On long tides
The rivers rest.
Longer than
Long moments
Of memory.
Swaying words
Swinging between meanings.
Lost days
Remembered and forgotten,
Sweet details, seasons.
Posts Tagged ‘seasons’
On Long Tides
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged languid, memory, mind, moments, Poetry, seasons, thought, tides on January 27, 2014| 2 Comments »
Flicker and returning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art prints, Autumn, Haiku-ish, landscape, mandala, Poetry, seasons on September 21, 2013| 5 Comments »
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.
—–
May, Kissed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged coupling, fertility, love, May, morning, nature, Poetry, seasons, sensuality, spring on May 1, 2013| 1 Comment »
MAY, KISSED
White puddle
Seed cools
Moon damp
Blue
Sky bed.
May dawn
Opening
Long-limbed,
Dewed.
Kissed, one
By one
Each fold
Each hollow.
Sun-covered,
Warmed,
Held.
****
Tied
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, being here now, belonging, consciousness, deep ecology, Exaltation, existence, life, meaning, nature, Poetry, seasons, space, time, world on April 7, 2013| 4 Comments »
TIED
My heart is tied to the swell of time.
This tide of days, this wash of seasons.
This breath, this slow explosion,
This unfolding, this revealing and concealing.
Unfurled, I am stretched elastic
From dawn to dusk,
From horizon to horizon’s edge,
Surprised by cloud and bluster,
Swept up in flock and murmur.
Chimed, cascaded,
Catapulted into distance,
Collapsed to dancing, molecular dust.
Sun-caught, moon-cooled, star-pierced,
Tumbled through grasses and shadows,
Shorn by cold, wakened by ice,
Shaped and turned, lathed, formed,
Reduced, concentred, made real,
Made utterly real, made whole.
Gauged and runnelled,
Flooded in memory,
Eroded in seconds and hours,
Made into the new,
Then back to familiar, dust.
A rise and fall,
A breath, a heartbeat,
A word
Whispered.
*
Balm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, consciousness, everything, landscape, life, moon, night, peace, Poetry, seasons, stillness, the universe on March 2, 2013| 2 Comments »
BALM
I shall cool my mind
Upon the low golden moon
I shall drain my habitual sorrow
Letting it flow earthwards
And rest.
Rounded quietness
The clear roof
Of a star-filled night.
Everything is as it is.
Everything is moving
Towards
A dancing of its own nature.
Sleep and dream and waking,
The blink of day and night-
Vibrations on the rim of
Creation’s bowl.
The rippled liquid,
Concentric pools,
An eye-blink.
Breath from the wing
Of a passing owl.
Polish the mirror,
Breath and sleep.
Frost at dawn
And the new lamb’s
Thin cry.
In the dead elm
Two magpies
Are building a nest,
Ivy clad, bejewelled.
As long as it can
Life will fill
All voids,
Dancing heedless
Over the precipice
Of time,
Disregarding limits,
Floating
As if it were
A garland, a light,
Set adrift
As a blessing
As an asking
Upon one great river
Sedate, curving slow,
Seawards.
Filled with Birds
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cats, dawn, dreaming, February, landscape, Poetry, seasons, song, vision, weather on February 23, 2013| 4 Comments »
FILLED WITH BIRDS
Dawn glides in silence,
Settles
Crystallising
around purring cats,
(quiet watching eyes
filling each room).
This house:
A pebble set against
A river of wind.
Two days ago
The sun splashed spring,
A bright relaxing,
Filled with birds.
Now,
Winter has returned
To gnaw our bones.
Still, light is growing
At either end of day,
Stretched, though, and pale,
But welcome.
I am become an interweaving
Of days and moments,
A halting song
Made poignant
By strange harmony,
An old song
With new words
And a new tune.
Days
Filled with birds.
Nights,
Dream-filled,
Word-filled.
A pebble set
Against
A river of time.
