Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, empty skies, Haiku-ish, landscape, landscape photography, light, most sapphire deep, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, plague, Poetry, sky, spring on May 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »
THE HEALED SKY
The healed sky
Blue as the calm gaze
Of the Medicine Buddha.
May all beings find peace.
—
The healed sky.
Wherever we go
The chanting of honey bees.
—
The healed sky.
A deeper peace creeps in,
Silence no longer a threat.
—
The healed sky.
Eternal mind
Ever returning to life.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, art, awareness, consciousness, dream, First Branch, Hill of Arberth, landscape photography, Mabinogi, Otherworld, Poetry, strategy, the numinous, time, vision, Wales on May 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »
ON THE HILL OF ARBERTH
Shall we climb the yonder green mound?
Expand our view to the wide unseen horizon,
See wonders, see the unattainable brilliance?
I shall tell you a story where the darkness shines
As bright as the glory of day,
Where the horror shouts loud enough
To wake the doorkeeper between worlds,
Where the pictures come as clues to other strange things,
Where places reconstruct in cellular aggregations
Down the spine and the tides of new air
Tingles with the riddles of a new way
To lose certainty and find a better truth.
Rest now.
Time and space is full already with this world.
Watch as patterns shift.
In shadows and slowed moments
Other worlds can show themselves,
The other that is not the other.
( the woodpigeon’s grey cool song
And the deep green wind between the hills).
It is so full, so full.
Let go the river downwards.
Just below, just below the known
Are the vast halls of golden brocade,
The sapphire cool pavements, as it were.
Wait, unframing, un-naming.
Roads are small patterns of consistency.
Mingle the words of in and out.
Lay one on another without choosing.
Climb the green rise and see what might be seen:
Distance, shimmer, dazed,
What is there is elsewhere.
Soften and dissolve the sight –
That is the way, ( a voice says), to see outside.
The mirror ripples, water turns to rock.
The slow creatures stop to dream,
The warm air chants with bees’ hum.
One step without moving.
There is an art to it akin to drunkenness and despair.
Waiting, not wanting control, dissolving slightly,
Wavering a haze of possibility.
Silence. The deep is the dream
That dreams you here.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, awen, bardic effusion, definition, fluidity, landscape photography, language, lesson, meanings, metaphysics, Poetry, the sacred, un-naming, water on May 14, 2020| 2 Comments »
The Stones Of Words In The Rivers Of Meaning
‘Sacred’
Is the most precious thing.
That which is unpartitioned.
That reaches roads longed for.
That unfurls sky landscapes unbounded.
That is the most precious.
That fills and empties and makes whole possible.
That wraps meaning in glory and silence.
That goes beyond meaning to mean more.
That flows beyond edges still singing.
That is utter silence enfolding, accepting.
That swells and feeds and gives succour.
That cannot be defined by limitations.
That is beyond and within.
The engine of breath,
The longing to exterminate failure.
To awaken, to sparkle, to feel more, to perceive more.
To stand on the edge of a precipice,
To leap and let go and not care.
To recalibrate, to forget.
To sing eternally.
To be welcomed home.
To be unsullied.
To become the story.
To be magnified.
An infinite expanse of meaning,
A means to go beyond here.
The awen – an inflowing and an outflowing.
Exhilaration.
It can possess but cannot be possessed.
That which carries us away.
Exponential expansion of fractal geometries.
Everlasting metaphor.
Edge of the mysterious void.
Extinction of destruction.
Edges dissolve
And we expand
Into the sacred more.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, art, certainty, frost, landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, spring, Wales, weather on April 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
SPRING FROST
take this tight
fist of frost
sky knifed
star edge cold.
all night growing
winter chime
whispered seed.
Certain is
fools for fools
while the world turns.
Life and death
a blade edge breath
that flips and loves either.
The in and the out of it
that we would hold fixed
and steady as a sure eye.
