LI PO WAITING FOR DRAGONS (DINAS WOOD)
Li Po, I suppose, will be standing there,
hands thrust deep into sleeves,
breathing the slow hills.
Admiring the play of light
and the way the oaks
catch the late year’s brightness
on their wriggled limbs.
And how green is the gold,
and how golden the air
spicing the hazy distant.
In leaf litter, the rustling
of jays and squirrels,
gathering up the fallen year.
In the glass layered river,
sounds swallowed
and turned to light,
light to sound.
Li Po remains motionless,
holding all the river of his thoughts,
so he forgets nothing, misses nothing.
What has gone, and what arises:
balancing the mind of clouds,
the mind of mountains,
the mind of Dinas, cave-filled, hunched.
He sees the forest crown
shaping syllables: each tree
a slow, fast, steady song.
He weighs dark and light
On the cliffs of Craig Clungwyn.
Notes the rainbow mists
above the Doethi valley.
Floats above the scouring wind,
hawk and skylark and willowherb seed.
Li Po, waiting for dragons,
for the roar of the Tao in the mountains,
the narrow road winding northwards,
the cauldron of the seven stars.
For the eye of the world to open unwavering,
mind melting into mind.
He will not have long to wait –
a century or two
at most.
—
simonhlilly 
Marginalia
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, art, comments, Dinas, fragments, human endeavour, landscape photography, May morning, Mid Wales, mind, openness, Poetry, spring, striving on May 24, 2017| 1 Comment »
MARGINALIA
below this turbulence:
slow, vast, are the currents.
Knotted threads soften, unwind
(As morning mists
In curling, upward sun).
The ghosts we hold most dear,
Those haunted voices we always hear,
That diffuse the endless night-
They come and go
As if they owned the place,
As if they mattered more.
They are so tiring,
These endless stumblings
Proudly towards truth,
Where simple goodness would suffice.
The broken-nailed, mad eyed dreamers,
The demon-fed preachers.
For we tumble towards a close,
And that is always and only certain.
Here, is the benign patience of Spring
Come again to remind us
That warmth will split the hawthorn blossom
(And the hills already drunk and hazy on it).
Just one sunny day,
and all we dream of
is summer.
A slow dance of swallows,
lambs and birdsong,
One blue warm billowy morning in May,
enough to banish all the long months
Of winter, to open and relax,
To build a nest
As if it were forever.
—
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