Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nature, photography, Poetry, summer, Wales, wisteria on July 5, 2019| 3 Comments »
FUJI (wisteria)
By the cottages of Penrhos,
Letting the warm wall take its weight.
Resting on the earth like a mountain does.
Leaning gnarled, an old man supports himself.
When time comes, his tongue flowers
Eloquent strings of song,
After the frosts have gone
And before the long rains.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, seasons, summer, Wales on June 24, 2019| 3 Comments »
THE HEDGES
The hedges hawthorn foam.
Precise time ceased and waiting.
A mist to smudge everything not near.
And a blue cool watchfulness
Before slow, large drops of rain.
Hills, and hills behind the hills, we see.
Hills and hills in the heart of the land.
Inch by inch they choose green
Over wan winter brown.
Inch by inch they swell and sing
Sated with descending arcs of summer stars
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, cold, consciousness, first frost, nature, night, Poetry, season's change, small life, stars on October 28, 2018| 3 Comments »
SMALL THINGS
To die on a winter’s night
And know that your last breath
Will be eaten by a million
Cold and hungry stars.
These flakes of furred life
Curled around their small souls
Encircled by great horizons
That ever suck the warmth
From fast-beating hearts.
No hardship, though, in letting go.
In leaving the fury, in leaving
The dawn cold to other hunters
And the sharp songs in bare branches
And the sharp eyes longing to peck.
To need no need now, to rise and fly,
To become incorporeal, incorporated
In the memory of an ever-loving world,
The blanketed round and sweet murmured world.
_
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Autumn, landscape, landscape photography, late summer, Mid Wales, Mynydd Epynt, Nant Crysan, nature, Poetry, Spite Inn, Wales on September 9, 2018| 8 Comments »
Our Geography –
Nant Crysan
The rowan reddening,
No drop of sunlight wasted;
And the dried grasses to feast on
For finch and siskin.
The blue forest, floating on heat and haze,
Is cool still, the sound of trickling water,
And a breeze far off
On the slopes of Esgair Fwyog.
A row of hills weighs again its thoughts,
The horizon still no nearer.
There, by Spite Inn, the buzzard
Peers from its high post:
Something will stir and food will come.
The world wastes nothing,
Passing on one to another.
The road turns because it must,
Rises because it must,
Falls because it must,
No god complaining.
The rivers of old walls,
The lines of fields left fallow.
And the old names:
The ridge of the runaway,
Haunted still ( the cry of hounds and the drip of fear);
the ridge of the tumbling waters,
Haunted by another sound – of
Gathered ravens and ripped, uprooted, roaring torrents.
This rise and dip of this land
Draped between named places
Always slows and deepens my breath:
The way the hills fold up to the sky,
The way the forests have been patted
Into neat lines at field’s edge,
The way the water of Nant Crysan moves slow
And hidden in the sedge-rippled meadows
Where the black cattle come and go,
The way the fences fall into their own calligraphy
And the gates open always,
always to empty, sighing sky.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, ciontinuity, history, landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, Wales on September 2, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Our Geography (1)
Our geography is mellow and tear-washed,
meandering and mud-stained.
It dreams through mist and slanting rains,
bites its lip and grasps the rooted valley sides.
It sends out messengers and bards
on posts and cries their hovered song.
It wears its history against a fickle, fast future;
views as unbecoming the speed of our own descent.
Though welcomes us back always
to its folded silences.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dhrupad, landscape, music, nature, nature photography, photography, Poetry, roses, summer solstice, Wales on June 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »
DHRUPAD 9 (solstice roses)
Solstice roses solstice rain
bright as sparrows
solstice cloud low bright
and sparkling rain.
Field roses, wild roses, dog roses,
solstice roses bloom fall fail
arching sun-like arching star-like
arching dancing leaping hedgerows.
Field roses white as cotton dresses
in sunlight fields in sunlight wind in solstice fields
light as cotton white as summer
blooming falling failing blooming.
And dog roses pink and frail and strong
as sacred as secret pink flesh
blushing pink curling pink scented and smiled and honey sweet
and stroked in light and solstice solstice light,
bloom and leap and arch and fall and fail.
Tattered heavy petal fall
weighed and washed bright solstice rain.
White as sheep new shorn, white as blisters,
white as taste in morning air,
white as solstice fall and failing falling failing,
flocking leaping solstice roses arching out
and arching over and petal falling petal failing pale as butter,
bright as eyelids, bitter smiling falling
failing blooming failing falling
solstice roses wild roses dog roses field roses,
thorned and throned and holding on,
leaping arching bowing blessing
bowers sprinkled white and pink
glorious as sheep in the morning solstice,
morning sparrow hedgerow morning,
rain wet wind and sparkling solstice morning.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, birdsong, blackbird, cân yr adar, flow, landscape ohotography, landscspe, music dhrupad, nature, Poetry on May 11, 2018| 1 Comment »
DHRUPAD 3 (blackbird song)
Blackbird rain, blackbird river,the rich so rich evening cool air, evening rich scent air, blackbird still river standing cool. Pines whisper the breeze the breeze the slide knife heart song thrills, mellow knife heart knife song. Rounded world voice river now ripple now voice. Apple rounded, juice voice, drip drip drip voice, echoed stone voice, remembering voice, saying floating cool rain voice. Golden smooth and jet black shiny voice. Rain split, rainbowed wrapped twist thread, weaving woven gold and gilded through and through, this warm this cool this water clear air song voice moment. Stopped and started time held and space thrilled, sun and moon and stars all, all named together, one river named, one moment twirled named, this river sorrow joy river, this eye opening out, vast vast this throb, this little throat, this heart, heart full, rain washed, cool washed, all washed, voice river, named.
—
