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Posts Tagged ‘nature’

The Road to Llyn Brianne

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 25, 2014| 4 Comments »

THE ROAD TO LLYN BRIANNE

There are,
There upon the turning road,
Great stones that watch
Without eyes,
Deep gullies with secrets
But no guilt,
A green, lined knotting,
A measurement of altitudes,
A satisfaction of soughing,
Where the treetops pin cloud
And the loud, round thin
Cry of hawks
And the surprising gorse
And the dusty heather.

At this height
The still, silent, drowning waters
Are steel half polished,
The vowels of ice and aeons
Carved into old valleys
And the grey, cracked rocks
Peer out shaping wind and runnel,
A shelter for moss
And little things hardly cared for.

They are persistently hopeful:
These lone fishers for gold,
Generators purring
Sifting the blood of old mountains,
The dust of suns.

And the sheep
Nonchalent as philosophers,
And the swoop of druid crows
On the diving road,
Where distance is down.
The world curved
And marvellous.

Crisp, cusped,
Drunk on vast views,
Descending at last,
A road less laboured
Between blanketed green,
Behedged, somewhat planned,
The roll into town,
A reassertion of time
Into space.

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Fragments from a long road

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on August 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Fragments from a Long Road

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In the blue shadows:
White bindweed moons.
Indescribable fragrance,
This August, summer air.

How the hills
Swell with rain,
Rise pale and loiter
At the edge of sight.

Chicory, wide-eyed
by the roadside,
Ragged blue
as the windy sky.

Even through these warm still days,
The scot’s pines, ever singing
Of storms and roaring seas.

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Buxton in the High Peak

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2014| 6 Comments »

BUXTON IN THE HIGH PEAK

Away into the high hills shrouded.
Away to the high, scoured lands laid with lines of stone.
Where the wind crows cedilla the sky
Giving their own reasons for silence and for speech,
And the unknown calls across fields in trills and ghosts of rain.

We are smudged and drawn thin through tangles of time,
Halting to grasp slim volumes, locate a name or place.
A footfall, a scumble of gravel, a whisp of evening moth,
A rag, a window outlooking, a scurry of moments.

But always, cloud-hugged and green,
The valley air pricked with cool distance,
Fluent with miles of silence and the sky.
The depths below and the depths above,
A certain thinness, a certain wild lateness to the season,
A short uncertain summer, clouded, piled up fragrant.

A near forgotten tune, a debris of careless architecture,
A mapping of overgrown scars, a huddling of sorts.
Under the dark maples, under the covens of elder,
Under the long light, the distant shining land crowned with evening sun.
The long roads, the long roads from hill to hill,
A nonchalent scattering of sheep, stone kept.

This long breath, a cool drink, a meeting of streams
Down by the rose, purple rose-dropped park
Where jackdaws bob in and out those stately walks
Where the walnut tree and the yews kneel and pray.
And always the happy, straining dogs, the flurry of ducks
And the slow, heavy drops fall bending the grasses,
Blue geranium and honeysuckle, and a drift of elm seed,
A patient confetti, swirled away down drain and culvert.

The high town and the low town
A history of names, a relaxed concentric dream,
Gathered, pooled, walled by silent woods,
By silent caves and the sound of running waters,
A scribbled note from heaven.

—

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June Now

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

JUNE NOW

Days as laid out cream white,
Days as numbered and round,
Days as fragrant as elder.

Worlds turned facing sunlit skies,
Worlds warmed, fed and content.
Golden bowls, sky-blue bowls and green
Holding as much as may be.

For a few weeks, near perfect balance:
Heaven and earth set spinning
On fingertip of time,
A measured delight.

—

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Soft

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2014| 4 Comments »

SOFT

It lies ready,
Gleaming, gentle
For the gentle sun,
Gentle for the rain.

Gentle the dead,
Soft the morning twilit
Silence.

Soft the hour
And cool
Before birdsong.

A silvered grey
The heavy grasses
Full and laid
In low waves.

Seed mantra
Low and fragrant.

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Book of Hours (continued 2)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2014| 4 Comments »

4
(Nones)

Swallows dancing
At the eaves:
An architecture
Of song.

Round worlds:
Nests take
The form of heaven
The form of earth.
Lined soft,
Down heartbeat,
Safe and sound.

—

6
(Compline)

A perfect moon
In a perfect sky:
Perfect hymn,
Perfect prayer.

All night
In dew-wet fields
Lambs call to their mothers,
Mothers to their lambs.

On shrouded paths:
Solomon’s seal,
Lily of the valley.
Simple grace.

