BRIGHTER THINGS
the wriggling of spirits
or the
mutterings of mitochondria
or
the pulse and heartbeat
of greater beings
upon whose breast
we sleep
or the echoes only
of winds and rivers,
a shared
but not immortal soul
journeying
the infinite spaces.
thought:
It a sign
that we are inhabited
by brighter things.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged awareness, biology, mind, Poetry, self-, symbiosis, thought | Leave a Comment »
Opening out.
We saw a bright place:
Summer stars, birdsong.
The language of a landscape.
—
Bright Spring day.
For a moment
Nothing else matters.
—
Home through snow.
Getting lost –
Other people’s footprints.
—
Winter trees:
You can see
what they are thinking.
Weighing the memories
of years and seasons.
Squeezed thin
between the bright veins of light
And its decay.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Haiku, Haiku-ish, landscape, Poetry, spring, Wales, Winter | 2 Comments »
GOOD FRIDAY
from the mist: the hills.
clouds attempt the memories of things,
but fail and find instead broad brightnesses.
there is birdsong in the valley (may there ever be),
and ravens in the cascading sky.
a wash of calling sheep, heading for food.
we feel the older weaving, thread-worn, familiar,
a whisper of what it was, (though still greater than us).
it is in the blood: this dying and longing and silence,
an intimation of the beyond coming closer,
the hidden web knotted together.
the sure, gnarled fingers of compassion,
patient Mother Spring
and the story of the son.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged easter, Good Friday, landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, myth, Poetry, Spring morning, time tides, Wales | Leave a Comment »
CWM GRAIG DDU
Yesterday the ravens were dancing.
Now, this east wind has scoured the skies
To a perfect frozen blue.
Dark, bruised by cold,
Cwm Graig Ddu, sunless, looks out,
Dreaming of rivers.
Its sheep: philosophical rocks,
Waiting for Spring.
—
Bitter cold.
Bright sunlight.
Trees dream
In the dark valley.
—
Hours pass.
Gazing out.
Hunting words.
—
Calibration of sorrows –
A mountain view.
—
An empty road
Still finds its destination.
All music sits upon its silence.
A sweet sap comes after winter sleep.
By slow breath the cauldron bubbles.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cwm Graig Ddu, Epynt, Haiku, Haiku-ish, landscape photography, Llangamarch, Mynyddeodd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, spring, Wales | 2 Comments »
SING OUT
Singing hymns to emptiness
Sound disappears with meaning
The instant it leaves the mouth
We need gods to sing to,
Something of the familiar,
But made more important,
As if worms and weeds
Had not silently shaped
All we are and will be.
It is what rivers and stars do,
It is what sheep and birds do,
Sing out to each other
That thin, frail line between
Life and death and life again.
Greedy gods and good gods
One by one supplanted
Though their lives are aeons.
Fed by song, happy in their given shapes
Until the singing stops
Where they forget their names,
Hatch as butterflies hungry for nectar.
There are the great and there are the small
While the song is sound and silence.
The void: a pause between movements
Where the audience wonders if it should clap
But remains in stillness, held within
A lovely diminishing resonance.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, chain of beings, creation, food, hymns, music, photography, Poetry, praise, purpose, silence, sustenance, tradition | 5 Comments »
THE WONDERS BETWEEN
The words of the golden-browed gobby boy,
Next to madness, filter down to aquafers dark and fertile.
Sublime its nonsense, sentient and spinning as golden suns
On the fenceposts of oblivion.
Meaning hangs from barbed wire, black rags breathing their last.
A hundred forests there are growing from the root of his tongue,
And each tree branches bells and shouts and battle cries of intelligence.
These fermenting druid visions ever guarded from nightmare by monsters.
There can be no place for a soul to find peace who sees the knot and rivers of becoming,
No place but at the very edge of things and at the very heart of things,
Where none think to look or go, on the folded lands of jet and fresh waters,
The bowl carved with care nibbled by prayers and the slow songs of sheep.
These words just mists transfused with light,
Threaded translucent edges shadowing other landscapes.
Bubbles wrapping spiraling air, compassing a skin of life.
An edge around itself, composed of itself, born before shape.
Perfect its round reflection, itself its own surroundings
The world its skin, invisible but for rainbows and radiance.
A glide of light on a perfect arc.
It is by what it reflects that is not is.
Ungraspable, a perfect world of brightness.
Mydwyf taliesin dery:
Gwawt godolaf vedyd:
Bedyd rwyd rifedau eidolyd
Kyfrwnc allt a hallt ac echwyd.
I am ardent taliesin:
I present song to the world:
Praises of the world’s bounteous wonders
Between the high place and the sea water
And the fresh water.
—
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Ancient Welsh poetry, awen, Bardic rant, IronAge celtic art, language, Poetry, Taliesin | 2 Comments »
NOW THEN
Now then
This memory
Bright and ruthless
Still here.
One moment sparkles
One moment shatters
And the one who goes before it
And the one leaving after it
Are one but not the same.
A language of licked lips and discrepency
A bartering of meanings.
They bring here with pride
The skill of conjurors and pickpockets.
The language of rivers:
The song of things
Worn smooth by sound.
The heart of starlight
Is loneliness and beauty.
The silence of the deep.
Out of the eternal past
A poet’s voice
Leads the dead,
Revivifies the earth.
Words fall golden,
Free of meaning
Time rusts,
Becoming earth.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, fragments, Haiku-ish, landscape, language, memory, mind, photography, Poetry | Leave a Comment »
RAINY SUNDAY
cloud comes down.
a light rain.
gazing out.
—
tending the fire:
it roars gently in the hearth.
no need for thought.
—
tending the fire.
a bird flies across.
white mind.
—
a bird flies across space
leaving no trace
but in the mind’s eye.
—
nothing to see
beyond the window.
spider scurries
across the sky.
—
low cloud.
spider scurries
across the sky.
distant hills.
—
white mists –
breath of the ancestors
whispering between birdsong.
—
snow banks
on distant slopes:
whiter than the mist,
whiter than the cloud.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, Haiku, Haiku-ish, landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, spring, Wales | 2 Comments »
A LITTLE TRANSLATION
1
Silver lands, wind breathing shivers
raindrops from black branches.
Puddle sky shudders.
These words fade, returning silence.
Raven slow, arcs vast horizons
In her bright, dark eye.
2
Turn over and sleep and
turn again.
Mind dreams on
Weaving its own worlds.
Root chant,
Bird’s feather heart.
Everlasting communion.
3
Wind roars.
Green buds.
The mountains
Full of rain.
There is brightness
In the air.
Hedgerows
Woven with birdsong.
Remembering a bygone tune,
The old man pauses,
Lost in memory,
And then forgetting.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, beginning of Spring, Haiku-ish, landscape, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, presence, Wales | Leave a Comment »
The roads by here drop listless,
Pitted and cracked with the weight of ice and rain.
Pulled down in slow light,
Hedges the colour of old scabs
And the bruised grasses buried deep
Snow on the mountain. Eira ar y mynyddoedd
Dark is the air. Awyr tywydd gyda hi
White the land. Gwlad gwyn erbyn hin.
All day long
Sun and frost
Have fought in fog.
Ice on grass grows
into white air.
Breath billows, the only movement.
A glaze of ice coats the puddled ground.
It thickens now
As dusk begins
Air as sharp as owls
And the blanketing silence
Fold back to silence
The ferment of universal memory
Star-fed, spinning hum
Spine mountain
Where the warm sun shines.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged after snow, Haiku-ish, landscape, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, Wales, Winter | 5 Comments »
simonhlilly 