Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dawn, daylight, hours, landscape, May, morning, nature, Poetry on May 13, 2014| 1 Comment »
MINGLED
1
Matins
Mingled
A corded, thin delight
A wandered stream
Water and light
Water and light
The small bright hearts
Calling out daylight
Ached between clouds
The blue clouds
Pearl bright heaven.
2
Terce
It has grown now
Green and golden
Rounded as a cloud
Bright as butter
A light harvest
A sun feast.
3
Sext
A dappled day
A cowslip day
A buttercup day
A bowl of cream light
Hours blooming and dissolving
Sparkled with rain.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angels, art, Beltane, birds, dawn, digital art, landscape, light, mandala, may day, morning, nature, Poetry, print, spring, summer on May 1, 2014| 2 Comments »
BELTANE DAWN
1
A thin thread: birdsong squeezed through,
Floods open: light, blue and still.
Time dances, each moment
A coming and a going.
A sound of slow wingbeats,
A calling of mating angels.
Souls tumbling together
In the undergrowth.
The vapours of summer:
Arising smiles.
The song grows stronger:
A limitless uncurling,
A gesture of compassion,
A mudra of offering up.
2
Still pillows:
The grey cloud
Furled, uncurled
A world greened.
Two slow crows,
Shadows mated,
North by north-east
Over the dew wet fields,
Over the singing wood.
Light pushed in
From subtle edges.
A moment of flowers,
Blossomed exhalation.
She stretches in sleep,
A sudden perfume.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alap, April morning, April showers, Bhairavi, birdsongart, blackbirds, England, Haiku, Haiku-ish, Indian music, jor alap, landscape, morning, music, nature, photograhy, Poetry, raag, rain, Sound on April 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »
HAIKU : ALAP AND JOR ALAP
Raag Bhairavi
Alap of blackbirds
Rain cooling breeze.
—
Liquid air
Alap of blackbirds
Wind tampura.
—
Cloud blooms blackbird’s song
New green sways dances
Welcome rains welcome breezes
Mind tongue tastes cool day
Touch settled on clear moments.
—
(Classical Indian music is arranged in developmental sections. First, is a slow alap where the notes of the scale (raga, raag) are explored in relation to the pakad or thematic melody of the piece. Next comes a jor alap, which is slightly more structured with a rhythmic percussive accompaniment on the chikari strings ( akin to strumming on the guitar combined with a lead melody picked out).
Raag Bhairavi is one of my favorites. I believe it is a morning raag, but has a rather haunting and melancholy pakad with a lovely descent of notes.)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allegory, art, awareness, bleating lambs, digital jiggerypokery, early morning, easter, Haiku-ish, landscape, landscape photography, meditation (definition of), morning, Poetry, sheep, Sound, spring, sun, vision, witness on April 17, 2014| 3 Comments »
EASTERTIDE
Morning sun.
Lambs and ewes.
In the shadows
Where frost dissolves:
Cool moved airs,
A glistening reflection.
A movement,
A stillness:
The space where thought
Had been.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dawn, definition, landscape, language, Lao Tzu, morning, mortality, nature, Poetry, receptacle, senses, spring equinox, Tao Te Ching, valley spirit, vessel on March 19, 2014| 13 Comments »
CHAPTER SIX , TOWARDS EQUINOX
As if to remain
Were the price.
Time tips
And we tumble.
Vessels pouring into vessels,
Our sounds hollow,
Certainties measured,
Strangely vague.
All and nothing,
We stand rocking,
Drunk on swaying decks,
Seeking horizons.
Waking, dreams dissolve.
Sleep, and schemes fold inwards.
We name and name all things
Yet the Nameless still remains.
I shall hollow the wood,
Discover the bowl, round, knotted.
The receptive is the valley spirit,
Mother of all things.
It cannot fail, it is a veil,
A mist at dawn, a sigh,
A flight of silent birds heading west.
Leaves spin open, stretch green
Into dewy morning.
The air, still cold, substance
Slow moving.
The solace of hawks,
The solace of sparrows.
Clouds from the south pour light.
Moon-cooled, the blue west:
A line of hills none
Can see beyond.
It is as a veil, barely breathed,
Valley spirit holding, not holding,
Vast, the tip of the tongue,
A taste of spring,
A dream of summer.
For a moment,
Everything seemed perfect,
Before moving on.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clouds, dawn, Devon, frost, Haiku-ish, jackdaws, landscape, mist, morning, nature, Poetry, rain, rainbows, springtime, time on March 5, 2014| 4 Comments »
ONE MOMENT AFTER ANOTHER
1
The morning is
Daffodils and speedwell.
Above the tumble,
Jackdaws skim and surf
Blurred wind.
There will be,
(Say the clouds),
An afternoon of shadows
Collecting rainbows.
A season of light,
A thimble
Of forgetfulness.
2
Dawn reflex
A refection of cloud.
Nothing I could have done better.
Dappled elegance, cold blanket,
A tipping of scales,
A slow drift to the east.
