A Haven of Peace, a Piece of Heaven
The Bield at Blackruthven
Retreat and Conference Centre
The Journey is also a place
A Pathway of Poems comissioned by the Bield at Blackruthven for the old gravel pits
Written and read by Kenneth Steven
The Journey is also a place
by kenneth Steven
Introduction
Listen to a few words of guidance from the poet Kenneth Steven before you begin
The Journey is also a place
by kenneth Steven
One
When you enter a house in Scandinavia
you start by taking off your coat and shoes.
At once there is the scent of pine;
the warmth will welcome you.
You leave behind the world outside,
will come in to leave behind the cold.
​
Here is a doorway, a gate, a threshold.
Beyond are many rooms made of wood
and only you will choose how long you stay here.
But enter slowly and as you do
let go of all the things you do not need.
Your shoes are full of stones, the stones of many journeys.
Imagine emptying out your shoes as you come in
to let the soreness of your feet begin to heal.
There are no office doors inside this place;
no telephones that must be answered.
This is what will be your journey, and the journey is also a place.
The Journey is also a place
by kenneth Steven
Two
Once upon a time this was not a place
or somehow had place taken from it.
There were diggers and they came for gravel;
they took what they had come for and then left.
However many living thingswould have fled,
hearing the machines working all day and night;
the shouting of the men working hard and long,
simply finishing the task they’d been given.
​
However many creatures must have gone
with the whine and growl of digging things
that clawed at trees and moss and earth
to reach the gravel they had come for.
​
So they found what they were after in the end
and went away and left a place dug out;
hollowed empty, stripped bare, despoiled
the torn earth hurting, but left at last in silence.
​
Even now it feels deep down, as though
in the beginning it was sea level, and when they dug
they found a far below, an underneath:
that’s what they left, a deep beneath.
​
How long it must have lain barren and unbothered
unwalked since there was nothing left to see;
the place just seen as little more
than what once had been a pit.