Catherine's Poetry and Prose site.
06th October 2024
Recently, Catherine has won one of four coveted places in a competition to celebrate the centennial of the discovery of the Neolithic tomb at la Hougue Bie on her native island of Jersey. Catherine performed her poem at the event marking the occasion. NEWS TO FOLLOW. meanwhile she has launched her new poetry and prose site:
Catherines Attic
Catherine's prize winning poem inspired by the Neolithic Passage Grave and Earth mound atop which sits twin medieval chapels, joined under a common roof.
Sonnets at La Hougue Bie, Autumn Equinox
Paused on the pivot point of nights and days,
light nudges at the coast, tickles awake
the drowsing birds. The first tentative rays
fumble through dew-ghosted grass to take
their route towards the round maternal mound.
Upon its flanks, late summer-weary leaves
skirt its curves. The cairn yawns. Underground,
between its shadowed structures, brightness weaves
its penetrating path, a brimming beam
of life, in brilliance pulsing through the stones.
It inundates the chamber, the swift stream
illuminates the place where once-dead bones
were laid, awaiting resurrected birth,
in faith as sun-shot shafts flood through the Earth.
A sanctity no raiders could erase
endures millennia. Time’s meaningless
in the quiet peace of this liminal space
where generations find a sacredness.
Conjoined by one roof, twinned chapels rise
in supplication to another Son.
Hope lives on, clothed in a different guise,
declaring victory over death is won.
In granite, humankind would here confine
a transitory spark of something more,
a power beyond this known life, the Divine:
the Truth that follows on, that came before.
A moment’s grace born in serenity
holds fast the hope of immortality.
{c} Catherine Hamilton 2024
Catherines Attic
Catherine's prize winning poem inspired by the Neolithic Passage Grave and Earth mound atop which sits twin medieval chapels, joined under a common roof.
Sonnets at La Hougue Bie, Autumn Equinox
Paused on the pivot point of nights and days,
light nudges at the coast, tickles awake
the drowsing birds. The first tentative rays
fumble through dew-ghosted grass to take
their route towards the round maternal mound.
Upon its flanks, late summer-weary leaves
skirt its curves. The cairn yawns. Underground,
between its shadowed structures, brightness weaves
its penetrating path, a brimming beam
of life, in brilliance pulsing through the stones.
It inundates the chamber, the swift stream
illuminates the place where once-dead bones
were laid, awaiting resurrected birth,
in faith as sun-shot shafts flood through the Earth.
A sanctity no raiders could erase
endures millennia. Time’s meaningless
in the quiet peace of this liminal space
where generations find a sacredness.
Conjoined by one roof, twinned chapels rise
in supplication to another Son.
Hope lives on, clothed in a different guise,
declaring victory over death is won.
In granite, humankind would here confine
a transitory spark of something more,
a power beyond this known life, the Divine:
the Truth that follows on, that came before.
A moment’s grace born in serenity
holds fast the hope of immortality.
{c} Catherine Hamilton 2024