Times takes all but nothing keeps

Caves, stones and ancient lives

Unfinished Poems project at

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery 

We are reaching the end of this first run of the Unfinished Poems project and here are a few choice pieces from the final sets of postcards…

Stone Age Tools
A hammer blow splits flint from stone,
A firebow wakes embers from the wood,
A bow shoots,
Ochre colours random glazes

 



Victorian Archaeologists
Shovels and spades dig piles of earth
Burrowing into the ancient mound
Mud and mess and graft and toil
All that work - but nothing found
(by BW 14/11/17)

Caves
Rain falls and water drips,
Stone dissolves and water seeps
Bones remain but not the lips,
Times takes all but nothing keeps
Caves
Rain falls and water drips,
Stone dissolves and water seeps
Swells the trees in apple pips,
And roots delve further in the deep.

Caves
Rain falls and water drips,
Stone dissolves and water seeps
This process continues while we sleep,
Years and years pass by,
Then something bright catches our eye
A fossil so old,
A crystal bright and bold
If only we knew what stories these hold.
(by SM Dowle 1/11/17)

Over the last 4 months, a set of postcards of Unfinished Poems has lurked in Buxton Museum and Art Gallery inviting people to connect poem to exhibit to imagination and and find their own words to finish the poem, or to ignore the starting points completely and write a completely original piece. As these Finished Poems have reached me, I have been posting them on this blog (while exercising a degree of editorial control). Out of an original set of 160 postcards, we’ve had 50 back - a good return. The rest are hopefully whispering their finished poems out there in the wider world beyond the walls of the Museum.

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll post the best of the rest of the poems and a fulls et of Unfinshed Poems so that if you feel so inclined you could complete them for yourself

With many thanks to these poets and everyone 

who has contributed to the Unfinished Poems collections. 

More poems will follow

Pictures: the drawing came with the Stone Age Tools poem

The waterfall and cave pictures are from Linn Caves near Milngavie - not Derbyshire at all but I liked the combination of water, stone and darkness