Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, nature, Poetry, summer, summer solstice, time, Wales on June 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »
SOLSTICED
.
Garth Bank is a mind
Resting in silence.
.
Bryn and Y Garn
Become domed and spacious.
Valley rivers make no noise-
The whole world stands still.
.
The cold of eternal space
Touches the edge
Of our certainty.
.
So we cling
To an ephemeral fullness
And watch a blue distance
Grow warm in haze,
.
Nested in comfortable notions,
The children of cracked worlds.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dhrupad, landscape, music, nature, nature photography, photography, Poetry, roses, summer solstice, Wales on June 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »
DHRUPAD 9 (solstice roses)
Solstice roses solstice rain
bright as sparrows
solstice cloud low bright
and sparkling rain.
Field roses, wild roses, dog roses,
solstice roses bloom fall fail
arching sun-like arching star-like
arching dancing leaping hedgerows.
Field roses white as cotton dresses
in sunlight fields in sunlight wind in solstice fields
light as cotton white as summer
blooming falling failing blooming.
And dog roses pink and frail and strong
as sacred as secret pink flesh
blushing pink curling pink scented and smiled and honey sweet
and stroked in light and solstice solstice light,
bloom and leap and arch and fall and fail.
Tattered heavy petal fall
weighed and washed bright solstice rain.
White as sheep new shorn, white as blisters,
white as taste in morning air,
white as solstice fall and failing falling failing,
flocking leaping solstice roses arching out
and arching over and petal falling petal failing pale as butter,
bright as eyelids, bitter smiling falling
failing blooming failing falling
solstice roses wild roses dog roses field roses,
thorned and throned and holding on,
leaping arching bowing blessing
bowers sprinkled white and pink
glorious as sheep in the morning solstice,
morning sparrow hedgerow morning,
rain wet wind and sparkling solstice morning.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape, landscape photography, nature, Poetry, summer solstice on June 21, 2015| 2 Comments »
SUMMER LONG
This elder splashed world, this rippled bourne,
A thousand round cream horizons
Stretching to light’s limit.
Sunlit words scatter on green tongues,
A bee wind, rose-scented, wavers.
This land breathes its hills and hollows,
The folding and unfolding of Time.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged balance, change, landscape, longest day, Poetry, summer solstice, time on June 20, 2014| 3 Comments »
SOLSTITIAL
This longest day
Hard to throw off endings,
The slip of names and times,
The ongoing of impossible disasters,
The rot and decomposition, composting dreams.
It is the words
That lack the elegant bright moment.
It is the mind
That, persistent, contrives distant futures.
It is the habit
That dredges what lies safe in darkness,
Holds it up, misinterpets and despairs.
So many words for failure
So few for bliss.
And thus our bias
Sweeps us toward an edge,
Soft screaming, torn thin.
World watching on
Keeping balance between
This dark, this light,
This day, this night,
Knowing it is not the thing,
Not the specific, nor the particular,
No soul weighing more than any other.
But it is the spin, the dance, the chant,
It is the hymn of becoming and return,
The melting of light, the retaining pattern,
Constant
is the revolution
of breath,
The breath of revolution.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambient landscape, belonging, haibun, Haiku-ish, islands, nature, Orkney, photography, Poetry, Scotland, sea, shore, silence, summer, summer solstice, travel, wandering on April 21, 2013| 6 Comments »
The full length piece can be found here as a blog page as it takes up a bit of space (though does not comprise many words). I have recently been looking at some very old travel writings, mostly taking the form of haibun. This one was composed on a brief visit to the Orkney Islands, north of mainland Scotland, during the midsummer of 1980. I have added a few new linking texts, but apart from that the piece remains as originally composed. Accompanying the text were originally some black and white photographs, but as this was long before the days of digital anything, I will have to do considerable playing around to reintroduce them (once I have located prints or negatives)
XVI
(solstice)
Returning to Stromness I cooked an evening meal and then wandered aimlessly along the coast. Although I had to rise early next morning, planning to take a boat to Hoy, I was unable to leave such a beautiful evening. Despite the hour, it was still very light, and a deep silence filled both myself and the land through which I walked. Resonance was everywhere. Great wellings up of deep emotion when I beheld the waves on a small foreshore; the trawler, its mast-light flickering, heading out to sea; the hills and cliffs of Hoy across the water almost melting into the deep stillness of oncoming night; young lambs bleating on the hillside; mother ducks with their young by the shore.
this evening, too, lingers,
unwilling to leave
your summer stillness,
Islands of the far north.
on the shore
wave upon wave
only deepens the silence,
Islands of the far north.
XVII
(gift)
soon to depart,
at last
the tune
of something
framing this land
the stranger
knows a wholeness
to which
he does not belong.
simonhlilly 