Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, dawn, landscape photography, light, Poetry, spring, Wales on March 12, 2017| 2 Comments »
Transient (4)
Skies of palest violet,
An uninhabited eye
Whose souls are words.
An unimaginable wind
Blows light in waves
across the hills.
Like heaven,
the snowfields rise above,
Hardly visible, their glimmering.
A village of daffodils sways.
The jackdaws freefall in joy.
There is ice in the buckets
And all the farms roar with fires
For the lads and lasses hunched
With cold hands
From a long night’s lambing.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku-ish, landscape, Poetry, spring, sun, weather, Winter on March 5, 2017| 1 Comment »
Spring sun.
All is forgiven.
Though the bitter wind!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged landscape.landscape photography, light, Llansteffan church, movement, Poetry, rain, spring, storm, Wales on February 25, 2017| 4 Comments »
TRANSIENT 1
This day
So full
Of veils and doors.
Rain-washed, wind-swept,
Metal bright:
Cold hills, copper burnished;
sky walls swagged and pewter blue.
Rivers fast and thick as soup,
Wavetopped, roiled, cascading down.
Pulpit trees proclaiming
Spring is near, but not yet.
Radiant light and broken rainbows,
And the scattered white heads of snowdrops
Praising the quiet corners,
And the drunken roar
Of storm winds.
—
TRANSIENT 2
Rain curtains the valley.
Like the dead
The hills are invisible
But still with us
(Breathing different air,
Dreaming slow, deep dreams).
Hymn-makers come from here,
Praisers of the Intangible.
(The hawk’s cry and the
Sighing grasses and the
Oaks in the lee of the wind.)
It is a short enough life
Not to sing out praise,
Not to wonder at it,
Not to search out the right words
And the tune of the soul-
A counterpoint to the heart-
And the rhythm of footsteps
Down the winding roads.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambience, art, landscape, landscape photography, mind, mystery, night, Poetry, rain, sleeplessness, spring, time on May 21, 2016| 3 Comments »
A Landscape Illuminated.
It is the drift between the breath of in and of out,
the fleshy petalled night a poison,
and an endless moonlit rain.
In gardens at very least, the green
will muscle upwards a brief month or two
from cuckoo’s bell and sighing swallows
to the ticking, scratching melodious crickets.
In hills, now, flakes of gold are falling snow silent
and the thin ghosts ever crying for justice
in the long, cold, blue shadows.
We dim with daisies a glimmer haze
And drop of hawthorn goddess,
scented and mean on red-folded air.
Sliding, we are sliding, uncertainly
whether up or down again, the long drip.
Time it is dripping, invented, named, measured
and wasted away as if dawn and sunset were not enough,
and the stars forever clouded and lost in mystery, as they are.
Adrift and turning, rocked gently, dismally declined.
Warmth slow escaping, longing for another somewhere
with bees and lilac and long, painless sleep.
A landscape illuminated, kissed in light,
unburdened with consequence, unfolded.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Cambrian Mountains, landscspe, photography, Poetry, spring, Troedyrhiw, Wales on April 18, 2016| 2 Comments »
View from a mountain garden (part one)
a house is there,
below the dome of mountain.
in days past
it might have been said
that it nestled ‘neath
the beetling brow
of raven-dark crags.
it is where
the high lands,
the sky lands, stumble and slide
in rough, grey steps
to crouch, dreamy eyed
on dappled sunlight in grassy pasture,
no longer scoured bald with fast airs,
nor woven grey in slow fog.
just here, now, they open slow stone hands,
release the waters, silver and peat-brown,
in streams and bogs and falls.
a tumble of white rush, an ache
of distant noise between
silent rustling oaks, lost in
deep and distance that is measured
and marked by slow drifting sheep,
the pools of sunlight scudding east.
it is a long time staying still, a dwelling,
piled up, re-walled, obscured, uncovered, re-used.
a pronunciation of name, a genealogy of comfort
and shelter, hope and hopelessness, a garden
and a rusting, a perch between here and heaven
and a bell to the beyond beyond that.
these are the colours of a day.
a day before Spring with cold winds
and a sun remembering warmth
and the palest of blue,
fragile blue,
mist-filled, hazy skies……
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged landscape, March, nature, Poetry, spring, Wales on March 7, 2016| 4 Comments »
Sunshine on the snowfields.
Rain in the valleys.
The fields are churned,
The lambs cold.
From chimneys
Woodsmoke leans southwards.
But in the hedgerows
Sparrows are chattering.
