whatever we can find 
old fenceposts, bricks
       we cross-weave daub & fix 
impound the water 
       do not let it run

ii Song of the Beaver

Water shaman; double-lidded, double-lipped,
       back toes webbed like a bat’s black wing.
It combs perfumed oil through its deep dark coat
       with a special split toe. It must have a moat.
It must have a lodge piled high with sticks and mud
       and inside it, a nest of dry shredded wood.
It must have a shallow pool so the kits can learn to swim
       and an underwater tunnel to enter the lodge unseen.
To fell a tree, you must have a reinforced skull
       & ferrous, orange teeth.
To survive, you must have foresight & stealth.
       I tutored you, woodsman. I showed you how
to coppice & thin, how to ford a stream.
       I taught the engineer to dam, & terrace, & sluice,
I taught the salmon to leap & the willow to shoot.
       I owe you nothing. You made me extinct.
Now I’m teaching you how to come back from the brink.

River Otter Beaver Trial – i A Short History of Extinction

River rats, Coptic dogs,
driven from the demesnes and wapentakes
hunted par force in the waterways
with dogs and traps and clubs;
good money paid for their pelt’s
stiff hair and voluptuous underfur;
the sensuous elixir of their castoreum,
its scent of vanilla, chypre and plum;
their paddle-tail’s backcountry fat,
and their sweet red Lenten meat.
Two pence bounty paid in Bolton Percy Church
for the last beaver’s head.
How often do we get the chance
to try again?

Poetry – Plymouth Sound / Blue Meadows

Render unto the sea
	what belongs to the sea:
give her back her nurseries
the sheltered grassy places
	where a seahorse might court
where a pipefish might thread
the translucent ribbon of its tail.
	Down into pewter broken water 
drop the hessian bags, 
the tenderly raised seedlings – 
	bed them in, lay the ground
for underwater prairies
and pray - that the wild herds come
	to grasp at sea grass, 
graze on plankton – 
for shy digestive tubes 
	to populate the silt – 
for the shimmy of dorsal fins
in the tangled meadow,
	with their precarious games 
of hide and seek, the electric
dappled fry; and at last
	for the stalked jellyfish
to extend its starry crown – 
as in the old days we made the gods
	a little house or shrine
& timidly but inevitably they came.