Posted in Uncategorized, tagged calm, landscape, Poetry, summer, time on July 22, 2014| 10 Comments »
LONG SUMMER
Hay lies golden.
A still, blue morning threaded
With skimming swallows.
Waiting, (for nothing in particular),
Thoughts form a translucent tent,
The hollow hush of calm.
A butterfly’s uncertain path,
breeze-borne, is this life,
Certain as the edge of summer clouds.
Time, a slow roll across hillsides,
Sun and moon, sun and moon,
A garland of slow, warm days.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambience, Buxton, coolness, crows, Derbyshire, England, fresh airs, landscape, limestone country, nature, Peak District, Poetry, rain, spa town, summer, the north on June 30, 2014| 6 Comments »
BUXTON IN THE HIGH PEAK
Away into the high hills shrouded.
Away to the high, scoured lands laid with lines of stone.
Where the wind crows cedilla the sky
Giving their own reasons for silence and for speech,
And the unknown calls across fields in trills and ghosts of rain.
We are smudged and drawn thin through tangles of time,
Halting to grasp slim volumes, locate a name or place.
A footfall, a scumble of gravel, a whisp of evening moth,
A rag, a window outlooking, a scurry of moments.
But always, cloud-hugged and green,
The valley air pricked with cool distance,
Fluent with miles of silence and the sky.
The depths below and the depths above,
A certain thinness, a certain wild lateness to the season,
A short uncertain summer, clouded, piled up fragrant.
A near forgotten tune, a debris of careless architecture,
A mapping of overgrown scars, a huddling of sorts.
Under the dark maples, under the covens of elder,
Under the long light, the distant shining land crowned with evening sun.
The long roads, the long roads from hill to hill,
A nonchalent scattering of sheep, stone kept.
This long breath, a cool drink, a meeting of streams
Down by the rose, purple rose-dropped park
Where jackdaws bob in and out those stately walks
Where the walnut tree and the yews kneel and pray.
And always the happy, straining dogs, the flurry of ducks
And the slow, heavy drops fall bending the grasses,
Blue geranium and honeysuckle, and a drift of elm seed,
A patient confetti, swirled away down drain and culvert.
The high town and the low town
A history of names, a relaxed concentric dream,
Gathered, pooled, walled by silent woods,
By silent caves and the sound of running waters,
A scribbled note from heaven.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biophilia.deep ecology, England, fragmentary moment, hymn, hymnal, june, landscape, northern summer, pastoral, Poetry, sky, Solstice, summer on June 10, 2014| 4 Comments »
SKYWARDS
Days ornamented with cloud,
Days dressed and wrapped in skirts of wind,
(The silk, shot silk green, the rippled fields of barley).
June bordered with honeysuckle, with dog rose,
Woven with the flitter of chaffinch, of bullfinch.
Woven into the choir of blackbirds
These hours, these stretching days,
Reaching skywards with the steepling grasses
Well towards solstice, well towards standstill,
The uppermost sun, the huge curving moon,
The silver singing stars of summer.
And us here, all of us here, within, without,
The commonest of senses, simple, watching
A gathering of friends, a multitude murmuring,
A cellular symphonic, rippled, waving, skywards.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged balance, elder, elder flowers, june, landscape, nature, Poetry, seasons, summer, time on June 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »
JUNE NOW
Days as laid out cream white,
Days as numbered and round,
Days as fragrant as elder.
Worlds turned facing sunlit skies,
Worlds warmed, fed and content.
Golden bowls, sky-blue bowls and green
Holding as much as may be.
For a few weeks, near perfect balance:
Heaven and earth set spinning
On fingertip of time,
A measured delight.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dawn, flowering grasses, landscape, light, May, morning, nature, Poetry, summer on May 31, 2014| 4 Comments »
SOFT
It lies ready,
Gleaming, gentle
For the gentle sun,
Gentle for the rain.
Gentle the dead,
Soft the morning twilit
Silence.
Soft the hour
And cool
Before birdsong.
A silvered grey
The heavy grasses
Full and laid
In low waves.
Seed mantra
Low and fragrant.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, generation, goddess, in conjunctio, light, oak, Poetry, summer on May 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »
SUMMER’S TALE ( The Ancestral Speaks)
I have found an acorn, small and green.
Given my murmured breath,
Given it my own waters.
It has grown thick and strong
Arching to heaven.
I have planted it deep
In my warm darknesses.
Rooted, it quivers
Bursting forth white blossoms,
A dripping mistletoe,
A sacred thing.
Becoming worlds we,
Trees of life, twined,
Exhale and rest
On warm earth,
A sun-dappled ground.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angels, art, Beltane, birds, dawn, digital art, landscape, light, mandala, may day, morning, nature, Poetry, print, spring, summer on May 1, 2014| 2 Comments »
BELTANE DAWN
1
A thin thread: birdsong squeezed through,
Floods open: light, blue and still.
Time dances, each moment
A coming and a going.
A sound of slow wingbeats,
A calling of mating angels.
Souls tumbling together
In the undergrowth.
The vapours of summer:
Arising smiles.
The song grows stronger:
A limitless uncurling,
A gesture of compassion,
A mudra of offering up.
2
Still pillows:
The grey cloud
Furled, uncurled
A world greened.
Two slow crows,
Shadows mated,
North by north-east
Over the dew wet fields,
Over the singing wood.
Light pushed in
From subtle edges.
A moment of flowers,
Blossomed exhalation.
She stretches in sleep,
A sudden perfume.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku-ish, landscape, Poetry, skylark, Sound, summer on July 30, 2013| 2 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku-ish, heat, July, landscape, Poetry, shade, summer, sun on July 23, 2013| 5 Comments »
Meadowsweet, meadowsweet,
The sky is white
With heat.
White bindweed, pink bindweed,
The distant road
Mirrored,
Shimmers.
Pale grass, pale grasses,
Seed pods golden,
Empty,
Nodding.
In shade of yew,
In shade of cedar,
Small flies are bobbing
Up and down,
Like fishes in cool water,
Like fishes in cool water.
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, Devon, England, flowers, fullness, haymaking, July, landscape, life, nature, Poetry, summer, sun, warmth on July 6, 2013| 4 Comments »
SETTLED
So it is settled:
Cupped, hammocked
In golden hay fields,
The sun
Of this northern land
Free, for a week or two,
To proudly swell
In still, blue skies.
To warm brick and path
Long past sunset.
To pull trees starwards
In deep green shade,
Sheened with dust.
Nestled, the violet mallow
In golden grasses.
Nestled, the purple knapweed
Along the pasture edge.
The hedgerow elm,
Two years dead,
Swathed lush in ivy,
Crowned, adorned
In arcs of wild rose.
Life rushes in
Dressing old wounds:
White yarrow, pink yarrow.
Sudden sweet drift-
Overwhelmed by honeysuckle.
The fingers, white fingers
Of bindweed count the days.
Swallows sigh happy
Swinging high in evening.
It is a time of tasting,
Of breathing.
There is music,
There is silence,
I can find no difference.
There is one second,
There is the next,
Tell me, if you can,
Which is more perfect?
—-
simonhlilly 