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As it is almost Autumn Equinox, here are two short seasonal pieces that arose recently.

FLICKER

He cools the air, calling crow,
A rasp of drift, the crisping leaves.

All things desire to sink earthwards
Towards a fitting sleep.

The sky left more void, blue, vast,
Scraped clear – the circling cry of buzzards.

It gutters, flares and flickers:
The nub of summer.

We become atmospheric, vapourous.
We are tumbled down, crumbled to autumn.

Made old, aged again,
Circumscribed, hemmed in
By hours of darkness.

—–

RETURNING

Light pushed at day’s end,
A cold, blue edge.
All hearts, filling, emptying, filling.
The year grows small again,
Summer’s passion eases.
We can go home,
Look inside,
Light fires,
Dream dreams.

—–

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CURSIVE

Once only this voice,
This line of sound.
One unto another
A flow of, a push of,
Outwards reach,
Mind to mind reaching
Like a tide’s reach
Stirring sands
A finger’s breadth
Beyond the possible
And then on again,
Another and another,
Creeping upwards
Into new land,
New not-self.
Rolled out, dragged,
Shaped, explored,
These sounds
Eroding the silence
Of the white page.

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WORD

Paper planes:
Some glide,
Some crash.

The subtle folds
Lilt and stomp
A trial by word,
A swoop, elegant
And pointed.

Hitting and missing
Of targets.
Languid language
Airborne,
Unconcerned,
Once born.

—–

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INVISIBLE FRIENDS 6

Time for a new batch of scribbles inspired by other’s words here, webbed together catching jewelled flies, eating or storing them for colder, frosted mornings…

OBIT.

Terse words
for a long peal of time,
a good,
an only, place ,
for such as he to rest.

—-

GIFT

Even so,
beautiful writing,
a dove released,
vanishing into cloud.
Knowing emptiness is,
at least, knowing something.

ASANA

My tongue,
a bookmark,
syllabub syllables,
sutras,
plough with brows furrowed,
let us lotus,
pray pray away,
body buddy bodhi,
enlonged lungs,
a crack of knees
( not a new noise, yknow).
A sound stretching out.


CASTLE WALLS

The draw of ruins!
What is it?
The harsh past crumbled back,
mulch,
earth music…..

—-

GHOSTS, FLEAS, A MUSE.

We,
Ghosts
Of poetry,
Stumbling lines,
Echoed,
Staring far off:
The effort
To recall.

—-

HAY BALES

Wheels fallen off the sun wagon.
It falters and droops
towards a fall.

——

COMPOSITION, DECOMPOSITION

A dance in slightest sound:
first mind rolling mutters,
then quiets as pen flows scratching,
the silence between words,
a rush of voices.
Silence is not an absence of sound..

—-

THE GREAT WORK

Selecting or not selecting,
wearing a mask,
choosing a mask,
revealing, hiding.
Dipping in a toe,
how deep these black waters of self?
How fast,
how airlessly drown,
out of depth,
no one watching.

—-

AS WELL

As well as can be.
When we fray thin,
with time or weather,
it’s only a sign, perhaps,
to deepen roots
and not mind the storm winds,
nor the thoughts
circling laments in empty skies….

—-

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HISTORIES

This slight remove,
This passion,
This sliver.

A slide towards,
( but not quite ),
Certainty.

A tumbling
Of eventualities
Concentred,
Piled up.

A manufacture
Of futures.

Debris chelated,
Polished, honoured.
A beginning,
A middle, an end.

Bound leaves,
Fragile and
Shattered.

—-

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First Signs

FIRST SIGNS

The last few days autumn has come with sweeping winds and towering skies. Cold rains between radiant brightness. The birches are yellowing, the hawthorns reddening, the elders turn gold and purple, the swallows have all slipped away. Because it was my habit, a long time ago, to be in the North at the start of autumn, I have felt the pull of the clear cold, the descent of the year, bracken and heather, valley melancholy.

With this sudden,
Southern cold
I would be, again,
In Portree

On a bright morning
Watching the light
Push the small boats
Tethered to the tide

And the gulls
In the upper town calling
From the hills of roofs,
Naming them all :
The clouds and storms
Of coming winter

And with the smell of baking
And the smell of woodsmoke
And the roar of Time,
Shored up by thick walls
And a gathering of smiles.

—-

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DAWN PAINTS TURNER

Eloquence of moments,
Tuned, fascinated.

Time when time
Turns visible.

Unfold the dawn:
A wooded hilltop
Crowned with
Swaying light.

A tentative colour
Of cloud,
An increase.

A commitment
To form,
A dance.

A fugue
Of entities,
A cascade
Of certainty.

Quiet
In the windless valley,
Soundless,
But for birdsong.

Spacious and vast
This becoming
Is.

Gaze
On the face
Of delight.

—-

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DREAM WORKS

Dark moon
Ripples through
The world.

Strong winds
Along the coast,
Fires pushed fast.

The buried stir,
The sleek hoarders
Of wisdom, stir.

Next to nothing
Is the answer.

A satin edge,
A mighty stillness
Witholding breath,
Inner heat.

Abiding
In emptiness,
The dragons of formation.

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Just got a small pile of hardback volumes of my long poem, “The House of Trees”. Quite pleased with how they have come out. After a few false starts, I went with Blurb. Having a solid book with paper pages is a joy. Not aiming for any mass market ( wherever that is ), particularly with poetry!

If anyone is interested, a few copies are available from http://www.greenmanshop.co.uk so please go and have a look.

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Each spread has an image page facing the text pages, derived from photographs I took in Skye last autumn.

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A priority of needs,
a hanging garden,
weed words, never planned, disgracing the symmetry, a scurried rush for sunlight before seed fall, a flap of wingtips, the world delighting improvisation.
Failure as a new song,
simmer, ferment, brew.
Rime, surf, time and space foam.
Somehow we know too fast, act too slow. The heart can hold almost everything when it lets go. I, or this voice of I, have breath,
have oracular,
ocular, awkward,
backward walking.
Weed words,
green and flourishing,
through cracks and voids,
softening lines, wishing well, careless though careful. I grope, so to say, a tease of groundsel, a sturdy vowel of plantain. Self-heal and teasel, both mop purple from blue sky ( now the knapweed is hard and dry, a shell bone scatter). Us poets, us weed dreamers, taken up (now the swallows shake apart the dream summer) ripening appled,
though bitter
still delightful
with the turn of things,
the edge of autumn, a juggle of suns, a whisper of moons, a world re-webbed for dew of fallen stars, a cascade of frost. To keep the hearth, to gather in. See breath, turquoise, misted. As long as there is laughter, all is not lost.

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