Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cultivation, enjoyment, equanimilty, gardening, grace, intellect, intuition, joy, landscape photography, looking, patience, Poetry, questions, relaxing intellect, searching, the unexpected on September 28, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Should we
look for answers,
forcing that fragile seed
of knowing
to sprout?
Or simple,
garden our questions,
the burgeon of complexity,
the fertile stretch
for light,
and delight
in tangled undergrowth,
hoping one sunny day,
for a fine
unexpected
perfect flower,
whose curves inward
drown all words,
a nectar to dance about,
coordinates to silent perfection,
a perfumed breath
in and out.
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, becoming, being, belonging, breath, BreconBeacons, Caer Carmarthen, deep ecology, enduring, evolution, landscape, landscape photography, life, Poetry, transmutation, Wales on September 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »
THOU ART
this earth
breathed upon
(the warm breath
of love and lust)
holds for a little while
in wonder
then retreats
to sighing earth.
its breath
passed on.
a whisper
in the forest,
a gust
below the rocks
and the high heather.
where the kites
and ravens wheel.
and the sun and stars,
too, kindled, embers,
by that offered air.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, biosphere, deep ecology, fog, Land of the dead, landscape, landscape photography, light, mountains, numinous, perception, Poetry, self-, Wales on August 25, 2015| 5 Comments »
This land,
The land of the dead,
A second skin, translucent,
Golden.
At the centre of each apple,
The sign of love:
The fivefold mutable, son and mother.
Over mountains a cream and violet fog,
Rolled, undulous, attentively folds.
A mysterious union,
Somewhat secret and holy.
The sky, a long vowel, holding its light.
A fluent time,
A tickled, breezeless sigh.
Not so still as to be nothing.
For the tiny roar
Of valley trees, a whispered thing
Measuring miles.
Vaporous drop,
Drip, congealed,
A reflected skin of nothing,
A silver round fruit,
Womb, belly, dream.
This skin
Is our beautiful horizon,
An inner organ.
Our own birdsong:
A poetic heart.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape photography, manifestation, melting, night, Poetry, texture, transformation, Wales, writing on August 24, 2015| 2 Comments »
GATHER YE
Stealthy as a cat
Night stalks a low moon.
A philosophy of cloud and rain,
A savoured language
Where trees and rocks
Become long, slow vowels.
The wet and fallen tongues
Of petalled roses
Cleaved to bough and path
Melting into something else.
Into the night,
Peeling words
From shape of vastness
And the thick, still silence,
While this world’s half
Dreams and settles down
In a bed of time and skittered light.
Cool along with the living
And the dead, all equal
In shadowed starlight
A tide of slight passions.
Rolling tongue, a roaring
Back and forth
But not so near
As to quell
The simple comfort
Of flecked
And flickered night.
Within its quiet purr
The padding cats
And careful mice
And white flow
Of owls
And the eternal rope river
Hurrying down the valley,
Tree-clothed and glorious.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, August, dawn, hill country, landscape photography, landscspe, late summer, light, mist, photography, Poetry, seasons, sky, valleys, Wales on August 20, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Swathed, mist cool
Tasting blue dawn
As still as an egg
Hushed as only August can be
Held in a lap of seasons
Replete, ripening,
Remembered now
The bite that is frost,
The gradual fall inwards.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dawn, landscape, landscape photography, mist, Poetry, summer, sun, Wales on August 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »
veiled
though we sleep
dream or wake.
the world wrapped
in its own light
soaked in whispered
breath.
a fountain of waters
a tree, a river,
wondrous emergent
a circular thing
a pearl gently
warmed in fire,
dawn misted,
floating.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ancient Chinese poetry, duty, exile., historical parallels, isolation, landscape, landscape photography, Poetry, slow collapse, the borderlands, the edge, the wilds, watch, weather on August 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »
A CERTAIN BLEAK BEAUTY
1
Endless rains
I wake early before dawn.
The dreams I recall
Are of loss and confusion.
2
The bonfires burn blue and bitter.
The mantra of compassion rings hollow
When all harvests have failed.
3
News from home is slow to arrive:
The roads often impassable,
Slow and winding
Through the hills.
4
My bones are weary.
I turn restless, from side to side.
The flies circling the room
Slower and slower each day
Fail to find the open window.
5
Though we are far
from the borderlands
Everyone fears invasion.
6
A song from the past
I cannot quite remember,
Of the moon and a girl
And a river.
7
Wind from the mountains
Tastes of snow.
The grasses are lank
and yellowing.
8
There is a certain bleak beauty
In the dark night,
Filled only
with the echoing cries of foxes.
9
News from the capital
Is dreary and unconvincing:
Familiar, lazy formulas.
The treasuries are empty,
The halls smell stale of old food.
10
Only this small thin cat is content
Paws flicking in sleep,
Curled up warm.
A collection of fleeting images, reflecting the present, but echoing the laments of those border guards of Ancient China
.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, hills, islands, landscape photography, Poetry, sea, silence, space, Wester Ross, Western Isles on August 9, 2015| 2 Comments »
WESTER COAST
These hills, this silence-
Silent enough to hear each sound,
Its beginning, its flight, its echoed end.
Silence as balm,
As high tide harbour wave,
Silence that lifts up, that sustains.
Where weight becomes weightless,
Where distance has a taste.
Where rain curves in
And burnishes the light.
Where breath is more
Than breath, is food.
Where night clothes slow,
And owls name space
And the wind across the grasses,
Across the bracken,
Across the rock,
Across the years.
Named,
Whispered forever.
Whispered names rolled,
Remembered.
Stone,
The music of stone,
The certainty of it,
Of its voice
Across the waters.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, continuity of dreaming, dawn, day, dream, Gayatri mantra, landscape photography, Poetry, sleep, three worlds, Wales on July 31, 2015| Leave a Comment »
BHUH BHUVAH SVAH
the river of sleep:
not quite song
not quite words,
a murmur continuing.
i have climbed
from the river of sleep
to the river of dawn:
not quite song,
not quite a speaking,
a slow unfolding moment
tasting, somewhat, something.
the river of day:
a strong river is its dream,
a shout of song,
a babble, a chant.
the valley grows clear,
the mountains recede.
the river mind meanders,
silk in the valley of light
to the gayatri metre,
a blue rhythm ornamented
jewelled,
to one infinite presence.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, landscape, landscape photography, memory, nature, Poetry, poetry traditions, remembereing. recording, Scotland, Sorley MacLean, the past, Wales, wilderness on July 28, 2015| 2 Comments »
Sure of this Sorley has spoken
His sweet scouring gravel words
Pure paced, precise grey grinding stones
Pouring splendid golden grain,
Eloquence of earth.
Though few have heard
Or paid him heed.
Old, tweeded, sharp-eyed scholar
Wandered, windblown on
Steep lined western shores
Between deserted croft
And sand-scoured macha.
His mountains named
One by one,
His steadings remarked,
His memories buried safe,
All buried under stone,
The language of remaining
Despite scorn and spittle.
A path half-made
Through hillside rocks,
The prints of deer,
Silence is the heather.
These winds whistle
Through an empty heart.
These words, a whisky
For the tongue that is parched,
A decent medicine
Against the clean sin
Of city streets,
Their promise to forget
Cold and weather,
An unceased consumption
Of time and art and loveliness.
Without the cry of curlew
Without the wheeling hoodie
Without the slap of salt wind
We think ourselves gods
Who are short, soft animals
One moment from bleached oblivion.
simonhlilly 