Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dry weather, Haiku, Haiku-ish, Issa, Japanese zen haiku, love of small things., Poetry, sheep, summer, Wales on August 3, 2018| 1 Comment »
ISSA AND A FEW MOMENTS IN WALES
(Four haiku)
Issa sees the world
holding Issa in its hands.
Both begin to laugh.
—
Croeso! Croeso!
The sheep cry out.
Rainclouds gathering.
–
Hesitant at first,
And the birds falling silent,
Cool drops of rain.
–
Distant, morning train
Echoes off the empty fields.
Sheep waiting for rain.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged abundance, dhrupad, june, landscape, music, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, plant growth, Poetry, seasons, sky, song, summer, Wales on June 9, 2018| 2 Comments »
DHRUPAD 8 (honeysuckle)
June, June now.
Elder, elder opens, opens out creamy sky cloud fragrant
and so too they drift drift drift, these hills,
the pale hills the bright hills the sunlit hills the star shadowed waiting hills. Drift slow and slow,
coming green coming all coming again.
Weave and throne song singing softly,
the clouds pile a sky hurray.
A thick slow drift, and the thin
slow rivers and the fast stormy rivers and the warm
sun waters and the honey thick shaded waters.
Green light now, green, and sudden roses
bloomed and falling, purple petals, sudden slow shifts.
High hills rise up and skylarks
and the thirsty climbing beans and vines and peas and bindweed.
And the honeysuckle the honeysuckle
blood red buds and dreaming of sweetness.
Twist and climb. Twist and curl and hold
tight as a baby’s fist
here, we are here,
we are close and tumbled and held and lovely.
All all climbed and stretching and together
and growing tall, tall
into the tall
throbbing skies.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape photography, Li Bai, Li Po, Mid Wales, mist, pen and ink, Poetry, rain, summer on September 4, 2017| 4 Comments »
INK WASH
open window.
now and then:
sighing cars
roll by.
gutters muttering
in light summer
rain.
time caught
on cobwebs,
lost in cloud.
sedge grasses flower,
green trees
statue-still.
Li Po hums
and sketches
silence.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Haiku-ish, landscape, landscspe photography, Poetry, summer on August 17, 2017| 8 Comments »
dark clouds.
blackbird singing.
pure heart
day by day
the rowan reddens –
memories stored for winter.
the old graveyard.
ivy and old man’s beard.
we all cling to what we once had.
morning mists.
a river dreams of seas.
dew in the stubble field.
reading poetry:
seeing the memories
of someone long gone
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, distraction, ego, landscape photography, mystery, Poetry, powerlessness, summer, the eternal, transience on July 30, 2017| Leave a Comment »
A Summer Lament
Summer, the dream we so soon forget.
Feeling the bones of winter beneath,
Its bleak branches bleached
Upon a cold, dark sky.
Green folds the small roads here
And the rain is warm.
But in the heart of the cities,
In the hearts of the powerful
Burns always a welded light
Wedded to words of war.
The cold is never far
And simple goodness
Too easy to be proud of,
As simple as breathing in and out.
So on the long days of a short summer
They will still wish for the clear pain of winter,
Something to rail against.
For they cannot let go of being more,
Though they are nothing
That the world will not allow
For a moment or two
In the brief shadowed sun.
To be a cause of pain is not power.
It is a road that promises,
But falls to void and oblivion.
Hedged with narrowing views
When the marrow melts
And blood burns free
To its coagulation
And the bitterness of hollow words
And the leaves curl
And an end that is not peace,
A bitter question, a hollowing answer.
We so float upon this thin skin of summer,
Longing it eternally, and as vague as holiness.
A glorious relaxation of edge and purpose.
The dive and long sighing arc of swallows,
The endless warm rivers of lark’s song,
The murmured chanting of a million bees,
Forgetting ourselves for a while,
Melting into being, nested in spirit,
Lazy in directionless, dreaming light.
Til the bite of the cold night
Returns us blinking
Wondering and hungry
And small in the face of almighty things.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Brynffo, Crychan Forest, Esgair Fwyog, Haiku, Haiku-ish, landscape photography, Poetry, rain, summer, Wales on July 25, 2017| 3 Comments »
BEYOND SPITE INN (haiku)
Cuckoo echoes cuckoo
Beyond Spite Inn
The road rises into cloud
This valley folds the green road
Rain drips from the copper beech
Grass bends over tumbled walls.
On Brynffo the spirits drift
Light as thistledown between the firs.
The sound of running water is their voice.
On Esgair Fwyog the sheep graze new grass.
The rain has melted distance.
A line of hills rest in sunlight
A sunlit hill.
Clouds shift.
It melts in rain.
Sound of running water
The steep slopes of Brynffo
Pine needles and the smell of bracken
Moving waters whispering
Lost in the dark forest
Whisps of mist drift aimless
Enjoying cool silence.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Celts, landscape, landscape photography, Ordovices, Poetry, rain, summer, the past, thistles, Wales on July 21, 2017| 9 Comments »
THE THISTLES
Cloud is down over the hills again.
It drifts and rolls between field and forest.
The valley is lain out soft and still green;
It does not mind the warm rain.
There is not silence, but it feels like silence.
Sheep shorn and the hay is in.
The thistles have a royal flower:
In deserted places, proud,
Like ancient tribes before the Romans came,
They gather and stand still.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, heat, July, landscape photography, Poetry, summer, Wales on July 7, 2017| 3 Comments »
JULY NOW
July now, and high summer days lay upon us.
In hedgerows the field maples smoulder a new red.
All the greens, more tentative now, tinted with heat and dust,
Weighed down by a glowing heavy sun.
The rivers are low and silent, bleached rocks butter-smooth.
Merciless will be the shadeless hills, growing pale and dry.
We seek the cooler air of woodlands
And walk out at evening with lullaby thought.
The nodding grasses, ripe and swaying,
And a full moon, crisp in a blameless sky.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape, landscape photography, Poetry, rain, summer, Wales on June 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »
SPITE INN
June settles in,
Warm and fine and easy.
Beyond Spite Inn
Clouds roll through the wet grasses.
Two cuckoos praise each other
Across the oak valley floor.
The old roads drip green.
—
Spite Inn is a ruined, but preserved, building on the road between Tirabad and Cyngordy on the northern slopes of the Eppynt. It is likely a drover’s resting place, and its name is thought to derive from its rivalry with another nearby inn.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Chinese poetry, landscape, landscape photography, Poetry, rain, summer, Wales, Wang Wei on July 7, 2016| 2 Comments »
a landscape for wang wei
the big hills
have gone visiting
the sky
in slanting rain
the green trees
dance and mime
incense rises
curving through all space
the window is a shrine,
an offering to silence
old men suck tea
and talk of distant troubles
i will paint in green
and grey and gold
a solitary bumblebee
wends its way
amongst comfrey
and wormwood.
—
simonhlilly 