A furrow, cross-cutting purpose,
A tiny friction, a wing-beat.
A sampling of enigmatic facts,
A certain blue
A certain distance,
A shading off into infinity.
(refection = a remaking, a nutrient, a food for body, mind and spirit)
3
New rising
Mist and birds,
Rising with the sun.
Rabbits pause and scatter.
Slow hills take form.
Heaven divides from earth.
A bleating of lambs.
4
Light in lines and waves
A moment mirroring
Off rooftop frost.
White grasses shudder and steam.
A birth of shadows, proud instants
No longer in between.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged February, fire, hearth, landscape, morning, paths, Poetry, roads, sky crowns, stars, storm, the wanderer, Winter on February 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Four pieces from early this morning, ancestral mutters: sky crowns and words from the Anglo-Saxon.
SIGNIFICATOR
The whispers of the stars of dawn,
Rooted in deep paths, seated mind.
Mind that seeks names only,
Seeks genealogies, plumbs down fathoms,
The pitch of rightness.
To themselves they whisper,
Remembering the weave and twist of gold,
The movers in the shadows,
The movers of twilight,
The flickering torchlight,
The muffled, shuffled feet of steady procession,
Of circular dance taking up positions,
Constellations of mirrored geometries
Winding up time before babes yawn,
Before the aches of morning stretch and sigh.
Before the biting cold, the stirring of embered dawn.
Before has passed.
Before has misted away.
The whispered eloquence of now,
A tranquil moment turned and knotted,
A place remembered on a silent road:
Signpost, crossed paths, significator.
—-
FIRE PRAYER
I kneel, cold water,
Before the fire to kindle,
A prayer for light and warmth:
Cold water, flying cloud.
For spark and roaring:
Cold wave, cold tide.
For return of belonging,
For reason to remain.
—-
WANDERER
The lament of the dispossessed –
The long diminishing curlew.
The urgent, soft cries of lovers –
Wild geese, wild geese.
The road is a way but not a home.
The footsteps of others, small consolation
When they have vanished to the horizon,
Gone on before, singing the old song.
Cloud-cloaked wanderer tasting salt.
His children, weighed metre,
The lilt of left and right.
—
ACHE
Raked by claws
(This wolf cold).
Blood stain tumbling
Clear watered pools:
These clouds of squall
In dawn skies.
World’s ribs sigh
And shiver –
The ache
Of onwards.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Devon, February, Haiku-ish, Imbolc, landscape, morning, nature, Poetry, seasons, time, weather on February 2, 2014| 2 Comments »
VALLEY SPIRIT
Over the last hill
Our prize is the view
Where the village nests,
Wood wreathed, woodsmoke.
Gathered fields almost,
Almost ready for spring
But patient, cautious,
Unhurried.
As unhurried as the morning.
Its grey lambswool clouds,
A blanket for Imbolc.
—
CROSS-HATCH
Imbolc morning:
Clouds like wolves,
And sheep.
Sun on all.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being, fragmentation, landscape, lucidity, morning, Poetry, time, Winter on December 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »
ONE MOMENT
Falling, tumbled dreams,
Wisped, fragranced,
Catch, spin and fade.
Morning is white and still
With frost and fog.
Sparrows motionless, huddled,
Await the sun, on elder, on elm.
We are sustained only, it seems,
By our forgetfulness,
By our obsession to measure time
And watch it passing.
To fit and shape the minutes,
Assigning usefulness
Rather than joy.
Sad creatures,
Longing for the real,
And missing it.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged actions, before dawn, birds, consensus, cries, dissolution, emptiness, ephemera, hunger, hungry ghosts, individuality, morning, peace, Poetry, the machine, weightless on November 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »
PRETA
Are we cradled in this new, cold dawn
Or do we fall weightlessly,
Our feathered bones hollowed by the mighty?
It comes in waves and seems to say
You must remain, but I,
A majority of one,
A minority of millions,
See no way to please the chosen machine.
We weigh nothing,
Vaporous, without memory,
Vacated, echoing,
The inconvenient, avoided, disregarded,
Re-written.
What it is we seek has not been found
In this slow, death-quiet brightening.
This birdsong is not for us
Nor has been given us this breeze.
No blessings that are not earned,
No comfort not calculated.
To fall without sound, to fray
And neatly dissappear,
Not to whimper or moan,
Nor to cry out to the invisible.
I shall put on the wings of the crow,
His sharp eye.
I shall guiltless rise on storm
And consume the already dead.
Guiltless and open as the sky.
To accept nothing, to bless everything.
Our peace cannot be stolen:
It only lives within us,
And cannot be traded
Nor snuffed out.
Yet we tread the ruts of long war,
Futile, strive to best these dark passions
With muddy fires and sounds of ripping time.
Run, run, from silence,
Run from stillness.
The hounds of midnight mad for blood:
Their hunger is our failure to face
The white mirror of emptiness,
The fall,
The long fall,
With no end.
O ye birds of silent air,
Ye travellers before dawn.
—-
simonhlilly 