King ‘til the Spring sun
smiles over the hill
and dreams of summer
quiet upon the air.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, landscape, landscape photography, Orkney Islands, Poetry, Scotland, time on April 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
ORKNEY SEQUENCES
1
The wind sings between the grey walls of the town.
It sings of long seas turned to green fields.
Small birds scatter and reform in flowing air.
Islands turn to cloud and then dissolve in the driving rains.
2
Perhaps the first thing you notice is the soft lilt of the land:
The way the colours slip from brown greens to sapphire greys,
And the sound of the waves, a ceaseless singing (that is also in the quiet voice
Of the people who slip between worlds and grey streets
In and out of tinkling tea shops, the warm must of cosy bars,
Turned around through doors by the sharp wind and its slap of cold rain).
3
This wind is not to be escaped from..
It has come this far from a world away.
Though you may wait awhile in the warm quiet,
You must leave to face the remorseless thrust of it.
4
So many miles crossing the earth.
So many miles across the air.
So many miles over the seas,
To the first hearth, the sparking fires,
The strong stone vulvas of the rolling lands
Arching green, gentle green from the green seas
From which the dead do dream,
To which the living return like swallows,
Like swallows sifting their songs, the scything memories.
The dead own all the songs, the songs feed the dead
And keep the fires of the living warm and strong.
5
Deserted farmsteads scattered the slopes
Weathered grey skulls, window eyes dark and sightless
Broken jaw doorways toothless gaping
Slate pate roofs smashed open by war-hammer winds.
They mark the passage of years and the bite of seasons.
6
By whatever ways, whatever ways we come to them
Waiting diffident or with curious eyes to see what they have become.
Until we feed the fire, until we feed the warmth now the long memories,
Until then they are remote as stars whose names are not known,
Whose patterns are not picked out by pointing fingers.
We move towards them and they, waiting or not,
Wrapped up in their own watching.
There is nothing left here but scattered teeth
And broken skulls, voiceless gaping jaws
And the endless wind across the low green fields.
It was better than this, it was better.
Words piled up in cairns,
Words piled up and stones laid out.
7
The central hearth
Where stars burn
Where the gathered starlight burns.
The wind is in a minor key.
Ghosts of footsteps heading north.
This is the last feast
Before the world changes.
Before the old doors are sealed.
Before we throw away our names
And watch for new signs.
Bone by bone
We disassemble our gods
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, Gosen Chapel, landscape photography, light, oak trees, Poetry, spring, time, Wales on March 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »
CHAPEL OAKS
Scattering dark fingered roads
Across bright dazzled morning.
.
Jackdaws coming and going
like second thoughts.
.
Snow picks out the distant hills
As if they were unattainable heaven.
.
Cold clouds drift on slow sunlight.
.
The in-dwelling silence is a song
Stretched out to eternity.
.
It is what the red kites,
What the ravens, wheel and dance upon,
Uplifted by delight.
.
The pain of frozen air
Is how we know
we are alive.
—
CHAPEL OAKS (2)
A murmuration of starlings
A murder of crows
A ricochet of jackdaws
A damnation of preachers
A singing throne of oaks.
.
The bones of the snow
On a bitter wind.
.
March morning sky
Churning the bright butter of glory.
.
The hands of trees reach out,
Shaking in eternal prayer.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape, landscape photography, language, Poetry, rain, storm, thought, time, Wales, Winter on February 28, 2020| 1 Comment »
.
STORM WIND
.
We cannot outrun the storm wind
We cannot outrun the rain.
.
Between the lines appear the shapes of other letters.
.
The moment the tongue finds a shape to express a feeling.
The moment the feeling swells, a flower
Of song blossoms out.
.
We cannot outrun the swollen river
We cannot outrun the racing cloud.
.
Every thread laid and lost within the weave.
To hold one thought, just one,
When the roaring chord that rocks the pines
Sweeps the world away in ragged tatters.
.
We cannot outrun the world of sorrow
We cannot outrun this tide of time.
.
The meaning here
Is not the meaning
We seek.
