Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, awareness, bodiless, cloud, Freedom, light, Poetry, spirit on January 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
LUMINOUS
Luminous ghosts
in translucent
birdsong mornings.
Old friends
invisible
and dancing.
We will have forgotten everything,
( memory
being the engine
of eternal
destruction).
Magnanimous
in all things,
Utterly laughing,
missing nothing.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, atmospheres, being, black and white, cloud, evolution, ink and print, light, lightness, metaphysics, mist, photography, Poetry, stratospheres, thought, transcendence, vapour on July 20, 2015| 2 Comments »
THE VAPOURS OF HEAVEN
Shall they stray far,
These wandered thoughts,
Drenched with the vapours of heaven?
Shall they, distilled, sublimate,
Take new form, grow winged
Then smiling, dissolve?
Shall they, folded,
Nest upon timeless light.
Sleep, and wake golden,
Luminous, singing?
Shall they, without surcease,
Dance eternal energies,
Still named, at home
On vast, breathing cascades
Of space?
Shall they, (these thoughts),
Turn swallows, spin as swifts,
Light as thistledown, rise
Like willowherb, weightless,
A drift in summer,
A slow gentle breeze
Bird-filled?
Shall they stretch, sprout nerves,
Become sensible, grow good souls
With new names, find mouths
And lips and tongue
And sing their own song?
The vapours of heaven:
A saffron casket, rainbow-locked.
Small whispered bells,
Honey-lipped bees.
A sky stretched
To blue transparency.
A tent with purpose,
An unseen sea,
Scaled skin of cloud.
In amongst and between,
Within cloud and moving mists,
Droplets suspended awaiting surface:
To acquire direction, to know gravity,
To locate tidal choirs.
It is all music, all music,
Nothing but song.
These images are taken from a series of ink drawings, scanned and photographically enlarged to reveal strange details. The revealing of other structures formed a parallel word stream imagining thought/word becoming sentient of themselves, hence the text, as one possible accompaniment to the images. (Other possibilities included star names or quotes from the works of John Dee). Some of the images are pixelating because of extreme enlargement, so these I may remake as pencil drawings…
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloud, hills, landscape, mist, Poetry, Wales on February 27, 2015| 2 Comments »
CLOUD VALLEY
Cloud valley,
a cleft of mist
Where trees
breathe white
In smoke drifting
shadow.
A hidden,
silent place,
Its own winds
and weather.
Where long yesterdays
Drip
and linger,
A cushioned,
cultivated moss.
Above a winding
flight of kites,
Wheeling the way
the sun does.
And the shout of ravens,
Stern as castles.
The heart may watch for hours
The roll of dark and light,
The folds of far off land,
But it is in cloud valley
Where spirit longing loiters,
The shroud of matter,
A weightless dance,
Once more revolved,
Tasted.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, cloud, Freedom, glory, hillsides, joy, landscape, landscape photography, melancholy, nostalgia, Poetry, purpose, rain, ravens, reality, saints, the past, Wales, washpool on October 25, 2014| 4 Comments »
Those distant hillsides,
They are not velvet, not green,
But bog and rock, sweat steep
For all but ravens
(Whose feathers we might wish for,
For straight as an arrow, for
Wind carried swift joy,
For the soar of it, for the wide,
Open cry of it, for exultance,
For freedom from sins).
But down here, wind-sheltered,
Small, feasting on cold hopes,
Yearning for mist smoked valleys.
Did they watch from alder carrs
The washer girls, raw red hands
And tearful eyes, arching backs
And mournful, moaning songs?
Did they feel the Lord swell within them,
Those saints forbidden their fruits,
Wilderness dazed, sharp chinned,
Spear-eyed witnesses?
So many brave boys borne away,
Cudgeled and shivered in blood.
So many unborn, covered in autumn leaves,
And wept over.
So many promises split, broken open
(Nothing but spit and spite remaining).
So many reasons to slide into silence
Hoping for a glorious trumpet
And ’til then, peace.
Of the earth.
They are all of the earth
And know it not,
Or birch their blessings
For want of wit and a little love.
The pines roar
But bear no anger.
The pines cry
But have no sadness.
The rain sweeps down across the valley.
Leaves fall, air becomes sweetly bitter.
There is no blame, should you stay,
Should you watch.
Everything will seem as it is:
Sun through mist, a mellow round passing.
We shall melt as we are gathered together.
Melt and become another again.
One or two words (only) to pass through
The narrow straits of a few years,
Before they too will become singing silence.
This melancholy is a cloak for deeper joy.
This deeper joy, a cloak for melancholy.
All notes sung before the throne,
Chords of major and minor,
Diminished, augmented.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambient spirituality, Autumn, cloud, fall, flocks, genius locii, landscape, Llangammarch Wells, memory, mountains, nature, past, Poetry, Powys, rural community, township, Wales on October 1, 2014| 8 Comments »
LITTLE LLANGAMMARCH
Little Llangammarch under wood and under hill.
Not quite awake, not quite asleep,
Dreaming as leaves drift down.
