
SEEDS
The seeds of sorrow
and joy
Are always present.
.
Take a little time
To cultivate
The seeds
of joy.
–
IN ABERGWESYN COMMONS
There the world shall open out,
Open out beyond the senses.
A wide valley shout with clouds,
A bonny plaid of river grasses,
A brow of grey tumbled crags
And the ravens and kites wheeling there.
The road rides the waves of miles,
Pushed upwards, lean and full of longing.
Free of voices, free from thought,
As if it were a better world
Unsullied, shaped by simple life
And simple death.
Praised by its mist of rain.
Blessed in its silence.
I have told you the road.
And you found it so.
Open-hearted, washed, released
In Abergwesyn.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, Cambrian Mountains, hills, landscape, Mid Wales, nature, Poetry, transcendence, Wales | Leave a Comment »
The minutes crack open and bleed cold.
Breath is chapped and hesitant in semi-quavers, a minor key.
The hawk is ice that hunts unrepentant the mountain heights.
Slay complacent warmth, the fickle needs of small hearts.
The flutter of joy, cackle of crow.
A silent field: whiteness extends to the very mists of deep mind.
Carved walls at the edges of space, words written there:
We are extinguished and free.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, cold, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, seasons, time, Wales, Winter | Leave a Comment »
RIVER WORDS
They do not say
What they sing
For your listening
But for their own joy.
No will of their own
But to find the deepest
And return.
Where streams meet:
A birth of spirals.
By the bridge
The patterns hold steady.
Acquiescence to the way.
We think we know them
By their names we know them.
We know them by their names.
You name the river
‘Destroyer of the children of men’.
I name this river
‘Gentle mother of fields’
The river calls itself:
‘Longing for stillness
In the deep’.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged consciousness, landscape, language, nature, perspective, Poetry, rivers, Wales | Leave a Comment »
BHAIRAV (THE WEIGHTLESS WEIGHT OF AIR)
Air.
Flowing river from mountains cooled,
And the passion of stars
Piercing the bow of Time.
Air.
Layering droop and singing yet
On the long slope of dawn.
Air.
Tinted blue yet.
Twisted warm and wan.
Twisted slow, rolling.
Air.
Dreaming pulses
As reasons’ reflection
But vague yet.
Vague and languid,
At edges stalled.
Moistened in sleep,
But not.
But not.
Air.
Piled deep
Down to the stars.
Life sways hanging, drifting.
Trees with their hair
Loose and swaying
Singing, singing,
Down to the starlit voids
Hanging the tidal edges
The endless full innocent darkness.
Air.
The trees shape
Single syllables
Howled whisps of vowels
Finding froth from feeling.
Air
Patterned, pressured, punctured
Parcelled.
Air
Twisted and released,
Spread out and stretching,
Tidal current
The vapours caress
Their gradient glacial moments.
Air
Sun bright now
Shifting shimmering.
It suffers all thought.
Turning about
Returning it to silence.
Air.
Sun-bright now,
Spirit-filled
Song-filled
The tongue of gods
Hungry for this and that.
It will not
It will not.
It will
It will.
Invisible lover of every surface.
Air.
It stretches, it pulses.
Gods are born from air.
They flow in and out,
Grow fists of nothing.
They flow in and out.
Gods born from
The turbulent throbs of air.
Movement shiver shafts.
Silence
Silence.
–
Bhairav is a well-known Indian raag of the early morning. I have only recently grown to love it and its variations. Perhaps the tense sharps and flats put me off. It has the energy of cool space, of heights, of growing light, of distance, of precise wing-tips, of soaring wings, of the dip and soar of red kites. This is a sort of verbal alap – a slow exploration of the moods and directions of morning air, here in the mountains.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged air, dhrupad, dream stream, floating hawks, morning, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, space, the numinous, transcendence, vision, Wales | Leave a Comment »