CloverSongs

Welcome to my page! I’m Clover. Like so many women, I wear several hats: I’m a bona fide, card-carryin believer in Jesus Christ, a wife, mother, grandmother, writer of songs, poetry, creative non-fiction, children’s stories, etc…, a home-maker, teacher, hostess, bee-keeper, soap-maker, and artisan. I’ve lived with my family for the past 31 years on the tiny volcanic island, Montserrat, in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean. I’ve found this lush, fruitful environment to be compellingly conducive to creativity of all kinds!

Ideally and as a rule, each day of mine begins in Love, in quiet study, prayer, reflection and writing until life around me comes rushing in… from the telephone, the knock on the door, guest arrivals, (we own and run a small Guest House, Gingerbread Hill) the morning stirrings of our special Noah who’s 17 and has that magical extra 21st chromosome that is known as Down Syndrome.

Then I shift into the gear of being wife, mother, housekeeper, and everyday lady. In this gear I prepare fruit salad with home-made yoghurt, make sure Noah feeds and waters “The Girls” and collects their lovely,fresh, brown eggs for a balanced breakfast, do some schooling with Noah, answer reservations requests, check on guests, make new lists and lists of lists, clean the house, tend the garden, etc….

Not one to be content with the commonplace, I guess I’m forever on the prowl in casual, everyday life for lessons of an eternal poignancy and beauty. My discoveries are often only expressed to my satisfaction via the union of words with music, or words with meter, or colours that lusciously play together…some art form or other. Sometimes I can’t even get close to expressing them adequately, but just have to let them steep awhile.

I’m what I call a “create or explode” person. There are times when I feel that if I don’t quickly create SOMEthing, I’ll just burst! I am not an organized girl, as desperately as I’ve tried and tried to become one. My brilliantly successful, British writer-friend, Polly, once described herself as a “creative slob,” and though I hate to sentence myself to that, I should probably say that if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me! Alas.

But thank God for a meticulous husband! Over the years David and I have balanced each other out some. He’s relaxed his chiseled parameters of order a bit and I’ve been reigned in/shaped up…somewhat. Still there are these areas of creative chaos that I SHALL learn to tame. I know…a place for everything and everything in its place. But I don’t always DO what I know…(When our 33 year old son, Sun Brother, was 8 or 9 years old he had this acute observation: “People say what they say but they mean what they do!”) Alrighty then.

Sun and his beautiful wife, Kristina created for me this new blogging website as a Christmas gift. I just got it day before yesterday, Christmas, 2011! So this is a new thing for me. Not sure how it will unfold. But I hope to include writings, links, music and more. If you’ve found your way here to this page, then “PLENTY HOWDY! (Island talk for “HELLOOOOO and WELCOME! I’m so happy to see you!”) I hope that over the course of time you’ll find at least a little something to encourage you on your daily journey.

Love and Blessings,