Posted in Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, landscape, language, nature, perspective, Poetry, rivers, Wales on April 26, 2022| Leave a Comment »
RIVER WORDS
They do not say
What they sing
For your listening
But for their own joy.
No will of their own
But to find the deepest
And return.
Where streams meet:
A birth of spirals.
By the bridge
The patterns hold steady.
Acquiescence to the way.
We think we know them
By their names we know them.
We know them by their names.
You name the river
‘Destroyer of the children of men’.
I name this river
‘Gentle mother of fields’
The river calls itself:
‘Longing for stillness
In the deep’.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged air, dhrupad, dream stream, floating hawks, morning, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, space, the numinous, transcendence, vision, Wales on March 31, 2022| Leave a Comment »
BHAIRAV (THE WEIGHTLESS WEIGHT OF AIR)
Air.
Flowing river from mountains cooled,
And the passion of stars
Piercing the bow of Time.
Air.
Layering droop and singing yet
On the long slope of dawn.
Air.
Tinted blue yet.
Twisted warm and wan.
Twisted slow, rolling.
Air.
Dreaming pulses
As reasons’ reflection
But vague yet.
Vague and languid,
At edges stalled.
Moistened in sleep,
But not.
But not.
Air.
Piled deep
Down to the stars.
Life sways hanging, drifting.
Trees with their hair
Loose and swaying
Singing, singing,
Down to the starlit voids
Hanging the tidal edges
The endless full innocent darkness.
Air.
The trees shape
Single syllables
Howled whisps of vowels
Finding froth from feeling.
Air
Patterned, pressured, punctured
Parcelled.
Air
Twisted and released,
Spread out and stretching,
Tidal current
The vapours caress
Their gradient glacial moments.
Air
Sun bright now
Shifting shimmering.
It suffers all thought.
Turning about
Returning it to silence.
Air.
Sun-bright now,
Spirit-filled
Song-filled
The tongue of gods
Hungry for this and that.
It will not
It will not.
It will
It will.
Invisible lover of every surface.
Air.
It stretches, it pulses.
Gods are born from air.
They flow in and out,
Grow fists of nothing.
They flow in and out.
Gods born from
The turbulent throbs of air.
Movement shiver shafts.
Silence
Silence.
–
Bhairav is a well-known Indian raag of the early morning. I have only recently grown to love it and its variations. Perhaps the tense sharps and flats put me off. It has the energy of cool space, of heights, of growing light, of distance, of precise wing-tips, of soaring wings, of the dip and soar of red kites. This is a sort of verbal alap – a slow exploration of the moods and directions of morning air, here in the mountains.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, change, consciousness, landscape photography, metaphysics, nature, Poetry, roses, time, transformation, Wales on March 25, 2022| 2 Comments »
THE ROSES
The roses
They have been in bud
For months
Through sun and rain.
Now they open,
Bloom for a day or two
Giving joy to all,
Then fade and
Fall apart.
The roses.
The roses.
They throw off their beauty
Like dancers.
They value more
Their roots
And their thorns.
The blood red hips,
The hard won strength
To go on.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, nature, photography, Poetry, seasons, time, Wales, weather, Winter on January 30, 2022| 2 Comments »
A small breath of wind lifts the mist ‘til more blows in.
Two days, three days frost, has melted
And the birds are in the leaf litter.
The mountain’s voice says
‘Winter is not over yet’
But here in the valleys there is a small respite.
A day or two, perhaps, of gentler thoughts.
The world revolves around us here.
There is lamentation and the groans of fools from afar.
The waves, perceptible and arcane,
Encroach on the plans of contented futures.
But here, for a day or two,
Will be blue calm and the hope
Of buds and roots.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nature, Poetry, time, Winter, winter solstice on December 25, 2021| Leave a Comment »
HEART
Heart anchored to this land.
No need for more questions.
The slow breath of seasons.
An Ivy road that clings and wanders
About the steep sides of Mynydd Troed.
This voiceless white sky calls
Into a vast unknown.
Three days stand still:
The cold of motionless time.
Take it to heart.
Let the silence of it
Dwell there a while.
–
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 Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, Wales on September 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »
The sky rolls out from them, these hills
that witness all that moves round here.
Catching the last light in shadowed hands;
Sending breezes billowing through the rolling valley oaks.
They drop their white veils and dream of prophecies
That do not end in utter silence.
Their answer is in streams and tumbled stones
That last almost forever, almost.
And catch and keep the hearts of small and nested things,
To keep them safe until it is time to take them back to night
And to that other dreaming.
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.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, assumptions, cuckoos, freedoms, habit, inevitability, landscape, landscape photography, Mabinogi, nature, Poetry, prophecy, time, Wales, William Blake on June 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »
A CUCKOO IN THE NEST
A cuckoo see-saws in the sunny dregs of May.
All the fractured warriors, pale and bloodless,
Sink into the seed-filled soil.
The winners and losers are the ones
Who laid out these fine roads.
So we can trust no other paths
Through the oak deep woods and sun-warmed cliffs.
They have buried their gold here and there
Like dinosaur eggs, cold hope and useless,
Without the thrusting love of bees.
We shall walk among the dead and borrow their dreams.
Bred for an ostentatious perfection
The roses strangled by a sea of happy weeds.
Yet we take the rose for our badge:
The blowsy, failing, propped and preening dream
Of old men and fanatics, and fight the weeds together.
The cuckoo mocks the sunny morning.
Innocence supplanted by an unbuilt guile.
The world see-saws on precipitance.
The stars, at least, remain, untouched
By this busy arrogance of being.
How many times shall I sing the same song,
O, Enitharmon? Until the long grey rains
Wash all footsteps away?
Gronw, Gronw, that stone over your heart shall not save you.
It will be laid out: the failings of desire and the roads of gold.
It shall all be sundered by the returning soul,
The tides of people, a song of weeds.
Sweet smelling idiots, the tiered hierarchies of perfect moments.
We have longed for its return – the resonant, ephemeral cuckoo.
But now its constant echo palls. It is no bard, but pure politician.
It ousts the futures of others, counts away choices, one by one.
The roads that are reasonable, are inevitable.
You had the choice a long time ago, if you recall, to be a hero
Or to fall safely into those ruts of good and equitable habit.
We have been charmed down from the tree now,
Given a voice, and we must fill the role assigned us.
To heave the future from its nest, watch it crack
Against the stones, and pray for food to still sustain us.
—
simonhlilly 