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Posts Tagged ‘spring’

How Still

How still
The lashes of your eyes
Searching words
How still

How long
The slow rise of your breath
Searching peace
How long

How fine
The enamelled morning
Blue, shadowed
How fine

How light
The dive of swallows
above buttercup shine
How light

How still, how long
How fine, how light,
This filigree life
Floating skywards

Well, a thanks to Marie Marshall, whose words this morning fed this little thing, sort of summing up the morning sun here, before the clouds pile up and wind carries in rain… ( if I can put in a link to the original I will, not that it’s difficult but I am all at sea with invisible machinery).

fragment 354

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2nd May: Flow of Time

1
Finger of light
Twitches the curtains
Warm cat purs

2
Floating free
It takes a deep breath
Rising sun

3
Without doing,
Everything changes.
Time’s river

4
One or two moments.
Sunrise.
Fast river Time.

5
Watching.
Where is the small leaf of hope
I floated on that river?

6
Stay busy
So as not to notice
The speed of time.

7
No need to watch.
Sheep grazing
Feel the sun rise.

8
Catching breath.
No time to waste
Already gone

9
Accumulating merit
Then letting it go
Doing this, doing that

10
Morning sun
Now too bright.
Turning my gaze:
Waning moon

11
Sun and moon
Floating along
River of time

12
Where are they now?
All those plans floating.
River of time.

13
Caught sight of
One last time:
Small blossom.
Bend of the river

14
Somehow the same:
This thought
This river

15
One moment
Vanishes.
Recorded forever,
Perhaps

16
Deciding
Whether to go up the lane
Or down the lane.
Cat sitting in the sun.

17
To see all the pattern,
Break the pot.
Now the pattern,
Where is the pot?

18
Tune of an ancient chant.
Searching the words
That fit

19
Recording
Ordinary moments
In case
They never happen
Again

20
Thoughts, silence.
The sound of sheep
Munching new grass.

21
Slowly moving uphill
Into sunlight
Sheep nonchalantly drifting by

22
Choosing one,
All the others scatter:
Philosophical thoughts.

23
Should they never come again.
Collecting moments.
Mind fuel.

24
Fishing for words
The hours flow by.
But look what I have caught!

25
Small bright things:
Minnow moments.
I will return them to the stream
In just a moment

26
Haiku:
Not just words
Ripple outwards.

***

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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.

****

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ST. GEORGE’S DAY ( April 23) (dream stream)

Emblazoned,
A green field.
Light rampant,
Golden-haired,
Erect.

Last night’s stars, last night’s meteors, showers of light as we plummet dark towards the spin of centre, the galactic hum.

Last night’s shooting stars
see them scattered sparkling
on the green grass of morning.

St. George’s Day bright with a sword edge in the wind. Little lambs sleeping warm in the sun. Guardian’s day, the land’s day. We who are, who are we, a part and portion, a flock hovering, gliding down to feed. Our field, bordered and named, bred of us, born and bearing us, dirt and soil grasped, the smell of it, the smell of bone and memory, the deepest smell. The redolent sound reverberates from in to out. Sound beyond, sound within. Nothing that does not vibrate and sing hymns to itself and its innocent exuberant expansion.

Awoken with sounds taking form,
star whispers filling echoing corners.
Placing sounds and syllables.
Taking time and running it
still to watch.

Lanced, vanquished, absorbed, armour to armour, name to name, sound to sound, the neigh of horse, jingle of rein, rasp of scaled iron claw on rock, hiss of expelled flame. The conflict of vowel and consonent. Pinned, wings upraised, the word is formed, dragon-mind gives up and yields to sword-tongue, shield palette. They are not two nor many, those actions, these seconds, these words. They are the stretched thin ever-now, the elongated serpentine, elementally configured, evolution of instance.
He rears up, he severs skin, subdues, subjugates, becomes monster. Not two but one. Bound together as icon, sound and form. Primal hunter hunted, eater eaten, seer seen. Send out from each eye a spear of mind, ineluctably, inevitably hooked, united, absorbed, absolved of difference, a flow of electrons. Eye to eye, saint and demon, exchange sky and earth, fire and tears. One, redundant without the other. Standing waves, crest and trough, a rippled ecstatic hum, white noise of endlessness, gong of falling away.

I shall sink into sound now,
sink into sound, name the names,
place the branched syllables,
string myself naked for nine days,
sacrifice, sacred act,
forget and recall the way the tongue
touches tooth exploding instruction,
an exhalation of daylight,
sparks, stars, a spittle of,
a shaft of,
a spear of.

Purring back and becoming the wriggle of the living heart, forged and cast, caparisoned in echoes. Sound shelled within sound. An eggshell heaven tumbling with birdsong. It savours the roundness of the day. Exhales cloud, tumbling, scudding. A roar that might be sea, might be forest, might be time itself, enfolding shield, vanquished and glorious, golden and slain in the morning.
The giant from whom the world is formed. The jester has slain the king. He takes a golden bow, winks, farts and dissappears. High minded flatulence of patriotism, set to against demons and heretics, the giants of the wilderness. The old names abide, whispered.

A little right
and a wealth of wrong.
To image is to fix.
To fix is to miss the point.
The heart of itself is severed and expires.

A parable of all things, as well as a description, as well as a poem, as well as a mimicked riddle. High on his horse, self-appointed and righteous, the knight rides out to do good. He will go native before nightfall. Seduced by the rainbow sinews of maidens. Then we shall see pierced flanks in the spring, hilltops yearning for a splice of passionate light. We shall see a might entering in and an entering out, a trouncing, a gasping pant of travail. It shall scatter the roosts, it shall raise the heads of deer in the trees. A mighty union there shall be. No battle but a dance, a molecular dance, strings knotted, syllables severed from dictated meaning, wrapped only into its own involution.

