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Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

MIDSUMMER DAYS
1
Heading, slowly north from under the cloud. As the road stretches, the sun breaks through. Heat seeps down and reflects up from the ground.

Wild rose and elder
The bones deep in my belly
Warm and relax.
Lazy summer clouds.

2
By nine
The hills are hidden
Light rain by the lake
Swifts dancing low

By ten
The day dips
A long twilight,
Undecided whether
It will leave or stay.
Ducks glide over the waters.

A moment only
The lime trees by the stream
Seem to radiate light
Before a sudden,
Most certain darkness.

The earth, at last,
Chooses the sleep of night.
The sky, though,
Still open eyed,
Too awake for stars.

—-

Solstice morning.
Lost amongst sweeping cloud
The sudden breeze makes rain
Under every tree.

Rested upon ripples
By degrees peace infiltrates.
Ducks line the lake shore.

—–

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MAGATAMA SAYS

Magatama says this is what you are, a wriggle in time, a wriggle in space. An eye that is hollow, a mind that is hollow, a space where, a vessel where, sentience pools and flows through. Embryo spinning round sun yolk. A distinction, a seam, a pebble, an accumulation of used data, a debris, a morraine, a momentum of moments lost, not quite forgotten.
A tube, sealed at either end with only hope. It will not suffer to remain. It too will distort amd become formed, reformed. The spin of horizons never long denied. A new in and a new out. A new edge, a new world, given names from somewhere else. The hollow eye, for the hollow eye does not see except what it has seen before. Somewhere there was a beginning, but it was not here, not here. Each key becomes a door, each door a wall, each wall a cell, each cell a wondering of me and mine, a selfish small delight, a harbouring of dream. Now the tide slips, the shattered, polished brilliance fades. We are left high, drying, the long keening of gulls, sandflies and bladderwrack. No more words. Day becomes day.
Scatter, scatter,
Ye stars!
Scatter,
Ye manifold living beings!
However so far
This home
Shall never become lost,
(though misremembered,
Though mistook),
So wrapped, so folded,
So entangled it is
Within your sheer fibre,
Your fluid, your feeling.
Flee as far as
Beyond the named,
Further than edge,
Farther than form.
Digging foundations for what walls exist, reconstructing our noble and grave histories, mirrors and clouds, equations, flocks of reasons seeking a roost, a reputation. The sun has hidden herself in a cave. Where is the sly shaman will entice her out with curiosity? Shiny things, laughter of others. Wrapped up in, wrapped around and upon ourselves. In becoming out, out in, the curve of edge, empty but for its own density.

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The scratching, sketching reveals magatama is also an ear, an orifice that listens, that absorbs…..and so too, turns doodling into that ubiquitous Celtic mysterious icon, the ‘trumpet spiral’, or for the more botanically minded, the mushroom divided, or for those who watch the way waters weave, the rippled surface vortex……but the doodle as doodle, as gesture, as delight of wrist, it is an outward sweep, a slow arc, an inward sweep, conch consciousness, two shapes from one line, an ineffability, a mystery, a going out and a return, the shape of a soul. Spirit language. It is always tricky, always says more than it says. Clouds conversing with hills………

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MAGATAMA RETURNS

Tight arc
Hard as stone
Open eye.

Rigid curl
Weighed tight
Pulsing.

Foetal curl
Settled
Pulsing.

What is it?
What is it not?
Magatama.

Worn smooth
Rubbed
Inward.

Container
Contained
Key.

One skin
Rubbed smooth
Inner, outer.

Stretching
Taking form
Throbbing.

Rising head
Looking
Seeing.

Eagle beak
Bear claw
Worn smooth.

Incontrovertible proof
A previous universe
Magatama.

Worn away
All that remains:
First universe.

Hooked,
Held,
Harvested.

Hollow seed
Throwing curved edges,
Expansion.

Hollow centre
Regarding flow
Back to nothing.

Becoming precious
Passed down:
What remains.

Accumulating
One surface:
Time-space.

Oldest unknown
First limit
Convolution.

—-


Every now and then, the magatama awakes, whispers into half-sleep. It is a strange being, a shape so simple, so involuted. A seed, a genetic meme. Casting around, I wondered if there were other antediluvian icons that would stir that ancestral well so surely. So far, the closest approach is by the Celtic torc. Like the magatama to the first Japanese peoples, the torc epitomised what to be a Celt meant. A real, tangible object, an object of trade, of status, of power. I shall have to listen to their whispers also……

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SUMMER RAIN

Summer rain.
It can almost be forgiven:
Warm, green air.

—-

Storm grey weight
Flowing grasses
Rabbit’s ears twitching.

—

Darker by degrees
Still air cooling
The first drops
Shiver.

—-

Still life
Hidden sparrows
Slow rain

—-

Slow rain
Hits every leaf
Syncopated greeting.

—-

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THERE SHOULD BE CUCKOOS

There should be cuckoos.
The warm silver clouds
Low with rain
Sheeting the high hills,
Green and weighed down
With yesterday’s light.

There should be cuckoos.
Floating, echoing hidden
Like a gong, like a memory
Turning over the still heart
Melting tight paths of thought,
Manifest distance.

There should be cuckoos.
Inhabiting every wooded fold
Deep in the world
Now settled, fruiting,
Slowly inturning, indwelling
Heading high to solstice
And then the long
Slow burn to harvest.

There should be cuckoos.
Now the hay is turned and gathered
Now creamy elder scents the air,
Worlds in worlds, layered, established.
Angels barefoot down the lanes,
Honeysuckle fingers, messages forgot.

