Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Abergwesyn, art, fading, Highlands, Irfon River, landscape, light, MidWales, nature, photography, Poetry, polarity, river, sunset, transference, water, Wolf's Leap on September 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »
SUN SET 1
Rock throat
slaked sung.
Water song
white til
mirror still.
River light licks
slick grey rock.
Cotton grass
nods spun
iron red pools
Raven crags,
stern chapels,
catch last light,
song sent
down cools
river throat,
Spin then
whorled, a thread
white song.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biophilia, Caledonian Forest, digital artworks, doors to Otherworlds, forests, Hebrides, Highlands, landscape, myth, noosphere, Poetry, Scotland, the numinous, Western Isles on March 23, 2014| 1 Comment »
KEY ONE
(forest of Caledon)
Green bed
Lie here safe.
Green heart
Rest here whole.
Green jewel
Rest here in light.
Over all and
Over Earth:
Completion.
Sufficient.
Wrapped in clouds
Held, not forgotten.
Endless is the mystery
Of life
Finding itself.
Sun and stars, even,
watch amazed.
Green heart of
All things.
the first of ten pieces attempting to encapsulate numinous landscapes of Scotland and the Western Isles. Landscapes that exist in memory, mind, folklore, as well as geographically. Access points to the Celtic (and pre-Celtic) Otherworlds. As a means to soul healing and the yearn of a return to an unreachable home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Freedom, Highlands, history, lamentations, landscape, photography, Poetry, religion, Scotland, seven tears, Skye, suffering, the house of trees, violence on January 23, 2013| 4 Comments »
9
Seven Tears: Lamentations
I would see them all gone:
The small black rags of malice
The small black rags of nightmare
A poison of harsh cold iron will.
Forbidding beauty, disdaining.
Who turns the flame of hope
To worms of despair.
A curse of faith despising life.
I would wish the gentle ones
Back in the deep glens,
By the loch-side:
The long chant, the ordered hours,
Prayers for all, care for all.
Chant in the cold night,
Praise in the dawn,
A haven, a refuge,
A fire of openness.
I would not leave the hills silent,
Nor barren, nor unsung.
I would not have them feared,
Nor mocked, nor misunderstood.
At very least, a common prayer:
The song of gathering in,
The song of weaving,
The song of sinew and patience,
The rock and sway of fruitful hours,
A song of peaceful construction.
This silent, bitter solace of hearts
This leaden, sullen lock-jaw –
A walled, guarded desolation
In the midst of shining presence.
We would not know freedom, even,
Were we feeding at its warm breast,
So torn and twisted our hearts
Have become.
So cursed by the darkness
Left to breed inside so bitter,
Bitter, wormwood would be sweet.
This long rent severance,
This decree of exile,
This proclamation of abandonment,
This churning mistrust peeling
Mind from heart, half from half,
Mothers mocked, sons burst open,
Daughters broken.
It was not the cry of a fox
At the cold centre of the night,
Nor gull ghosting on the water
That woke me into darkness.
It was the despair of a woman
Echoing hills and empty streets.
In the certain dark, ill-lit,
Wordlessly crying out,
Summoning the flicker of pain.
The endless distraught
Eternal wringings of sorrow,
Bloody clouts reddening
Water-lapped stone,
Consonants of spite,
Howling, sobbing vowels
Down the long years.
When shall it cease?
I, too, should leave by that bridge,
(would I could),
Leave the sullen solidity of pain,
The unforgotten sin, remorseless blame,
Not wasting one more word
On the forlorn rigidity of final hope
They cling to who have not already
Released clawing fingers and drowned.
I, too, would return to the twilight dance,
A weaving with purpose and poise,
An upholding, a reimbursing,
A constant, belonging chord.
Chant and chanter, strings of song,
No need, ever, to remember or forget.
Free from those who would sever the root
To free the tree, who would wash the soil
From each endeavour, strip the river
From its valley, would feed their children
To a red mouth of destruction
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cil Chroisd, four trees, Highlands, hooded crows, house of trees, Isle of Skye, landscape, memorial, nature, photography, Poetry, Scotland, the dead, yew trees on January 16, 2013| 5 Comments »
The House of Trees
4
Cill Chroisd
On the road to Elgol
That dances its way
In the dark and light
Of moving skies.
Breathing up and down
Sliding beside loch and ben.
Between the green toes
Of Beinn na Caillich –
(she, who, giving birth to the land,
Remains unconcerned
But ever watchful)
Beneath the raven’s wing,
Beneath its long, far cry;
Amongst the short grass,
Sheep-cropped and hummocked,
A blanket fit for sleep and dream,
They have placed the corners
Measuring the ordered landscape
Of the dead.
Here lies a MacLeod
Under the brown breast
Of Beinn na Caillich.
He has not angels by his head,
Nor angels by his feet,
But four eternal trees –
Green flames of yew –
To shade him from too much sun,
Too much starlight.
Four trees
Grown from his bones,
Fed by the exhalation
Of his long sigh in sleep
And promised rest.
They will be a shelter
From the four quarter’s winds
That winter howl along
The dark glen.
They will be a shelter
For the small birds
Singing him joyful
‘Til his Judgement.
A sure roof
Outlasting the crumbling of walls –
The green, sky-stretched,
Wind-hugged branches
To bear him back home.
Here he shall have peace.
Peace, but for the hooded crows.
Peace, but for the sheep
Tugging the small, green tumps.
Peace, but for the passing wanderer, curious.
They have built for him
A house of earth
For the earth of his body.
They have planted for him
A house of trees,
Seeded from his flesh,
Grown from his sinews
So that he can live for eternity
In holy wood.
They have built for him
A house of song-
The wind in the ivy,
The swan and the curlew-
For his soul to stretch out.
Who would not want a mountain
As a headstone?
Without cold in the bones,
A delight to watch for centuries.
Without a watery eye:
The storm winds, a delight.
And to drink the peace
Of the cloud-tangled rushes
In the evening and morning time,
Rippling with diver and otter.
Who would not melt to moorland?
Rich peat mixed with memories
Of the long-gone,
The onward patter of rain.
simonhlilly 