Posted in Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, landscape, New Year's day, Poetry, rain, time, Wales, Winter on January 1, 2022| Leave a Comment »
NEW YEAR’S DAY
When there is nothing good to say
Then silence is better.
It is a calm day today,
Small rain in a dark sky.
Above the quiet valleys,
A high wind from the west is roaring.
The last day on Earth will be like this:
Resting in its own beauty,
All known, nothing named.
All reasons self-extinguished.
Watched over, cherished, belonging.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, Christmas, eternity, existence, landscape, landscape photography, moon, Poetry, time, time and space, Winter on December 25, 2021| 3 Comments »
CHRISTMAS NIGHT, CHRISTMAS MORNING
The moon strides through mist.
He is one: half-dead, half-reborn.
The garden is all jet and water –
The black shadow that is time and space.
There is no truth here but stories,
Is what we learn if we live long enough.
The river in its shroud, past the silent graveyard.
Nothing for you to do but weep and sing,
Says the sighing pines.
Nothing but to find beauty here and sing it,
Says the sighing pines.
And the stars look down in envy.
They would fold their wings and walk
These muddy, leaf-strewn paths.
They would feel the cold air of morning,
Let go of hope and fear,
Sing with sun and sparrows.
Would build their small fires,
Feast on emptiness and fullness.
Eternity weaving clothes for itself.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Autumn, Bardic rant, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, nature, Otherworlds, Poetry, rain, the numinous, this world, time, Wales on October 31, 2021| 3 Comments »
HARD RAIN
Hard rain washing the world away.
Leaves fall through cooling air.
The gutters are singing an autumn song.
Rivers wake from summer’s sleep.
I was dreaming of eagles and their turquoise voice
In the days where darkness drums down more suddenly
And the cold cannot any longer be shrugged off.
I was dreaming of a path that was a spiral
And a spiral that was a mirror.
I stand before a silent oak.
Its name is eternal song,
Retribution, its door.
Its mouth is darkness.
In the end we do not know what matters.
This curl of sound, this exhalation of breath
Might be enough for a universe to be complete.
I study the taste of this turquoise,
Turn it between cold fingers
Then walk into the hill ( for all hills are doorways).
If you follow the hare, the path shall lie
Flat as grass before a strong wind.
If you follow the deer, the path shall be
Dappled and filled with birdsong.
If you follow the otter, the path will be
Silver and smooth as moonlight.
If you follow the dead,
Returning to their places,
You shall find your path
To womb and fireside
And questions: why and whereto.
All the warm singing halls
Lost in mist and blood.
All the familiar is a lie.
The world is utter strangeness
And the stars, known but unnamed.
I have been a trowel, an eagle, a pen.
What has been put together, falls apart.
These dreams you do not own.
Each is borrowed to keep you warm.
The path is a name you do not know.
This world is all the clue you will get.
Wrapped and unwrapped, each day a reminder.
There is no greater fool than a poet,
No greater truth than the lie of poetry.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, art, Autumn, bardic, lament, landscape, Poetry, rain, seasons, time, Wales on October 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »
WAR CRY
A furnace dawn.
It will come on
To rain tears later.
Why are we always
Led by fools?
.
It is not gold, but spelter.
Not ore, but slag.
The forge of beauty is cold.
The taste of the morning air
Is bitter.
.
Two swans, white and dancing,
Fly low following the river westwards.
A sorrowful sky full of rain
Will cause more leaves to fall.
.
All our roads are cracked and failing.
They have borne too much,
Never thanked nor mended.
We watch weeds grow tall in crevices.
.
Within the hills
The druids and saints
Are turned to stone.
The names of things carved and fading
Where sheep are grazing.
.
There will be peace at last
When we are all gone.
First frosts will kill
The last rose.
.
The gods of creation
Sought perfection
And so always failed.
They have taught us sorrow,
The fleeting smile of time
And space.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, belonging, blame, landscape, Mabinogion, Poetry, Wales on September 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »
CYMRU, IF I NAME THEM
If I name them shall I make them mine,
Those hills that rise and fall in cloudy distances?
Shall I take them into my folded self,
Safe memorised and belonged?
Will they, then, wake enough
To acknowledge this time’s short passage,
Allow a fleeting sun-warmed moment of life
To be counted and valued?
Is there then enough silence in them
To quench the rabble tides of complaint?
Enough sobriety and bliss to dismiss
The well-worn excuses of failure and exile?
We are eagles weeping in the crowns of eternal oaks,
Waiting for the one who made us thus,
To come and set us free, to give us,
One last time, our form and status,
To let us die loved in our own place.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, belonging, forgiving, hills, landscape, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, peace, photography, Poetry, politics, Wales on August 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »
GIVEN TIME
Given time
All the stones return.
.
Companionship, the soft moss
That greens broken voices.
.
We are accustomed to abandonment
Where roads turn back
Leaving the high hills to themselves.
.
We are accustomed to the tides
Of disdain from those
Who cannot see our wealth.
.
We breathe free in cloud and soft rains,
In the glance of sun,
In the silent press of snow.
.
What we lack
Has been given away freely.
Nothing of worth
Has been lost.
.
From the darkening skies
A single feather falls.
The stones are silent.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awen, bardic, Bardic rant, consciousness, landscape, Poetry, Taliesin, time, transformation, Wales on August 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »
THE OLD TALIESIN
He does not have to raise his voice –
Silence comes with it like the tide on the shore.
Bent-backed, i see his strong staff, serpent-wrapped.
It is still a tree of fruits, sweet and bitter:
A crab apple scented with autumns, hard with frost
And the seeing of too much sorrow.
I see his bright brow, bald as the moon.
He is being chased again through the halls of the world
By another who shall not relent.
And he will change form again,
On wide, sunlit oceans again,
But not until the three drops congeal in truth,
Not until the chariot wheel is cracked,
Not until a new axle pin is shaped and smoothed.
A year and a day,
And we shall all change places.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cambrian Mountains, deep ecology, hills, July, landscape, memory, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, time, Wales on July 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Penygarngoch rises from the past,
A whale of rock, green draped,
Through the hayfields and meadow mists.
Rising above the lowing cattle,
Rising above the blackcap’s song.
Higher than the raven’s tumble,
Higher than the roads and pathways.
The present does not wash it clean of memory.
It does not replace the layers accumulated,
The dust of starlight, the tombs of kings.
In its deep roots, in its trickling waters,
In its sedge and scrub and bracken,
In its clear-eyed dreaming head,
In its separate, aloof completeness,
In its drawing out of silence,
In its dome of watchfulness,
It rises higher into the sun.
Both consonant and vowel,
Both noun and verb.
A rounded arc that restfulness adheres to.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, nature, Poetry, summer, summer solstice, time, Wales on June 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »
SOLSTICED
.
Garth Bank is a mind
Resting in silence.
.
Bryn and Y Garn
Become domed and spacious.
Valley rivers make no noise-
The whole world stands still.
.
The cold of eternal space
Touches the edge
Of our certainty.
.
So we cling
To an ephemeral fullness
And watch a blue distance
Grow warm in haze,
.
Nested in comfortable notions,
The children of cracked worlds.
–
simonhlilly 