THE TREES
.
the trees have
become skeletons now,
.
this year’s flesh
stripped off by storms.
.
we are becoming the dead
And breathe
that spice perfume
Of cold and
mulch and sleep.
.
the wind lifts the skirts
of the morning.
.
we see nothing there
except clattering bones.
.
all our neat
and sensible power
evaporates.
.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, Autumn, landscape, nature, Poetry, stormy weather, trees, Wales, wind | 4 Comments »
NOS CALAN GAEAF
What power we have is transitory –
the lights flicker off and on.
helpless we watch the waters rise.
.
The wind too high for owls.
the ground too wet for sparrows and mice.
only the sheep, patient as the moon,
illuminating their fields-
the ghosts of Nos Calan Gaeaf.
.
A day of broken promises.
showers slice through rainbows.
small roads disappear under leaves.
beneath the storm wind roar
there is a new silence.
.
The veils between worlds wear thin.
the living and the dead stumble into each other.
A spirit murmuration, a dance before the setting sun.
those whose short lives were bright with pain,
killed by war and childbirth,
look on amazed at the docile listless hordes,
their over-saturated visions flickering,
addicts of mechanical dreams.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Autumn, landscape, Poetry, Wales, weather, Winter | 1 Comment »
WHOSE EYE
Whose eye now rests unblinking?
These sorrowful scattered things.
Whose perfect recollection
Recites names and causes?
Who knows and can name
The wide, free roads to destruction?
Is it that there is only ever one timeless voice,
Bright-browed and sharply bitter,
A wormwood for awakening?
Slew the game and shift the form,
It can never break from the following cloud.
The storm crow cries,
Carrion falls to feed new flocks.
Day and night is his mouth.
Dawn and sunset, dusk and midnight.
They are dreaming
Who listen to that song
Dreaming it is their dream alone.
There is peace beneath
The storm of words.
One world anchoring
The roaring others.
Gather back your souls, lost and scattered.
From this forest undergrowth.
From the peeling skies.
From the long dust roads.
Gather them in the heart of a song
That will not brook nor break.
One season returning with bright fruit.
One prayer reaching the throne of the Creator.
All this is the debris of glory.
The gold that feeds the gods-
These autumn grasses are brighter,
These few days, more precious.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, Autumn, landscape, nature, Poetry, song, Taliesin, Wales, words | Leave a Comment »
RISING, RETURNING
Rising through mist and rust and gold.
The rain coming and going and the oaks holding on.
History repeating itself, as it always does,
And the eternal poets weeping and laughing
In their sunlit words.
We shall reach home soon, as we always do,
Until the very last time when time shall slow and stop,
And the oaks, only, will be holding on then
In rust and gold and sunlit drifts.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, Autumn, belonging, change, landscape, landscape photography, mortality, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, rain, seasons, Taliesin, time | Leave a Comment »
BOOK OF RIVER
A thousand page book
On ‘What the Rivers Say’
Illustrated by hand with all
The ripples and such.
Equivalents of sound in line
And what the mind says.
And what the wind says
And where it leads
And where it leads back to
Again and again.
A work folded from
One sheet of paper.
A work transparent, translucent,
Opaque.
Where pages and words
Appear above and below each other.
A multitude of one view, an explanation,
A demonstration of the inexplicable.
And all the voices there,
All the voices from along its length,
Rumbled and whispered
And sung and roared.
Tiny sparkled voices, great voices,
Minnow voices, tree root voices,
Drowned minds of poets
And their pale ghosts.
Voices of tributaries, voices of puddles,
Voices of pools, voices of dribbles,
Of moss dripping, of sodden earth,
Of scoured stone, of squiggling,
Worming things.
Reflections still and stately,
Pride that confuses and leads nowhere,
But the doubt that up may be down.
And the river bed, ah! the river bed:
A history of shatterings, of droughts,
Of flood race, of lost footings, of twisted ankles,
Of sobs, of precious things lost
Forever, forever, forever.
Down to the sea with them,
With the gold and the glistening
And the feathers and fluff of life.
The leaves spun to colour
And down away, away.
Stretched from there to here to there,
Beyond distances and the taste of soil
And the taste of heather and the taste
Of ice and of wind in the sparkling hills.
Self-created words, worm words,
Caddis larvae words, fast, flitting,
Slow floating words.
Half sung, half spoken, half heard,
Half, half, some other,
Some other meaning completely.
Completely star-worn and moon-urged.
Life moving downwards towards itself.
A book of river.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged book, deep ecology, dhrupad, hills, landscape, landscape photography, Poetry, printmaking, river, song, thought, Wales | Leave a Comment »
THE HEATHER NOW
The heather now clouds the hills:
in sunlight, a drift of heaven,
In low, slow rains it is
the colour of sunset storm clouds.
When does solitude turn to loneliness?
.
Fifteen years the eagle flew here.
From Tregaron to Llanwrtyd her hidden throne.
Seeing more than most,
the season’s swift tides blanching the bracken,
green then gold, copper then rust.
.
More than meets the eye,
these growing voids, these lost things, named,
forgotten, decayed, consumed.
A worm eye’s view is the beginning and end
of each transformative engine.
.
New names and a new breath.