“Moonlight Through Glass”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged collection, contemplative, metaphysics, Moonlight through Glass, nature of mind, new book, Poetry, published, reality, seasons, space, spiritual landscapes, time on February 22, 2013| 7 Comments »
My first collection of poems is now available from Smashwords.( http://www.smashwords.com ) it contains one hundred and eleven poems compiled from my first year’s blogging, up until December 2012. This is my first attempt at e.publishing, and as far as I can see it seems ok – looks really nice on Kindle.
If you would like to take a look you can download the first twenty percent of the text for no charge. Price to download the whole caboodle is $6.99 (apparently there are 13,910 words, most of them in the right order! In a little while we should also have the book as a downloadable pdf available from http://www.treeseer.com
“This is the first published collection of poetry from Simon H. Lilly, an artist and lecturer who is also an established writer on esoteric healing. The majority of the works are from the last two years, with a selection of earlier poems spanning four decades. There are over a hundred poems, from short, haiku-style pieces to longer performance texts and epic narratives. The landscape of the changing seasons is often the backdrop upon which the nature of mind, awareness and reality is explored. His poetic influences are the spiritual landscapes evoked by Classical Chinese and Japanese poets, the rhythms and word-play of Old English charms and spells, and the wistful lilt and muscle of the Celtic bardic traditions, particularly the contemporary Scottish Gaelic masters.
Rich language, sometimes dense, sometimes light, always looking to recreate an instant within memory, a picture in words. Quiet, contemplative, but never sentimental, he describes these poems as “flocks of thoughts watched from a quiet distance”.”
Next project (when I’ve fully recovered) will be to publish “The House of Trees: a poem of thirteen parts.” and then maybe a volume with a mixture of word and image (a lot more unpredictable in how it will work on different reading platforms, though I believe).
Imbolc
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, February, festivals, fire, Imbolc, light, nature, Poetry, seasons, spring, St. Bride, traditions, warmth on February 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »
IMBOLC
The small fires
Must sustain us still.
Cold flows,
A cloudless wind
From the North.
Hope is our scarf.
Hope warms our hunger,
A thinly stretched continuance.
One small spark
At dawn
And the long,
Slow fuse
Of Spring
Is lit.
The beck and rill
Of Time.
Eight Haiku for a Year of Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, change, emptiness, Haiku, heat, Poetry, relections, seasons, water, words are pictures on September 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Eight Haiku for a Year of Days, another posey of haiku for the changing year, now that autumn skies and golden light begin to soften the edges of summer….
*
The dew departed;
But under the willow,
And in the lark’s voice….
*
Cattle grazing
On the sky.
Early morning lake.
*
Watching them swing
This way then that –
Small boats
On the breath of the tide.
*
Hot dust
Between my toes.
The empty fields.
*
Amongst the stubble
Drunken daddy-long-legs.
The silent sky.
*
Come in, come in,
Leaves of autumn,
The wind is cold!
*
Four day’s frost
Crunching underfoot.
Chattering jackdaws.
*
Stubble field.
One withered apple
On the old tree.
Eight Haiku for Shrouded Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, Haiku, moon, nature, night, Poetry, seasons, sequence, solitude, travel, Winter on September 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »
*
Every other noise
In the storm:
The latecomers.
*
Sounding deep my soul:
The wind that moves the dark pine.
How far seems that home!
*
Only me
And the full moon
In this empty boarding house.
*
Nothing remained to be said.
The wind
High in the darkness.
*
The empty clouds
Fill with light.
Slowly, the moon.
*
Dead of night.
In the empty yard
The dripping standpipe
Is silenced.
*
This sleeping world:
River singing to itself
Under the stars.
*
Halo of the moon
Shifts like a dreaming cat.
The dawn wind.
——
This is a selection of haiku from various times, put together with a similarity of mood or feel. To add to it a very recent little piece:
Little cat
Can’t settle:
Moonlight
Rippling through the windows.
—–
simonhlilly 