GAYATRI
They are there again-
Whispering voices
Measuring word against feeling,
Shaping edges, building coastlines,
Collecting drift for rafts,
A vehicle for mind,
A conveyance to elsewhere.
In the grey flow,
The river before dawn,
(Accompanying the purposeful padding
Of cats seeking a perfect
Place to curl or watch),
There they stand midstream,
Upright, silent upon silent,
Chant snaking over the water’s lap.
I shall go to that ocean’s edge:
Hiss of sand grains stinging
The dry marram grasses.
Listen to the wide waves roll in,
Their deep rumble of the miles
Through the soles of my feet.
Watch the cloud build and fade,
The cry of gulls, tasting salt.
In cold dawn
For whom does the blackbird find
Its mellifluous river?
For whom does the raven call
Across the wild moors?
And for whom,
On his columned tower of air,
Nearly beyond sight,
Does the eagle send out
His long, descending cry?
To reveal the truth:
Nothing but the interior,
Masked by, revealed by.
A prison of the recognised,
Of memory, of habit
And well-trod pathways
Reinforcing a clutch of clues.
To reveal the truth:
Nothing but an exterior,
A view devoid of viewer,
A shaped, echoing chamber
Of what is not elsewhere.
Emissaries of the void,
Mediators of re-orientation,
Skilled in gematria,
Consulting tables of correspondences,
The magical hours of day and night,
Sigils of the planetary spirits,
The magic squares, tablets
Of the Thrice Great.
Translators and interpreters,
Riding the words spluttered
By the depths, by the flocks
Of wild thought scattered
By an eye upon a lituus.
Measurers of geomantic force –
The will of the interior dragons
Of elemental necessity.
This they are.
(Or so the child, over-tired, set to sleep on chairs,
Believes, mishearing the backroom boys at their
Smoky, affable, night-long poker game:
A wash of rising, falling stories, subdued bluff
And laughter, silence and staccato curse.)
Through that long, slow flow,
The grey river, never ceasing.
The memory of ice-fields, ancestral shrines,
Ghosts of prayer flags, squalls of chant.
Bone thin fingers, urgent, prising apart
To get one more view, to reveal
A fall of trigrams, a cipher, or
A terma, space-hidden.
My own dear companions:
Weather-wizards,
Shepherds of storm and lightning,
Weavers of reeds and grasses,
Compounders of root and petal.
If it is you, then blessings and apologies.
Out of step, out of time,
The world waits no more
For eloquence or art
That weaves mind and matter
By the fireside.
We are blackbirds
In the cold dawn;
Ravens crying out fierce joy
And ineffable sorrow to empty hills;
Eagles beyond sight,
Forgotten by the grass-eaters,
Turning upon an exhalation of air,
A gesture of word,
An alchemy of heart and breath.
A pinch of insignificance,
A deja vu,
A rusted key
To a forgotten door
Within a buried ivy cave
In a twilit,
Twilit world.
For no-one but ourselves,
Ourselves to ourselves,
We raise cupped hands,
Let the clear water fall sparkling
In sunlight,
Let the hymns rise and fall
To the sun, the world,
The watcher within,
Purified, cleaned, emptied,
Made silent once more.
Silent in mid-stream.
The lapping waters.
simonhlilly 
Conversing with invisible friends (1)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged asides, blogs, bubble-and-squeak, collection, comments, fragments, hiaku-ish, muses, Poetry, responses, scenes on April 19, 2013| 13 Comments »
CONVERSING WITH INVISIBLE FRIENDS
It is not infrequently that I find reading someone’s blog I become word-filled, or at least taste the winds of wordage. A spontaneous thing, a few lines cast down in appreciation or conversation. I have begun collecting those that pleased or surprised me under the above title. Some are complete in themselves, some just torn pages, sketches, notions. But amusing, I hope. A bouquet for my muses ( you lot of screen-lit waifs and strangers, mind-readers, mind-sharers, an osmosis of muses).
1
DREAMING
Caught in this hammock,
Dew-wet spider web:
February day
Dreaming of spring.
Night now.
The world calling low
Down my chimney:
“come out, the clouds
Are fast and glowing pale.”
2
JUGGLER
And what’s a man without his shoes?
A cold toed dancing monkey,
off balance
and drunk on gravity!
3
TINNITUS
It must all end thusly,
stopping suddenly,
like thoughts do, like life does,
as boredom or something more inviting
takes the stage.
A nice touch,
like hearing a wash of bar-room gossip,
or a sudden rush of fragmented,
incomprehensible telepathy….
4
TOO SMART
Stepping over cracks,
papered, glued.
Names for emptiness,
even clever emptiness that a mind can leap.
One by one
we shall all disappear,
finding everyone else,
who have also disappeared,
wondering how that,
how that could possibly happen,
how that could possibly happen again,
again
and again.
5
MUSED
The poet fights to get out,
is slapped down with a gritty hand,
that then too,
turns into a mudra of revealing.
A nonchalent hide and seek,
footsteps echoing in silence.
The maniac down the corridor titters loudly….
6
LILT
Speed and convolution,
locomotive breath.
Delicate pace
with careful tongue.
Disallowed,
my comments,
strange,
syllabic apprehension,
jealous machines…
7
ASIDES
Underestimated, the value of brackets!
They packet up thought and expression,
more similarly to thought and voice,
than more highly regarded punctuations.
I am all for brackets
( I shall make a placard,
and stand on cold corners
(with a small dog and rattling can).
(and I neither object to brackets within brackets
(though a sniffy grammarian might grumble)).
They are raised eyebrows and slight smiles.
They are knowing ness and by the way ness.
They are signposts in the significance
and waywardness of a train of thought
(we are now off the rails and improvising,
(mouth moving, brain aghast)).
And by the way,
the jewel of your words has a certain ring,
engaging,
wed to the world
(punning though,
is the sign of devils
playing with idle hands).
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