.
We cannot outrun the storm mind
We cannot outrun the candle’s shadow.
.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged annwfn, art, awen, bardic, biosphere, landscape photography, message, metaphysics, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, mystery, nature, Poetry, prophecy, storm, the dead, the numinous, time, timelessness, transformation, Wales, weather, Winter on February 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
ORACULAR MESSAGE
In the woods, in the green wet woods
The dead are waiting with their songs.
.
They have longed for their flesh and they have forgotten.
The rivers are full of their passions.
It is a cold steel desire, a lust like winter.
.
It is gone now, subsided into multiplicity,
The tracks lost, the flash of prey in the bushes,
All become unintelligible like a valley dissolves in driving rain.
.
But the dead are waiting there with their slim fingers
To crack open your sight, to break open your eyes
The release the hawk of your mind, the hungry raven of your heart,
The river of your reason.
.
This is for you, a prophecy for you
Because you have read these lines,
Because of the intersections of the stars,
Because you are nothing but this,
About to be forgotten, about to be lost.
.
The dead are waiting in the woods, singing and dancing,
Forgetting everything.
.
You have dreamed enough.
You have destroyed enough.
.
They slide between species, have no regard for distinctions.
They breathe the matter ejected from shuddering galaxies into the void.
.
These words are not for you
But you must remember them and pass them on.
They are for the last one who leaves.
Who turns to flick the light switch
And with a small smile steps into darkness.
.
Tell them the dead are waiting in the green mossy woods.
Tell them to listen for the sighing song
For the surprise of pine scent drift singing storm winds.
Tell them to remember the small things,
The notions that eat worlds.
Tell them the dead are waiting
To take them home.
.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, bardic, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, language, memory, mind, nature, photography, Poetry, song on February 10, 2020| 2 Comments »
CLOTHED
Clothing himself in these common borrowed words,
A certain style, a certain habit, turns it all around.
Anonymous ubiquity becomes an intimate paced voice,
The poet emerges from the rough hedge glowing in the darkening evening.
Everyone has seen the full moon a thousand times,
Yet still now sighs and stands still.
Clothing ourselves in another’s memory
Or dreaming a dream not even ours:
The profoundest philosophy here,
A truth of who we are, think we are,
Where our edges blur and meet,
Where our voices change key and tone,
And slip into accents unfamiliar,
Where we stop being who we think we are,
And for a moment, if only ever for a moment,
We leap from the endless river, glinting and free
Into unfamiliar harvests of air and evening
On the floating view of somewhere we can never stay,
Returning so rapidly to the noisy rush of time and space,
Swept downstream, singing tunes with a cadence now not ours,
Now not solely ours.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, dhrupad, landscape, landscape photography, music, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, rain, song, time, Winter on January 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »
DHRUPAD 24 (New Year) 10.1.2020
Slow, slow now, slow time uncertain
Slow as honey slow it is unfolded
The paths untrod, the ways clouded
The roads silver, the roads brown
The roads puddled poured into the hills.
The days slow, unnumbered
The days unencumbered, weighed in
Silence. Slow slow the revolutions
Of the red kite, the wheeling, returning
Circling in slow light in slow light
And the sun low and slow looking
Looking for a new name a new name,
And the air leafless, the land leafless
Something something on the tip of its tongue
A new name, a new name, a path
A new way and the small birds brown
And the small birds red and blue and brown
Pecking looking for a new name.
And all the dreams a-slumber
And all the days a-slumber
And all the seeds and the leafless air
And the falling rain dreaming and sleeping
A small new name, a new name
And the sparrows shuffling in the eaves
And the gutter rivers singing, chanting
Murmuring, whispering, breathing, sighing
A new name a new name. Slow, slow the days
Slow the days now, time as thick as honey drips
Pools and falls and collects time taking shape
Shape taking space space taking voice voice
Murmuring a dream here, a dream here a new
Name a new name a name a new name, slow.
—
simonhlilly 