Harnessed in silence
It shall fold itself
Back into the morning.
Voiceless, comforted
Into the cool slow sunlight
And the mist by the singing river.
It shall be polished with ashes,
Burnished by breath.
And we can not help but die,
But that is not the problem.
Says the breeze in the pines,
The breeze in the chapel pines.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ambience, consciousness, landscape, light, luminescence, Poetry, spring, the numinous, Wales | 1 Comment »
—
DHRUPAD 21 : blackthorn spring
There was a song one morning in front of, behind, deep down,
my eyes opening, open eyes and still dreaming,
dreaming words and rivers a song of a song of a Spring song
of a blackthorn Spring,
song of a blackthorn song a dream song slow and fast and glorious.
An opening song a Spring song, a blackthorn white froth cool wave
warm sun song
a sudden slow here it is song
snow in sunlight not melting but blooming warm snow song
settling in sunlight song song.
On black branches along the roads
a sprinkled silk fine tight bound waiting waiting
for bursting out when the air melts and colour, colour colour,
to remind us of winter gone to remind us of flowering to remind us of sweetness and bitterness to remind us of beauty within it all
beauty within us all, silence and beauty dressed in white and waiting.
A heaven full of spirits here and now,
in this bowl in this valley in this horizon.
Leave them be, these fields of dreaming, leave them be and laugh.
A fragile bursting foam aflood in the warm valley side
not in the hills yet not in the hills but here and there in the flash of sun
or how then now then it is not sun
not sun but sallow sallow
by the river valleys orbed golden and mist green and shining gold sallow
in seas of light dipped and tasted and diving down
to find the old beauty the ringing song.
Sallow willow sweet willow goat willow great sallow
dipped rooted down to water and bursting gold
peeled back and shooting gold in misted blues
the long miles of blue and haze and mild shadow furred and generous. Blackthorn and sallow
sun and snow sun and snow
a year song long
and remembering these notes
this tune
this dream
a year
song.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blackthorn, blossom, Cambrian Mountains, landscape, Poetry, sallow, spring, Wales | 2 Comments »
Light-hammered days.
Green burnished boughs.
Always this beginning
Scoured by cold winds.
Here and gone before we know it.
Birdsong too intricate to remember –
This woven life
With subtlest changes,
The dream repeats.
Though you might wish it,
There are no lessons to learn.
All the stories, a foam of blackthorn,
Blossoming suddenly everywhere.
Taste this now, it will soon be gone.
Gone to return, a somewhat different song,
Called out from another valley,
A little nearer, a little farther off.
–
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged april, blackthorn, landscape, Poetry, spring, time, Wales | Leave a Comment »
SPRING SCATTER (haiku-ish)
Moon as bright as morning
burnished by a cold wind.
Mountain river white as clouds.
—
Floating mountain.
Two crows.
Spring sun melts frost.
—
Cold wind.
Bright sunlit air.
These blackthorn days:
Tumbled jewels.
—
Along the lanes,
blackthorn blossom.
On the high hills:
the bones of the snow.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Haiku, Haiku-ish, landscape, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, spring, Wales | Leave a Comment »
WHERE THE SHOOTS
The skies are dark and light
and sweep down to catch us unawares,
nonchalent and easy, as the ravens
on the cliffs below Strumble Head.
Change is the dance,
not what or why or how.
Rain and sun and bitter winds,
Then warmer silences
Where the shoots push through.
—
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LLANLLEONFEL STONE ( our geography)
There is a stone there, fixed there
(though only stubborn fools would try to move it),
that speaks when the light falls right from the small aisle windows.
Not yet worn smooth but mute enough to be overlooked by most,
as the owls were in the rafters.
As old as the crows in the yew grove dark and silent.
As old as the bitter spring that bubbles from the hillside
As old as the view perched high, a respite from season’s battles.
Hidden is Llanlleonfel, hidden in trees, hidden its path,
forgotten its signs, next to the farmyard,
a barn storing memories and lowing souls.
The words slope down, they fall down, bow down.
Sorrowful words in proud stone, like the world itself, like the world.
Hanging on by a thread to meaning and remembering,
a small rippling on the glass hard surface of winter light
long shadows cast between sunlit hills.
Two names named, so well known, now forgotten,
Waiting waiting tight in their shrouds for the day to waken,
To be judged and born again as heroes that they were.
Left here stranded as the roar of history passes by,
Nothing here now but sheep tugging at the hillside grasses.
Here lies Iorwerth and Rhiwallon,
(Yet they are all dissolved now to earth and water, breath and light),
Tightly wrapped in the world’s dreaming shroud,
As they ever have been, as we ever have been,
Swaddled between sunset and sunrise,
Growing and diminishing with shadow fall.
Worn down and away to whispers
to ripples, to silence.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged history, Llanlleonfel church, memorial, Poetry, Wales | Leave a Comment »
EXTRACTING BEAUTY FROM ENDLESS SORROWS
A fine Spring day
(though only a city-dweller
would believe that winter is over).
The thrush is singing
in the chapel pines
and on the hills
the thud of bombs.
A woodpecker is drilling
in the valley,
(or is it machine guns
over the ridge?)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged army ranges, landscape, Mynydd Epynt, Poetry, spring | 4 Comments »
They build up in snake and scented layers, an incense of doubt and subtle weaponry.
There is nothing they do not know ( for they are the most convincing liars).
Few converse with them, and fewer still stay sane if they do.
Shadows that fear to move lest they become something more substantial.
Shadows that flicker and dance, content with no form but imitation of countless forms.
They are shadows of things unheard of, yet nonetheless feared.
A writing automatic. A blur on the stairs.
A soft padding where there should be nothing but silence.
A dark bloom folded up in its own destiny, beyond the tricks of time and space –
a honeyed tongue delighting in other’s poisons
and perfectly, perfectly reasonable.
Ink that slurs and smudges the mind with indelible insult.
Truth that cannot be born again, but must.
All this in the deepest pools of your deepest eyes,
And behind those, too, the deepest engines
Of rot and renewal.
Impossible to weigh, impossible to judge,
Beyond behaviour, beyond rule and law.
Bones congregating, skittering, amalgamating.
A contagion of consciousness.
Ancestral murmur, a tidal surge.
Warped away from our superficial dreams of goodness,
They shall have their way because of our unknowing.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged darkness, deceit, judgment, knowledge, mind, perspective, Poetry, psyche | 4 Comments »
CALM ABIDING ON WILD PONY MOUNTAIN
Facing the silent mountain
I sit listening to the wind.
Thoughts like streaming clouds
Come and go.
Only the weight of woven sunlight
Keeps me here, shaped by colours,
And the road through the valley
That promises still so much.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged landscape, meditative mind, Mynydd Epynt, Poetry, Wales | 2 Comments »
simonhlilly 