A scattering of syllables,
a cry long and fading,
high in the cloudless sky.
A land of stoic disappointment
lies below.
.
The yews of Abergwesyn,
the yew of Llanfechan,
the chapel yew at Cefn Gorwydd
all holding on, deserted.
Folding history into themselves
and holding on.
.
The eldest springs here
are all purging and bitter.
They will keep the long death away
but they too are long forgotten.
.
The hay is in despite the rains,
and the sheep down from the hill.
Good governance is as far away as ever.
.
The eagle free in its vast prison.
Solitude and vision
and the slow rains
washing it all clean away.
.
—
For the last fifteen years a golden eagle has lived in our area, escaped from captivity somewhere, it has lived alone for sll this time. Just recently found dead -probably of old age.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged golden eagle, heather flowering, history, landscape, late summer, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, remembering, the lost, Wales | 2 Comments »
TY CANOL WOOD
It is a narrow house, the wood that is made for eternity.
A smoke of dream shivering upwards into air.
The roots of it smoulder below, flame-leaves lick.
It is a narrow house we are born into.
So much that cannot be reached, cannot be known.
The paths wander between moss boulders and broken bedrock,
clothed in thick green life.
Constrained by thin earth, yet they all do seem to dance,
and at night, some say, they walk
and the rock creaks open,
light spilling from golden halls,
and that unnerving perfect music, too.
A narrow road and a narrow house we have set ourselves,
But that is not the world’s way.
She dances and throws it all away in broad gesture,
Sings at the central hearth, though no-one listens much,
and knows that song is food for every soul.
Feels the billowing thunder head, this haze of gnats,
the invisible silver threads beneath,
and the chains of finest gold,
and the footprints of old gods between the stars,
that is birdsong here
in Ty Canol Wood.
—
This ancient small woodland in Pembrokeshire is named from the nearby house, Ty Canol, ( the central, middle, house). It has links to Otherworld inhabitants, and has a definitely magical atmosphere. Here I am contrasting the open, generous quality of the natural world with the restricted experience of mortality and human perception. The coffin is sometimes traditionally referred to as a narrow house and the tomb to a house of earth.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ancient woods, death, landscape, landscape photography, mortality, nature, Pembrokeshire, Poetry, secret places, the past, Wales | 4 Comments »
ARCHETYPAL
The hunter father transgresses;
The mother suffers unjustly;
The child is taken.
What was wonderful, vanishes.
The light disappears, no one knows where.
Roads, veils and mirrors –
The mechanics of universal dance,
The momentous, minuscule choice.
The bright, eternal child brought low,
Brought back to the wrist of the falconer,
Brought back to rule in glory,
Brought back to catch the uncatchable.
And all the time
It is she that saves the day,
Who bestows and restores balance,
Who names, who summons, who moves
Like a moon through darkness
Sorrowful and joyful and blissfully full.
And the child, neither here nor there,
Neither this nor that,
Tricked by innocence
To reveal the weakness,
To discover an impossible death,
To wait endlessly in the wings
For the lines of the last act,
The resolution.
I ask to know the truth
So that there may be understanding of power.
That the maps are unfolded
And the well-trod, invisible roads revealed.
Because we are free only to follow the well-worn ways,
Because there is only one plot and one story
From the beginning.
Because, tried and tested are the grey chains.
Because, tried and tested is the only freedom.
The rules of falling, and of redemption.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ancestors, archetypal patterns, consciousness, Freedom, language, Mabinogion, metaphysics, neurology, Poetry, the unconscious, tradition, Wales | Leave a Comment »
THERE, THE STILLNESS SINGS
sink down a little, beneath these surfaces.
the same world, a different view.
a cool wind is blowing, though the mists stay still.
the deep hills in the north, the uplands of the south
are nowhere to be seen.
in the garden scented rose petals drop like rain.
sink down and find the earth,
a rich soil of dreaming.
my souls have coalesced
but drift apart as stars do,
As wandering flocks do.
without even trying
the hills begin to emerge.
it will be a hot day
and we shall be grateful for shade.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, Cambrian Mountains, dawn, landscape, Poetry, silence, summer, the numinous, time, Wales | 2 Comments »
FIRST LESSON
You will have been wandering, I suppose,
Through the sunny, vague landscapes of your life
Following the habitual hounds of thought
Weaving in and out your thoughts.
.
You will have come across these words,
Sucking them up, making them yours
Before even thinking, before even thinking,
To whom do they belong? Whose voice, now?
.
We believe ourselves sovereign here:
My mind, my territory, my dwelling place.
But is that really so? (is what I ask.)
You have wandered into other worlds
Oblivious of boundaries, so hungry for more,
So sure of what is.
In an instant, becoming something else
( a folded, entangled irony, to enjoy all the horror movie themes).
.
A skin not yours adheres,
So you become something you were not.
What we do, we become.
What we take in, becoming our responsibility.
.
Shimmering are the edges of the world.
Mirrors and doorways are everywhere.
Names are roles and speech
Sets about great tidal shifts.
.
You know what you know now
By becoming what you were not.
A communion of voices.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged analogy, consciousness, First Branch, landscape, landscape photography, language, Mabinogion, Poetry, Pwyll, reality, self-, Wales | Leave a Comment »
