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Posts Tagged ‘nature’

Your Joy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 7, 2022| 2 Comments »

YOUR JOY

It is the time of year when dreaming bleeds into daylight.

All the roads turn green and make their way back home.

The thrush is singing loudly in the budding ash tree.

The nature of art is to tell truth through lies:

This smudge is not a butterfly,

This hill, you cannot climb,

This moment is long gone.

Crows and cuckoos, the bleat of lambs,

Sunlit grass and the dark uplands.

We war to keep things safe, to keep things the same.

Not even one day will survive into the next.

All the gods are here, waiting for your joy.

–

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In Abergwesyn Commons

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 4, 2022| Leave a Comment »

IN ABERGWESYN COMMONS

There the world shall open out,

Open out beyond the senses.

A wide valley shout with clouds,

A bonny plaid of river grasses,

A brow of grey tumbled crags

And the ravens and kites wheeling there.

The road rides the waves of miles,

Pushed upwards, lean and full of longing.

Free of voices, free from thought,

As if it were a better world

Unsullied, shaped by simple life

And simple death.

Praised by its mist of rain.

Blessed in its silence.

I have told you the road.

And you found it so.

Open-hearted, washed, released

In Abergwesyn.

—

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River Words

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , 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’.

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Bhairav (The Weightless Weight of Air)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 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.

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The Roses

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , 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.

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Small Breath

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , 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.

–

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Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.

–

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Hard Rain

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , 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.

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These Hills

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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.

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Pen y Garn Goch

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , 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.

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