Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku, moon, night, Poetry, seasons, time on August 30, 2012| 2 Comments »
*
But for the shape
You could well mistake it
For a summer cloud –
The moon this evening.
*
Losing their place
They hesitate
Then start again –
Cicadas counting stars.
*
As if climbing this hill
Had made them mine
– the moon, the city.
*
Sapped of its colour
Beneath the streetlamps:
The flowering cherry.
*
Warm wind all night long
Rushing to heaven,
Kindling the stars, even.
*
In my dream
I named them all –
The birds of dawn.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku, nature, Poetry, seasons, senses, time, timeless, words are pictures, year's passing on August 29, 2012| 2 Comments »
Six Haiku for Timeless Days
——–
Cloud upon cloud
Over the still water
A cuckoo’s voice.
———
The wind
Is the ladder on the horizon
That those tall clouds climb.
———–
The thunderstorm.
In this deserted garden
Only you and I,
Little frog.
———–
Rain running off
A horse’s flanks.
The longest day.
———
Stone, standing
In an empty field.
Waiting, maybe.
———-
My old home
– memories
Where I left them.
———–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, February, moon, night, Poetry, seasons, silence, words drift away and back on March 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »
February is month of silence, of purification, of beginnings. White days, black nights. A hunger to be started, a hunger to remain at peace……
I
Silver and still.
A geography of birdsong
Shaping the silent air.
Continents of cloud
Laminate the day.
II
PILLOW
The full moon,
Like a gentle rain:
Honey to the soul.
Sweeter still
The sweet music
Playing in that vast silence.
On the tip of the tongue:
How cool the roundness of it.
On the pillow where I rest my eyes,
How fragrant that single flower of jasmine.
III
THE AVENUES OF EVENING
A thousand stars
For each man’s eye.
A thousand stars
From each night’s vigil.
There is fire
At the centre of everything.
Fire beneath
The cool breeze of evening.
Fire in the white cherry’s breath,
Fire in the poet’s head –
The crazed poet lover
Strumming his heart.
In the heart of each man
A thousand stars.
In the heart of the night
A thousand antiphonies.
Mars’s red eye cools:
He drinks
The white cherry avenues
Of Aphrodite.
The world,
The round world
Spins through fragrant air.
Fire in the worm
Fire in the well
Fire in the garden
Fire in the eyes of the cast out.
Looking out-
As if for the first time,
(every time, the first time)….
Fire in the cold woman’s dream
Fire in the forest.
Fire and flood spreads spinning
In the woman’s womb,
In the swan’s rustle
By the water’s edge.
The nipple of Life shoots milk in fire
Through blank blindness.
A thousand stars spread in each drop
Flung free in distance.
Fire that burns
And fire that answers,
Freezing the spaces in between.
Fire that falls on the thumb
Is sucked without thought
Transforming fire to word,
Word to illumination.
Fire running through each beast,
It courses the veins of each child.
Each glance: a thousand stars,
Each familiar in the memories of a million souls.
A thousand stars for each man’s eye
In the cherry’s breath,
In the avenues of evening.
IV
TWO WOMEN
Now they lie, one and two
United in oblivion,
Comforting their powers.
Moth white, moon pale,
Sleep’s hills and valleys
Slightly rising, falling.
They know it and
Do not know it:
Measuring the world,
Wrapping it in movement.
Breath fills the room
And whispers through the house.
The seed falls through its golden cloud.
And now the cat prowls
Where no cat is.
Cat of desire
Purring at the bedhead.
Cat of darkness
Wrapping around its warmth.
The Familiar of the Female
Measuring the world,
Wrapping it in movement.
V
ONCE ONLY
In the grey dawn the honey kiss is hers
That made you shiver.
You do not know her name
You do not know her face,
Coming to your dreaming.
Her scent is summer
Her skirts sounding seas.
But she never waits for you.
But she never waits for you.
She will wait for you but once.
Only once will she wait for you.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, brambles and the sea, equinox, lammas, melancholy, Poetry, seasons, turning year on September 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Fires within the world – summer’s ending.
I
Bank the fires
Hum the lullabye
End the world’s work
Weave a breath of dream.
Tree shadows on the wall
Watching the flicker of eyelids.
Who is awake?
Who is dreaming?
————
II
The fast, turning wheel
Of the northern year:
warm honey summer air
Sunk now
Deep within the nested chambers
Of swelling berries.
Still
Golden days.
