Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, blackbird, clouds, harvest festival, hills, landscape, mist, Poetry, rain, seaons, silence, song, time, valleys on October 6, 2013| 4 Comments »
HARVEST FESTIVAL
Cloud rests, winged.
Feathered, these upland mists.
Green grey the day along
Swathed and shrouded hills.
The still, one prayer, arcs
The scooped valleys.
(Pitted the stones,
Time-pocked).
A bell, a peal:
A gathered fruitfulness,
A hymnal of sunlit days.
In sainted, beached ship,
Sails of praise turn tides.
We become indwelling,
Folded,
The promise of rain,
The blackbird’s quiver-
Heart arrowed, liquid.
——
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, cities, emptiness enclosed, leaf fall, October, Poetry, rain, rush-hour, the lie of cities(ever empty), time-lapse on October 4, 2013| 4 Comments »
STILL VOIDED CITIES
How it is and how it seems:
The stuttered view,
Rain slanting in on warm southerlies
Grey, in tides, in waves,
A breath moist muttering
This first week of October,
(Shadows between green leaves
Turning purple,
Purple the ash keys, heavy
Beween wan, limp fingers
Counting the paling
Shortening days).
The engineer’s equations,
Crisp and sure:
The city walls
Disregarding season’s
Rise and fall.
Crystalline, always empty,
No shelter
( but a shell of concept),
Eternally still,
Void of heart
Where life slumps in
Sad blood rides,
Tides of melting
Soft flesh
Too swift to notice
This stark contrast-
Change and no change,
( the walls slow stain
With debris
Of swollen dreams
Fostered and forsworn
In these winded voids
And passageways),
These cities
Always silent, sublime,
Lit and shadowed
On a whim.
No place
For the slow dry arc,
The turning leaf
Falling in late sunlight
Lost trampled on asphalt
(The smell of new rain).
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clouds, green, haiku summer, landscape, leaves, mind, Poetry, rain on June 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »
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.
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birdsong, cloud, cuckoos, grasses, green, landscape, nature, Poetry, rain, resonance, summer, time, valleys, woods on June 15, 2013| 2 Comments »
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.)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, dream, garden, habits, Haiku, impressionist, landscape, lines of intent, nature, nerve pathways, persona, rain, roles, roses, sparrows, streets, symbolist on June 11, 2013| 2 Comments »
JUNE RAINS (haiku/haibun cycle)
Sudden gust of wind.
Rain-wet face.
These grey, empty streets.
These grey, empty streets:
I do not know their names.
They do not know mine.
A dream in cold dawn.
Too many words attached to memory. A posy of complaint, shades of all the colours of melancholy. Cast down, forgotten, they shall dissolve, mulch for future centuries. Beautiful air locating magical symbols. A play with syllabic sweetness, a river of sanity too far to touch.
A dream in cold dawn.
Somehow choosing a role
No-one else will have.
Is there a moment, a time, when each one of us decides our degree of visibility? Do we slip, collecting the well-worn clothes of a vacant consciousness, into comforting roles, familiar, mapped out? And so they adhere, become so owned. The first and the last in the queue. The sensible one, the designated driver, the quiet one, the strange one.
No-one else is here.
Squabbling sparrows
Scattering blossoms.
Rain-wet garden.
The colours have swiftly changed from the brightness of May to the weighed greens of June. Elder blossom is the punctuation, and the delicate scatter of wild roses. The bindweed curls, the honeysuckle prepares its longing fingers. The sun breeds cloud, sucks moisture and breathes storm.
No-one else will know
This one silent moment.
Rain wet garden.
Rain-wet garden
Flowers weighed down.
Unavoidable sorrow.
Unavoidable sorrow.
Thoughts falter.
The low-slung cry of swallows.
Low-slung cry of swallows
Steady rain
Strange emptiness.
Strange emptiness
Fills with peace.
Scent of wild roses.
Scent of wild roses:
Though they bend and weep
They know this rain a blessing.
—–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku, Haiku-ish, japan, machinery, monkeys, night, photography, Poetry, rain on June 1, 2013| 7 Comments »
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
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, dragons, dream images, dreams, fairytales, folklore, fox lovers, Haiku, Haiku-ish, japan, japan landscapes, kirin, landscape, landscape photography, magatama, mountain monks, mythical beings, night, Poetry, rain, sleepless on May 31, 2013| 2 Comments »
MAGATAMA BLINKS
night rain.
slow breath, flared nostrils
of meditating samurai.
drunken skeletons,
clattering arm in arm,
splashing puddles.
rain passes right through them.
five-tailed white fox
rolls over, kisses lover
and creeps out to hunt chickens.
moon lies back,
shivers,
thinking of ocean beds.
calligrapher practicing
with invisible inks,
worlds destroyed and created.
yamaboushi
splashes down mountain path,
breathing rock and root.
five miles high,
dragons and phoenixes
look down on city lights.
crows shift and grumble
nests full of the stolen dreams
of small children.
magatama blinks
turning into a jade bird,
once then twice.
slightly fuddled,
thinking up names
for new brands of sake:
night rain,
samurai nostrils,
calligrapher’s surprise,
moonlit window,
animal seance,
dancing foxes,
shadow river.
poet weaves clouds,
farts, scratches,
remembers, forgets.
cloud scroll, cherry dark trunks.
hooves of the kirin
echoing in the valleys.
there is no magic outside
the mind.
there is no mind outside
of magic.