—


The original Hours of Prayer were seven, but over time some combined together, like Matins and Lauds at sunrise, and some seem to have been dropped, or abbreviated, like the Vigils throughout the night. We are poorer for some freedoms. The rhythms and tides of quiet attention lock us into a humbler being within the world.

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Mingled (Book of Hours)

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

—

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DYLAN

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2014| 6 Comments »

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I read a little Dylan Thomas last night. First time for a long time. “Under Milk Wood” is a true classic, but much of his other verse writing, I find a welter of words that quickly become too rich and dark for my stomach. But it is jazz. A complex, distressing barrage of improvisation that stuns the prissy levels of consciousness and lets the bardic, raw unconscious voice reel in delighted freedom of sound and association. A windful sky of darkness racing with occassional glimpse of translucent still starlight. So here I am, witless and broken backed…..

DYLAN
1
Son of the wave
A fluid tide jazz
Murmuration of starling words
Swinging drunk
Self-eloquent
Singing down evening lanes
The world exultant
The world squeezed
Tumbling in woven line
Dancing on tender, long toes
Sparkling.

2
My father’s mother, too, was a Thomas,
Small as a mouse with a shout and a bite
Who faded fast, turned white, drowned in herself,
Lost and homesick for something lost.

And I, maybe, now abraded down to
A Welsh road of rolling river words
Tied golden, chained to tongue
A dance for ears, mighty, joyous,
Cloud-wrenching, heart-bursting soliloquy.

3
A deliquescent, delightful urination
Of golden words.
A mushroom-minded mouthful
Of minced meanings.
A rhythmic tumble, a murder of crows,
A wild macaw of seagulled callings,
A taste of death, sweet and dusty.
So falling a sound, so rising,
A breathless gander, a meander,
A vast river of undone spun
Spick and span trodden sound.
A rush, a relief, a rocket acceleration
Of howling words
Through one bright mind.

4
O Dylan, a dilation
A look you here
A gone-to-bed-at-noon,
A fluster of seed heads
Blown in breezes,
The drunken, dizzy delight
And a slow, slow, solidifying
Concretion of the weight
And want of seconds,
Rapid, rapid, the going and the coming
Of sparrows, the flutter of days
Between spark and darkness
Of death worm dark.

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Two for a Sunday

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

SERMON

From his pulpit
On the top-most branch
The wood pigeon’s
Sonorous sermon
Drones, resounding,
Slow around.

Beneath him,
Hidden in back-pew bush
Disrespectful sparrows,
In their Sunday best browns and bibs,
Chatter and play,
Impious, but loved,
Regardless
Of the Most High.

—

LIGHT

An instant before birdsong.
Time returns with increments of colour.
Light is all there is:
Light frozen, light expanding.
We orbit meaning, voiceless
In wonder,
Witnesses to glory.

—-

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Conversations with Invisible Friends 13

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2014| 4 Comments »

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WINGS

Looking over the hills,
Low cloud,
Dusk after rain.
I would wish you
All wings,
My friends.

—

SOUND CHAMBER

This voice born from caves
This voice shaping emptiness
This voice, the flavour of silences.

—

CUP

This vessel of poetry
Always lucid, empty
Til held and warmed
By palms, tipped
Towards lips,
An exchange of breath..

—

TICK

There is no time
In the worlds of spirit,
Nor in the worlds of matter.
Only in the mind of Man
Does the click and tick
Of moments
Signify a neurotic cauldron
To oblivion or eternity.

—

HAVEN

This mind, timeless, anchored
Rocks, sways, on word tides.
Gull-wind senses roam and wheel
Searching food.
The patterns of love
And belonging
In rippled reflections.
Harboured, havened, home.

—

SLIGHT

Sweet violet
White and nodding,
Rising in damp westerlies.
Prophets with blazing heads roar by
Raving,
Not hearing, not caring.

—

SEMIOTICS

Nice, nice, nice!
(Triple nice denotes favour of the gods),
a vapour aromatic, bitter,
Rising from certain, approved of,
Sacrifice.
One who knows his place
And knows it might
Be nowhere particular,
Except the particularity
Of cloud chambers
And the silent
Expansion of a supernova
(Inexplicably given
Nomenclature
Of someone’ wife).
The only object
Is its name.
Three moving lines.
Hence the wise man
Remains silent
Watching the return
Of swallows.
No blame.
—

IN THE MACHINE

Love the depths!
What computers really dream,
what they say to each other,
not just oh and one,
but a cosmology of dark spaces,
exploding stars….

—

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