There should be cuckoos
Measuring this loosening, this hollow,
Replacing thought and song
Answering all, settling all,
Letting go, adrift and floating.
Low clouds, rain heavy,
Warm air’s slow somersault
The swaying grasses, the rippling grasses.
From the green world’s roof,
From its rafters,
There should be cuckoos.

—–

(Ornithologically suspect, as cuckoos here in England usually call most in April, but it was the thought of cuckoos on a warm, cloud-filled day in June, that inspired this flow of words.)

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WARMING

(The ghost of William Blake conversing with
The ghost of Samuel Palmer, down by the apple
Orchard, perhaps)

Sunlight gathers heat.
Sparrows in the eaves
Flustered wings, feeding, fetching.

Small is the delight
That accumulates bliss, drop by drop.

The easy centuries
Of a cat’s sleeping breath.

It is a life of small moments,
A slow, steady filling:
Small moments noticed,
Not blessings to be prayed for,
Not dreams to be hollowed out from air,
Not glorious futures
Nor the wrinkled, cold hand of victory.

Upholding the fragile,
Precision of caring,
Peculiar coincidence,
Unexplainable connection.

No arrows of equations pinning certainty,
The sly, mad oracle of statistics,
Prophecies of bacterial bloom.
Summer storm
Here and gone..

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SEEN THROUGH AND THREADBARE

We are tumbled, we are lost.
Dreams scattered, dreams hanging on.
Bleached of radiance, long bitter hours –
The nonsense of encumberance.
Expectation exposed, soured, drained.
Threadbare themes clutching for others,
Drifting away, drifting.
Stale rooms, wan sunlight.
Uplifted, waylaid by thin cliché:
Music somewhere to race through,
To wear as flags of intention.

A matter of opinion, this weighing of souls.
The animal-headed ones cast out
For the favoured, faceless, nameless accountants.
Glory rationalised as aberrant chemical imbalance,
Ninety-nine point nine percent of all known dreams
Killed, deadened, ridiculed.
Distracted, taken for a ride,
Disengaged from small beauty,
Cursing the train of more,
The sleek highway to an echoed here.
Consumed, never consummated.
It will never add up to much.

Friends, one by one,
Acquiescing to anonymous silence.
Silent dawns without laughter,
Void cracking through the eggshell light.
A pillow of dissapointment
Stifling a few last breaths.
The parasite gone one step too far,
One step far too far.
Abducted, returned, discarded,
Tested, rejected.
Numbed, awaiting the quenchless wrath
Of the righteous.

—

( a small cloud of melancholy drifting by,
A life returned unopened)

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VOICES FROM WHITE NOISE ( a dream stream)

I have tuned my ears towards the voice and must try to narrate, to corner sense, 
scribbling 
urgent message 
mind map 
message 
wittering.
I have heard the ravings of the cellared recidivist, the relentless, insistent heretic.
I have chosen,on a whim, to sit next to the glassy stared lunatic on the bus, the Ancient Mariner, and must bend and blow in that breeze.

There is a thread, 
a whisper, a word 
that travels through our dreams. 
Something that remains, that delicately holds on. 
How long does an idea flicker and burn in darkness before it expires? 
(The sigh of acquiesced defeat.)

Deceit is freely given, not asked for, cajoling. Truth must be asked for, urgently, earnestly sought. Why? Truth cannot be weighed out, patted neat and square like butter, wrapped and satisfactory. Truth does not fare well as a commodity. It is a map from only where you are, only from that place, whispered to you alone. Not one great instruction for all. Only madmen rave about universal truths. Each truth is an apple. Each the most round, succulent sweetness produces a thousand seeds all different: some soft, some bitter, some long-lasting, some fragrant. And no one can tell which might be which but by time and patience and the eventual taste of it.

So some of us wake to our dreams, 
scribble in the dark urged to construct, 
to record, 
to remember whispers. 
A reconstruction of echoes.

If I should continue long enough, listen, mould, worry it, then shall it eventually run true, discordant chaos becoming rejoicing refrain, voices emerging from the white noise. The mandala will become populated, the statues shall speak, the mirror offer wise advice, sound reflection….

It fails, it falters with daylight.
What was clear, insistent, cogent,
Pales and hollows.
Dismiss the howls, the complaints,
The sequences that seemed fair.
Tuned out, they rant in another quadrant
Of time and space, stiffled by yawns,
Inconsistent with birdsong.
The Furies, the Oracles,
Sinking slowly
To darker depths,
Slipping,
Spiral-wise,
Melodramatic
Monologues,
Mouths filling
With sifting sands….

——-

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trial3

A LOVE SONG OF THE MOON

sideways drift
long bones curve

surprising silk,
always surprising

sideways drift
lilt

dream eyelid smile
opening pale, lucent

slip slow
foam falling
drip,dribble

one drop
viscous, sweet

night falling in
acres: time blankets

enfolding white
silent gasp, always,
always

ever is
slightly vanishing

hidden, certain,
downwards

long-boned,
spine line
tingle-tipped

inward curve,
coved, curled

combed, covered,
feathered

sigh breathing
bell

snow cold
melting, settling,
melting

—-

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ripple light2

JUST LIKE HAIKU

1
nonchalant monkey
busy eating fruit
raises an eyebrow:
single snowflake
drifting down.

2
sound of seagulls,
echoing sea caves –
air-conditioning unit
splutters to life.

3
night rain.
a million leaves
gently clapping

—-

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