INK WASH
open window.
now and then:
sighing cars
roll by.
gutters muttering
in light summer
rain.
time caught
on cobwebs,
lost in cloud.
sedge grasses flower,
green trees
statue-still.
Li Po hums
and sketches
silence.
—
Posts Tagged ‘art’
Ink wash
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape photography, Li Bai, Li Po, Mid Wales, mist, pen and ink, Poetry, rain, summer on September 4, 2017| 4 Comments »
Late Summer Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Haiku-ish, landscape, landscspe photography, Poetry, summer on August 17, 2017| 8 Comments »
dark clouds.
blackbird singing.
pure heart
day by day
the rowan reddens –
memories stored for winter.
the old graveyard.
ivy and old man’s beard.
we all cling to what we once had.
morning mists.
a river dreams of seas.
dew in the stubble field.
reading poetry:
seeing the memories
of someone long gone
—
Miles of Sky
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, hills, human nature, kindness, landscape, landscape photography, paying attention, peace, Poetry, sages, Wales, walking on August 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Wandering over miles of sky;
The song of the height of the day;
Thoughts graze on distance.
There are many paths here, many views.
One can but choose this single moment
Where the next step may fall.
The old sages would place their huts
In quiet groves next to some riverbank,
Letting the world sing them to sleep.
Idly doing the will of heaven,
Showing the way by staying still.
Breathing as forests and mountains,
Babies full and swaddled in beauty.
Restless we wander, honking like geese,
Like sparrows in the eaves,
squabbling over straw.
Tears for the moon –
waxing and waning.
The best we can ever do:
To care for small things
And to learn
a deeper kindness.
—
A SUMMER LAMENT
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, distraction, ego, landscape photography, mystery, Poetry, powerlessness, summer, the eternal, transience on July 30, 2017| Leave a Comment »
A Summer Lament
Summer, the dream we so soon forget.
Feeling the bones of winter beneath,
Its bleak branches bleached
Upon a cold, dark sky.
Green folds the small roads here
And the rain is warm.
But in the heart of the cities,
In the hearts of the powerful
Burns always a welded light
Wedded to words of war.
The cold is never far
And simple goodness
Too easy to be proud of,
As simple as breathing in and out.
So on the long days of a short summer
They will still wish for the clear pain of winter,
Something to rail against.
For they cannot let go of being more,
Though they are nothing
That the world will not allow
For a moment or two
In the brief shadowed sun.
To be a cause of pain is not power.
It is a road that promises,
But falls to void and oblivion.
Hedged with narrowing views
When the marrow melts
And blood burns free
To its coagulation
And the bitterness of hollow words
And the leaves curl
And an end that is not peace,
A bitter question, a hollowing answer.
We so float upon this thin skin of summer,
Longing it eternally, and as vague as holiness.
A glorious relaxation of edge and purpose.
The dive and long sighing arc of swallows,
The endless warm rivers of lark’s song,
The murmured chanting of a million bees,
Forgetting ourselves for a while,
Melting into being, nested in spirit,
Lazy in directionless, dreaming light.
Til the bite of the cold night
Returns us blinking
Wondering and hungry
And small in the face of almighty things.
Beyond Spite Inn ( haiku)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Brynffo, Crychan Forest, Esgair Fwyog, Haiku, Haiku-ish, landscape photography, Poetry, rain, summer, Wales on July 25, 2017| 3 Comments »
BEYOND SPITE INN (haiku)
Cuckoo echoes cuckoo
Beyond Spite Inn
The road rises into cloud
This valley folds the green road
Rain drips from the copper beech
Grass bends over tumbled walls.
On Brynffo the spirits drift
Light as thistledown between the firs.
The sound of running water is their voice.
On Esgair Fwyog the sheep graze new grass.
The rain has melted distance.
A line of hills rest in sunlight
A sunlit hill.
Clouds shift.
It melts in rain.
Sound of running water
The steep slopes of Brynffo
Pine needles and the smell of bracken
Moving waters whispering
Lost in the dark forest
Whisps of mist drift aimless
Enjoying cool silence.
—
July now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, heat, July, landscape photography, Poetry, summer, Wales on July 7, 2017| 3 Comments »
JULY NOW
July now, and high summer days lay upon us.
In hedgerows the field maples smoulder a new red.
All the greens, more tentative now, tinted with heat and dust,
Weighed down by a glowing heavy sun.
The rivers are low and silent, bleached rocks butter-smooth.
Merciless will be the shadeless hills, growing pale and dry.
We seek the cooler air of woodlands
And walk out at evening with lullaby thought.
The nodding grasses, ripe and swaying,
And a full moon, crisp in a blameless sky.
Midsummer Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambience, art, Beulah, green, june, landscape photography, light, midsummer, Poetry, silence, twilight, Wales, woods on June 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »
MIDSUMMER LIGHT
The woods are settled now and full.
Their heavy green skirts spread cool
And pleated in each valley’s green lap.
Nest and nested, crowned with shade,
They glow of a midsummer evening
Into a slow, white bow of twilight
Patterned with bats and owls,
A stretched and quiet expanse,
The tropic and declination of invisible motion,
A singular silvered attendance upon silence.
—
Spite Inn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape, landscape photography, Poetry, rain, summer, Wales on June 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »
SPITE INN
June settles in,
Warm and fine and easy.
Beyond Spite Inn
Clouds roll through the wet grasses.
Two cuckoos praise each other
Across the oak valley floor.
The old roads drip green.
—
Spite Inn is a ruined, but preserved, building on the road between Tirabad and Cyngordy on the northern slopes of the Eppynt. It is likely a drover’s resting place, and its name is thought to derive from its rivalry with another nearby inn.
June Drift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Abergwesyn, art, june, landscape, mist, photography, Poetry, rain, Wales on June 8, 2017| 2 Comments »
JUNE DRIFT
I am as blurred as the cleft of Cwm Dwfnant shrugged with cloud,
shunned in its darkness, up hanging from the heights, silent as a hawk.
like ladders the thistles grow, straight and high, and the sedges hustle
the grasses, cropped short, and rain-laden.
the woods, a hushed audience, wait for rain
that is as welcome as the sun, as welcome as the long, pale dawns,
as welcome as the naked starlit evenings.
sallow seed slides and drifts, amnesiac angels, bounced on warm air,
and shallow cool down by the gurgling river’s bank.
and the globeflowers at Nant Y Bran bursting and butter-bright as suns
on their long green necks. and yet they still cannot look into tomorrow.
where shall be ever planted the sweet heads of valerian
and the meadowsweet foaming up through the coming of another summer.
light drizzle rains down, slowly drifting east. a cuckoo mist, a cuckoo silence.
I am blurred as the sources of all rivers are, nominal, approximate.
this white drift is a moment that now dissolves the hills
and clarifies by shimmer and shade the valley’s deep and every fold.
the unknown and the known are not new dreams to us.
they clothe us and wrap us round, swaddled and held still, a long lullaby,
sometimes with words, sometimes with sounds,
sometimes with a warm breath
that is itself no different than love.
—
These blurred, cool days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape, landscape photography, May, mist, nature, Poetry, rain, Wales on June 5, 2017| 3 Comments »
These blurred, cool days are best,
Soaked with fresh green airs
Hedgerows smudged with bluebells,
Cowslip clouds lolling heavy in the grass
And the rivers running brown and full
Over hollows and heaped grey rock.
And everywhere the blackbirds sing
On wooded slopes,
And the flit and flick of swallows
In the slow rain.
—