One road, more or less, one shop, one bar, one hall,
A church, a chapel or two.
Time each day measured by two trains north, two trains south.
Toes wriggling always in Irfon and Cammarch,
(Where the two are met and knitted, a feathered mating).
Root or rock, I cannot say for sure.
This stone sheds syllables in flakes,
Prayers slurred, folded, forgot.
This root, iron red, waves wrapped,
Unworn, unmoved, on the hill above,
A saint’s house, stilled glory, skybound.
The swoop and quiver of the red kite’s call.
Shade-huddled sheep, the quiet of the field.
The past it grows thinner by the year
Lost for words, the long losing of names,
The who and where, the why weeded over,
The hero’s house, a longed-for truth
Scattered in byre and farmyard.
Between the open-eyed houses
and the river, still and low as glass,
Come tumbling flocks from the fields,
Down between the cars a bleating tide,
Chivvied, the bobbing, weaving dogs behind.
It hovers: the mountain silence.
They come and go of their own accord,
Leaving clouds and mist for a while, for a while,
Between what is left unsaid
And the slow rain.
Here below, where woodpeckers cling statuesque
and jackdaws skid and race
Like kids in playgrounds, cops and robbers,
Shootout at noon.
Here, in the fields again
The sheep wander as numerous as stars and as white.
The wind blows colour and light,
To and from the bluffs of Abergwesyn.
The rolling darkness, the quiet night descending
From the deep well of Cwm Graig Ddu.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cloud, early morning, full moon, Guru Purnima, July, landscape, light, moon, Poetry, wind on July 13, 2014| 2 Comments »
Too many references to ‘super moon’, only one I saw to Guru Purnima, which is this full moon in July dedicated to all our teachers.
FAST SMOKE (Guru Purnima)
Through a fast smoke of cloud
This golden moon, full as it can be,
Wrapped with light and golden,
Arcs out of sight,
Golden in a golden morning.
From its vastness it has seen the sun,
Seen the day, breathed in light,
Exhaled in fullness.
Absorbed, we are absolved of necessity,
Filled up with ample goodness.
No need to know. Nothing obscured.
Nothing beyond reach.
Enfolded radiant, as this moon.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brecon Beacons, cloud, distance, hills, history, immanence, landscape, mystery, mythic, past, rain, searching, travelling. language, Wales, Welsh language, woods on May 8, 2014| 2 Comments »
Violet blue
The bluebell haze.
Twisted, threaded,
Through and through
The oak green.
The shadow dropped
From big-breasted hills
Rolling in waves:
Valley’s deep sigh.
The road sways:
Head, this way and that
A hound seeking home,
The river snake’s companion.
I am blown free and torn
In this cloud-edged land,
Misted and veiled
All purposes tasted.
A scumble of swifts
Above the black poplars.
A heaven white scent
The rowan, the hawthorn.
The names: a rough reed bed
Tempered with savoured vowel.
Roughshod, a blacksmith’s anvil
Of a language.
Meanings annealed, malleable,
A memory of saint and well
And sandal.
A here and a there
Where miles elongate
Or evaporate.
Where moments grow roots,
Deserve names, a fame
For remaining.
A valley cloud, high and low,
A wooded place, an inhabited mound,
Yew and chestnut,
A fading, rained-upon blossom
An adherence to loneliness.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birdsong, cloud, cuckoos, grasses, green, landscape, nature, Poetry, rain, resonance, summer, time, valleys, woods on June 15, 2013| 2 Comments »
THERE SHOULD BE CUCKOOS
There should be cuckoos.
The warm silver clouds
Low with rain
Sheeting the high hills,
Green and weighed down
With yesterday’s light.
There should be cuckoos.
Floating, echoing hidden
Like a gong, like a memory
Turning over the still heart
Melting tight paths of thought,
Manifest distance.
There should be cuckoos.
Inhabiting every wooded fold
Deep in the world
Now settled, fruiting,
Slowly inturning, indwelling
Heading high to solstice
And then the long
Slow burn to harvest.
There should be cuckoos.
Now the hay is turned and gathered
Now creamy elder scents the air,
Worlds in worlds, layered, established.
Angels barefoot down the lanes,
Honeysuckle fingers, messages forgot.
There should be cuckoos
Measuring this loosening, this hollow,
Replacing thought and song
Answering all, settling all,
Letting go, adrift and floating.
Low clouds, rain heavy,
Warm air’s slow somersault
The swaying grasses, the rippling grasses.
From the green world’s roof,
From its rafters,
There should be cuckoos.
—–
(Ornithologically suspect, as cuckoos here in England usually call most in April, but it was the thought of cuckoos on a warm, cloud-filled day in June, that inspired this flow of words.)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloud, cloudburst, Poetry, rain, squall, storm, wind on August 23, 2012| 1 Comment »
CLOUDBURST
A thousand spirits
Released.
Possessed leaves
Flying wild.
Skies tumble
Earth ripples.
Storm joy.
——
ISLAND WEATHER
Looking back:
Valley dissolving in rain.
Here:
Butterflies,
summer sun.
——-
simonhlilly 