But more insistent now:
The filigree of stars
That thin the silence.
Shadows lengthen,
Edges turn pale:
Fragile are the hours,
Well-wrought
The gathering in.
The sutras of Time:
A balm,
Most beautiful elegy.
Never weep
The drained cup:
The wheel of the year
Is the beat
Of your heart.
——-
III
No moon
This Lammas Eve,
But all along the path:
Bindweed,
Yarrow
And silver mugwort.
——-
IV
( upon the increased beuracratisation of personal choice, living, breathing, eating, dying, thinking, choosing……)
A drift of angels:
All smiles,
Cudgels behind their backs.
“Do what we say –
message from an Almighty –
or creation will crack.”
Thugs of theocracy,
Regulators of vocabulary,
Rhetoric of righteousness,
Statistics of placation:
A bad smell
Rebranded.
Hoodwinked,
The viral notions
Quietly take charge –
We succumb to apathy,
A belief in benificent power.
“This is all for your own good,
Protection
you cannot afford to ignore,
Advice
You will be ill-advised to question…..”
———–
V
(upon a sudden plague of idiots with circular stupidity…)
And I shall not smile
To keep you merry-
You who go round
In the same ruts endlessly,
Congratulating yourselves
For the new views,
The progress made.
Deeper and deeper
In muddy mire,
With tawdry mawkish ballads –
Hymns to mediocrity,
Platitudes that destroy
The truth of language…..
——–
VI
“Blessed be.”
All summer
I have been dreaming –
Up to no good,
Saving up time.
An ocean of words
Ebbing and flo-ing
Just beyond reach.
A roar of voices,
A hiss of whispers.
Dabbling my fingers
In shallow, warm waters,
Bemused by sunlight,
Waiting for a signal,
A start,
A point to begin.
Upon a lake
That is not a lake
There is a boat
That is not a boat.
Not doing,
But being.
———–
VII
Fragile:
If you try
To grasp reality
It is crushed
Beyond recognition.
Just wait
With hand outstretched
And beauty
Will alight,
For no reason –
Only because
it can.
——–
VIII
The spice of death
Is on the air:
Reddening brambles,
Crisping, fading bracken.
Edges turn brittle.
Earth and grasses turn damp.
Damp seeps
Into the bones of things,
Like darkness
Eating the edges of daylight….
————
IX
And then,
One calm,
Blue
Evening
We realise:
The swallows
Have all gone!
Silence descends
With the blossoming
Of autumn stars.
————-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged green, lost in musing, Poetry, seasons, Sping, time on April 26, 2011| 2 Comments »
April notes.
I
Leaves,
Tongues,
Unfurl to taste
The spring air.
A thousand dialects of green
Singing in the sunlight,
Floating on the breeze.
Whispering,
Rising,
Rustling.
II
Summer settles in.
Hedgerows all green at last:
Elm and ash awake, unfurl.
The first, fierce flash of flowering
Subdued and melted,
Satisfied and seeded;
Dandelions exhale upon
The warmed air.
Skylarks dissolve
Into the high blue,
Swallows sift
The thickening air.
Days
Expand and relax,
Warmth radiates
Into the evenings.
Spring saunters away,
Humming,
Stopping to smell
The blossoms of May –
Creamy tide of spice,
Her footsteps
Fast covered
And
Fading.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eight quarters of the year, energy, essences, festivals, metephysics, Poetics, seasons, sovereignty, spring on April 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Tumbling muses, a cascade of language, a release from exactitude, so often poetry is not created, not constructed, never owned, not signed for in triplicate. It bursts upon the brain, insistent and immediate. Presumptious, impatient it will flounce off, melting into vagueness if not given full attention. ” If you don’t want me, I know someone else……”
The yaffle’s green laugh
Framing the numinous.
Splendour remains subdued-
The first splinters of Spring.
Time rushes silently by:
A wonder not noticed
But for a moment
Of pause.
Heaven is nowhere else
If it is not here, now.
When the sleeping wake,
when the dying relax,
When the conceited admit
Mystery,
Heaven will be here, now.
This is one of my new prints from “The Lights of Sovereignty” series. This one is “The Light of Beltane”. A bit early, but then my “Light of Spring Equinox” decided to depixilate itself so I’ll have to upload the original again! These images, mandalas of light, complete the Energy Cards for our
Range of Sovereignty Essences (except for “the Merlin” and ” the Earth Goddess” which will arrive sometime, hopefully!).
simonhlilly 