On every bank
Daffodils risk their yellow song,
And the jackdaws dance
Carefree in wild, grey skies.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, boundaries, contrast, Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant, identityCambrian Mountains, Irfon Valley, landscape.Wales, light and dark, mutability, Mynydd Eppynt, Poetry, spring, St. David's Day, weather on March 2, 2016| 5 Comments »
St. DAVID’S DAY
sunlight drifts lazy, slow, over hillsides
like the thoughts of man
and sleepy gods.
hunched low, these wild Cambrians
hide their own
merciless uplands with steep green:
ascending oaks and the downward rushing
waters that name the valleys.
there is there.
a studded look of clouded rock horizon,
a descant of filtered light.
turn round, though,
and you will see
the high, dark wavered line of the Epynt,
shrouded, begrudging light.
a mystery of mysteries in smoke-wet valleys.
and here now,
the ravens flying from one to the other,
from glowering dark to shining light,
swimming across sheep-sprinkled valleys
all green even now at the end of winter.
the farms all gathered for lambing
and the cherry plum awakening
with the snowdrops and daffodils
and all.
St. David’s Day it is.
he who is a saint of the edges,
a decentralised saint,
a saint of hills and horizons
and sweet, cold waters
and the birth of Spring.
look here: a bright benign unfolding.
look there: a towering roar of grey-blue cloud,
toothed and grating the hidden darkened slopes.
a march between contrasts
a choice of choices
that become nothing
but a roll of change as it changes with the wind,
cold then wet, a speaking of days,
a laughter of uncaring bliss
and an end to certain righteousness.
so this cold wind has March on its edge,
a kiss of rain and mist and a hope of sunlit moments.
this world is a landscape
made of whispers.
the proud man is his own fool
who cannot see.
the humble know they breathe
the breath of others,
the echoing chambers, the sighs and footsteps.
this world, hung upon the cross as our deliverer,
and we, hung upon the cross of its directions.
one given to the other, mutually mixing,
a melting of forms and of thought,
A landscape made only
of whisperings.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambience, art, landscape, photography, Poetry, rain, spring, Wales, weather on May 20, 2015| Leave a Comment »
A feathered crouch
Cool and slewed wind
Mountains hunch
Shuffle in and out
Tides of rain
A slow long tune.
A green nation
Rules the cuckoo’s voice
Stretched long the river rings
Vivid is the wood
Tousled the tall larch
Fathoms deep the bluebell haze
Grey and dappled
All sorrow weighed with joy
In tonsured cities
Days careful are numbered
Then forgot.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, being, dakini, dream, expanse, mystery, Otherworld contact, Poetry, printmaking, spring, the numinous, vision, wisdom on May 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »
OWL-HEADED DAKINI DREAM
Owl-headed, lithe, folded,
Feathered.
Shock thundered voice:
Scythe words,
Harrow words,
Winnowed,
Fine-limbed spells.
Fingertipped, a weaving sined spin,
A cast out dance.
Sunlit surge in blue, fat sky.
A thousand green tongues
Hallowed.
Treasures rain,
Brushed light on lips.
Arched span a wing across.
Star chased, a trembled cascade.
Breathed dust, the burst
Before thought, bubbled,
Swirled, bowed.
Lean in, lean close.
A criss-crossed hum,
A bee jewelled drone
Truth stitched.
Skull bowl brain meal.
Glistening viscera
Steam slithered open.
All, all revealed.
My voice, a lute, a cuckoo.
A call distanced
By the fathoms of spring.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged april, comparison, criticism, doubt, ghosts, Poetry, spring, style on April 1, 2015| 2 Comments »
ALL FOOL’S DAY
Someone who believes the voices in their head
Are worth listening to,
Who shapes a voiceless howl
And paints peacock the grey goose feathers.
Bitter or sweet is its confection,
But flown, not owned.
A convection of breath muttered,
Cooling fast to silent shuffling.
A spark to set heads alight.
A bird at dawn joining in, joining in.
So very modern, so social, so angst.
Shaped anger, a certain brittle brilliance
(Too many pills, too many movies).
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
My colours are earth ochre and mud:
They blur and smudge and taste
As bitter sweet as old iron.
Red is not better than blue.
Nothing but our breath
Is not borrowed,
And that is shared with ghosts.
If I pick a posy of weeds
And small insects
It shall likely be thrown away
By evening, change within a day
To wilt and slime and compost.
A river of muscular words,
Knowing their trajectory,
Slick with fitting exercise,
Polished, glancing slyly
At themselves in mirrors.
Mine: are orphaned, skulk
Adolescent in corners
Wishing they were anything,
Anywhere but here, ignored,
Misunderstood, awkward
With self and not-self,
Ready to punch
And run away screaming.
Small curses and bitterness,
A sweet green wormwood of words,
Unfashionable as Homer and the ‘Seventies.
Nothing if not shaped air,
A moments held tight and wriggled free,
Regardless of reputation
And good sense.
Outside my window
The world tips towards a hidden river.
Every tree and field a palimpsest of seasons.
Boughs thick with time shudder and bend,
Hold their taut silhouettes.
Tangled, indistinguishable are their roots,
Their eloquent green tongues.
A patch of blue sky
The shape of continents
Slides across the sky,
Dissipating like smoke
Slowly turning.
First drops of April rain.
—
simonhlilly 