Saint and dragon lover,
each echoing sighs,
the fire of tangled nerve
shooting out to the horizon’s edge.
A green shield lies the field.
A sparrowhawk hesitates,
turns and dives.
Silence inside silence.
Sound itself,
a swallow in new skies,
expanding.

****

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(the images are from a series of sketches I have been making to turn into silver pendants. Dragon energies are a fascinatingly robust archetype of earth/solar/cosmic sentience and as such are a fertlie ground for internal explorations in matters of consciousness and deep ecology)

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1
The underside of heaven
A grey rolling, folded softness
Pushed gently, refiguring the light.

Messenger birds slide between worlds.

Settled and slow, layered in shells of skin,
Webbed, skeined, we solidify, objectify,
Await outcomes, anchor the ineffable.

2
Soon, and suddenly, there shall be green leaves.
A day or two of sun, a change of wind.
This pale stretched time will melt.
Hatched and brilliant will be the morning sun.
We shall remember what we have forgotten
And forget the simplicity of folded light.
Birdsong, bright edge and shadow;
The scent of hyacinths, the scent of mown grasses;
The roar of beauty as time flickers.
A brimstone butterfly in golden morning.

3
These words: a map back to my soul
Perhaps for another to discover
Where cold ashes still mark the place
I could not remain.

These words: a map back through dream to memory,
A resuscitation of hours and senses.
What is lost, gathered again –
A tide scouring, reforming the sands,
Never to be the same, though not so much changed.
The roar of time as beauty flickers.

4
Rain-wet morning
Cool on my brow
The blessing of doves

The blessing of doves
Soft chanting from treetops
Grey, heavy clouds

Grey, heavy clouds,
What is there missing?
Only the voice of the cuckoo.

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**

A flood of gold
Danaë sighs
Morning sun.

**

Owl call
Answered.
A single star
Glimmering.

**

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SPRING EQUINOX MORNING

For this
one instant
A radiant pink
Squeezed and bright
Between hill and cloudbank.
Set round and sure
In circled gold
Dawn sun
Ringing
Time.

On the back of my eye
First flash of morning sun
Dazzles still.

Turning around
First flash of sun
Drives out thought.

Small promise
A moment of radiance
Before clouds close in.

It is the colour
Of heated silver
In a burnished silver sky,
Warm and cold balanced both
Tasting equinox.

A claddagh ring
This dawn:
Heart sun
Held safe
in year’s
Two hands.
Promising
Spring.

Promising spring
Dawn soon waylaid
A party of snowclouds.

A party of snowclouds
Cautious at first
Racing drunk and wild
Across neat fields.

Across neat fields
Light sparkles on dewfall.
Birds chasing each other
Pause a moment.
Spring dance.

Spring dance.
Changing partners
Their feet flattening daffodils,
A whirl of wind and hail.

A whirl of wind and hail
Is the news from the north.
All is silent in the garden.

All is silent in the garden
Dawn sun has vanished
Deep
within the daffodils’ trumpets.

Deep within the daffodils’ trumpets
Is the sound of spring to come
A bright fanfare.

I cannot describe
The colour of the dawn sun,
But perhaps
A blush of fire,
Burnished warm
By the fingertips
Of infinite patience.
Smoothed glow,
Delicate, cherished.

Sun hidden.
Collecting firewood.
The hearth
Still our closest companion.

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COUNTING MOONS

The moon tonight gliding through the eye of the Bull.
On the horizon light is still holding,
And thrushes, too full of Spring to sleep,
Echo song across the valley.

Why should I record this?
One day among many.
Nothing remarkable
In this new season’s freshness
( except our own common forgetfulness
Lost in weighted, judged moments).

I could give you a year of moons,
Some seen, some clouded, some serene or dreadful,
Meticulously recorded, patinated silver,
Its light cold, warm, diffuse, reticulated.
Its shape swinging this way then that,
Its rising between house and tree, hill and hedge.
Its mirror face reflecting clearly every tide of passion and despair,
Its mirror face pulling eye and heart to hold all souls aloof,
Quietly cooling, pulse and breath shifting, shivering slightly,
As if a gong brushed by a breeze, sounding sounding low.

A pool, silent.
A way in and a way out.
A door, a window, swinging open, slamming shut.
Lightening, darkening, reasonably equinanimous.
Unconcerned, ineffable, a mouth trying out new sounds,
Consonant and vowel shaping words that all mean silence,
That all mean liquid, that all mean holding, pouring, filling, emptying.

Just now, I can think of nothing more full of satisfaction,
Nothing more worthwhile,
Absolute evidence of time well spent,
Dutifully attentive, a garland for creation’s gifts,
Harmless, meaningless, a simple offering,
A counting of breaths, proof of life.

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FOGGED

Inlaid with birdsong,
Lost in fog
Brightening white and slow,
This damp still morning.

Dog distantly barking
(pointless metronome),
Counting moments,
A question never answered.

Distance cancelled, hushed.
Everything pools close,
Strange and familiar,
Owned, disowned.

We are become the sky
Clouded and vaporous.
Dew, web-hammocked,
Anaesthetised, drowsed,
Awaiting the sun and
Its breeze from the sea.

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MOON SCREECH

Moon screeches across the sky-
Chalk on board,
Ice dust on the wind.

Layered circumspection
Is no wiser than
Reckless certainty.

Inside me
Scream a thousand
Small possibilities
Extirpated, snuffed out.

Inside me
A thousand more arise
Radiant effulgence,
Birth smiles.

It will take
No time at all.
It will take no time
To wipe all this away.
Swept clear,
So fragile
This dream.

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