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, Haiku, japan, landscape, night, photographs, Poetry, rain, sequence, waking on May 29, 2013| 3 Comments »
a href=”https://simonhlilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/frog-garden.jpg”>
1
pillow rain
blanket breeze.
dream fever.
2
dream fever
waking suddenly
heartbeat!
3
heartbeat,
ticking clock.
suspended weightless
between dream and sleep,
between day and night.
4
tangled drifting words
dream images
ticking clock
5
a tumble of words
dreams slipping away
this floating world
6
this floating world
sinking, bobbing,
rain-soaked curtains.
7
curtains of air.
moon behind cloud.
poet scribbling in darkness.
8
moving carefully
so as not to wake others-
it never works well!
9
the wind
the rain
tears well up,
sutras of hollowness.
10
wriggling dreams
half-formed.
aching heart.
—–
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Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cool, Haiku, moon, night, rain on May 17, 2013| 2 Comments »
simonhlilly 
Conversations with Invisible Friends 3
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blogs, comments, existence, Haiku, mirrors, plum sake, Poetry, rain, robin, silence, storm, words, worms on July 6, 2013| 3 Comments »
Another selection of comments and pieces inspired by other’s blog posts or blog comments. (We orchestrate…..)
NOISE
Prayer,
confessional,
creed.
God or Godless,
we ramble to ourselves
within our own bone cathedrals,
echoing with sighs and curses.
There is a completely soundproofed room
in some MidWest University.
No one had yet managed
to spend more than 45 minutes there.
Hullucinations after a few minutes.
We are not designed for silence or darkness.
We bleat and howl in our own jungles,
bleat and howl….
—
GIFT
This body,
This world:
A gift from a million suns.
—
NIGHT RAIN
A rain of words
puddle the page,
tongue-mind umbrella unfurls,
tastes flicker neon image,
dream world,
dream world.
—
MIRRORED
To see ourself reflected in the smile of our love
Is the only mirror should be allowed
Not the rotated smudge of silver window
Nor frozen shadows unbemused, inanimate.
—-
SQUALL
Whose soft words
Sweeping through
My mind’s cool edge,
I wonder?
Sound of distant rain.
Sound of distant rain.
Something seems forgotten:
Cool emptiness,
A taste of sorrow.
A taste of sorrow
For no reason
That I know.
Mantra of compassion.
Mantra of compassion.
Wind and rain
Blowing away
Ephemeral things.
—-
A CAST FOR WORMS
Well better and betterer.
Words for worms!
( Diet of Worms?).
Worm world.
Worm holes.
Cast about, Charles Darwin
( worms, his first love).
Lumbricus terrestris.
The name itself
Segmented, wriggling.
Beneath us all.
We, at last,
Their own dinner.
Earth to earth,
Tasting earth,
Making earth,
Loving earth.
Our Masters,
Squirmy worms,
Fast food,
Slow food,
Love food.
—–
ART OF POETRY
This hybrid birth,
a form of archaeology,
digging as science,
the science of digging,
the art of concealing and revealing,
building and collapsing, that is ,
constructing,
hybrid construction,
a constriction of possibilities,
a constraining of maps,
quantum thisness and thatness,
leaving more out than in,
making a point,
missing any other view,
poetry: the straining for meaning
without even pretending success,
e.e.cummins and e.e. goins,
a vowel,
a vapour,
a string of pearls,
words making doors,
doors opening,
sutras,
stitches,
hints for hunters…..
—
ROBIN
Looking back:
The world-
Bright, cocked eye
—-
GRACE
A small thing
Is not the same
As an inconsequential thing.
A loud voice
Is not the same as
A voice to be followed.
In one second,
In less, even,
The world can be born
Or can disappear
In front of our eyes.
Each person made afresh
Each to see what can be seen
What can be sung.
No wrong notes
If we do not know the tune.
We shall diminish and wither away
Jumping to conclusions.
Falling skillfuly
Is called flying.
Stumbling elegantly
Is called dancing.
Moving gracefully
Is called living.
—–
PERCEPT
Plum saké.
Too much
Slurs the mind
—-
METRE
It has presence and voidness.
It has frozen processes,
exited time,
become apt, concrete,
paradoxically gone.
Here
and both there and elsewhere,
but only inside
does it play a tune.
Lithophone,
bone music,
skeleton key.
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