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1
River full and woodsmoke

Days now, dark and fast as water
Flickering as night thunder

The houses and we shall huddle
Against the black slant of rain
Against the towering, swooping clouds.

Settling in the drift of slow, golden leaves
The bitter bite of brightest bramble
Aspen leaves, their last long laughter.

In the silver firs, on the church tower,
Jackdaws chafe and circle chatter
Wind skirls dancing, wet skirts slapping.

2
These mountains, worn low
Settled down, but content,
(As humans could never be),
Folded arms, their valley breasts.
A sharp-eyed, smiling mam,
Neat pinny fields, indulged with sheep.

3
I ride again the poetry road along a ridge of weather.
Words hovering, red and lithe as kite tail feathers
Tasting wet, west winds.
Hope and ambition, a stiff field thistle
Lasting out the slow rot to winter.
Wood will bend, sedge stand stiff,
A hard chew, a gristle is this cold tune.
Worn thin, the leaves rattle, a clatter of bones.
Death’s feet dancing to keep himself
Warm for hedgerow work.
Ghost cries of fox down in the valley wood
Disturbing warm-sided farm dogs, a howling choir.
Night and day, a scatter of starlight,
A tumble of rain.

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Passionate lovers,
These winter and spring days.
March and April,
How they so
Tear at each other, caress
With smiles,
Fall together,
Push apart, preen,
Rush oblivion and break
As waves at high tide
On each other’s panting flesh.
Rain
Seeds dashed,
Rainbows unfurl,
Sudden sun, dark squall,
A mating in time and space,
Conjunction of contraries.

Moon worn thin
High north wind
Spring thaw.

Half a moon
Ice in the river
Slowly melting.

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STORM DAYS

This hollow, unrevealed sky.
Dipping, a magpie attempts a new meridian,
A straight flight to food or shelter.

The dead elms’ reaching fingers quiver;
Power chords, the cables roar.

We each and all must huddle and endure,
With the sparrows, with the ever joyous,
Garrulous sparrows – delicate and subtle
In their design, a clutch of heartbeats,
Warm, communal.

No malevolence in the weather.
No malfeasance in the storm.
Another day to sing about.

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Four pieces from early this morning, ancestral mutters: sky crowns and words from the Anglo-Saxon.

SIGNIFICATOR

The whispers of the stars of dawn,
Rooted in deep paths, seated mind.
Mind that seeks names only,
Seeks genealogies, plumbs down fathoms,
The pitch of rightness.
To themselves they whisper,
Remembering the weave and twist of gold,
The movers in the shadows,
The movers of twilight,
The flickering torchlight,
The muffled, shuffled feet of steady procession,
Of circular dance taking up positions,
Constellations of mirrored geometries
Winding up time before babes yawn,
Before the aches of morning stretch and sigh.
Before the biting cold, the stirring of embered dawn.
Before has passed.
Before has misted away.
The whispered eloquence of now,
A tranquil moment turned and knotted,
A place remembered on a silent road:
Signpost, crossed paths, significator.

—-

FIRE PRAYER

I kneel, cold water,
Before the fire to kindle,
A prayer for light and warmth:
Cold water, flying cloud.
For spark and roaring:
Cold wave, cold tide.
For return of belonging,
For reason to remain.

—-

WANDERER

The lament of the dispossessed –
The long diminishing curlew.
The urgent, soft cries of lovers –
Wild geese, wild geese.
The road is a way but not a home.
The footsteps of others, small consolation
When they have vanished to the horizon,
Gone on before, singing the old song.
Cloud-cloaked wanderer tasting salt.
His children, weighed metre,
The lilt of left and right.

ACHE

Raked by claws
(This wolf cold).
Blood stain tumbling
Clear watered pools:
These clouds of squall
In dawn skies.
World’s ribs sigh
And shiver –
The ache
Of onwards.

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TURNED, GONE ON (requiem)

Stillness now, lost blue and empty silence.
After wracked storm, tearing breath,
Tangled rain. The howling
Has ceased, calm, calm.

Where sun reaches, there
Is hope of a little warmth.
But little warmth in shade,
Little warmth when the face
Turns away from light.

Calm void where you have gone,
Spacious, rested, freed from pain of time.
Naked void where you were,
Are, no longer.
The empty fields,
The stiff sloped horizon,
The days ahead unformed, vast.

These winter roads
Will lead to a surprise of spring,
But not soon, not soon.
Not before the world becomes ragged.
It must become ready, choosing, too,
Letting go what is,
Letting uncertainty bloom.
Too tired to breathe
One last slow, drawn out,
Whispered breath.

The void of skies
Fills slowly with new cloud dreams.
The scoured earth will clothe its scars
In new skins of green life.
The hollows will slowly fill,
The woods, they will be bound in birdsong.
It will become gentle, dancing once more.
But not soon,
Not soon.

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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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ARISING

The haiku is often what is not said. The spaces filled by personal recollection. And, of course, catching the moment a mind jolts awake.

This haiku,
Wordless, is
What is not said.
The shaped voids
Becoming occupied
By personal recollection,
A sorting of remains,
Catching the moment
Mind catches sight
Of itself
Mirrored.

These words have no meaning.
And these lines are silent.
No sound, no movement.

In the heat of late summer
The shrine in the mountain forest
Filled with the gossip
Of old men in green shade.

Storm sweepings
(debris of the sway of the world)
Sugi smoke rises and crackles.

In its own dark hall
The taiko drum plays with silence.
Unstruck, its taught skin
Ripples out roundness
Beyond sound.

Ripples across Sewa Lake,
Waves of branches in the wood,
The oncoming typhoon.

The cicadas ignore,
The ants map
The grey weathered boards
Of the audience chamber.

The carefully robed priest,
Each toe grasping the steps,
Opens the door between worlds
With invitation and gesture.

A slow wheeling of kites.

This sign is not in use.

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CLOUDBURST

A thousand spirits
Released.

Possessed leaves
Flying wild.

Skies tumble
Earth ripples.

Storm joy.

——

ISLAND WEATHER

Looking back:
Valley dissolving in rain.
Here:
Butterflies,
summer sun.

——-

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