Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku-ish, landscape, nature, photography, Poetry, roads, summer, travel on August 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Fragments from a Long Road
In the blue shadows:
White bindweed moons.
Indescribable fragrance,
This August, summer air.
How the hills
Swell with rain,
Rise pale and loiter
At the edge of sight.
Chicory, wide-eyed
by the roadside,
Ragged blue
as the windy sky.
Even through these warm still days,
The scot’s pines, ever singing
Of storms and roaring seas.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, death, elegy, existence, Haiku, japan, landscape, life, loss, photographs, Poetry, travel, uguisu on May 29, 2013| 3 Comments »
Here is the final part of this long piece I started on my arrival in Japan last week. It was a lot longer than I expected, but then grief and loss, death and life, love and longing are big subjects.
I have been working from an old notebook so it has taken longer to transcribe and post than usual. Maybe now I will start some slightly more jolly haiku!
JAPANESE SYMPHONY, EIGHTH MOVEMENT, ‘Uguisu’
i do not know ho we can stay.
little bush warbler, i do not know
how it is we can remain.
i am drunk upon your water-clear song.
i am full of white tears for lost worlds.
i do not know how we can remain
so diminished, so lost.
within the song is always silence.
within the sorrow, something else,
something else.
we go, must go,
we cannot stay
forever looking at sunsets and weeping,
in the cool clarity of summer stars.
we are clothed in your song,
little warbler, drunk and raining,
wingless on bare branches.
blades of grass, single petal falling,
we shudder and break
into a thousand pieces.
i do not know how we remain.
we are not who we were,
nor who we are
nor who we could have been,
little bird.
it lies in sorrow, little bird.
it lies forgotten between us, little bird.
it lies between if only and never.
breath comes in and goes out.
joy and sorrow, the flickering breath:
the light and shade of this life.
how can we remain?
song only comes as we expire,
breathe out, let go.
the beautiful voice, little bird,
escaping, gone,
no longer belonged,
no longer belonging.
offered.
memory and forgetting –
the only gifts
we have ever owned.
—–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cicadas, friends, Haiku, japan, journeys, loss, meetings, moon, night, Poetry, return, sake, sorrow, spirits of the dead, travel, yakitori on May 23, 2013| 3 Comments »
1
moon leans down.
spirit of the departed
pale, smiling.
in the yakitori bar
every face
a character from Hiroshige.
we bend to each other
laughing
at the unfailing sorrow
of our human condition.
sake tasting
of tears.
warm night
cicadas tisk and tut:
our homeward staggering.
—-
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.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, Breadalbane, clouds, Cuillins, dawn, dawn sky, glen garry, hills, Isle of Skye, landscape, lochs, mist, nature, photography, Poetry, portree skye, relections, Scotland, sky, Sleat, sleat isle of skye, TheTrossachs, travel, trees, Trotternish, valleys, water, waves of light on November 13, 2012| 9 Comments »
We recently travelled to the Isle of Skye and the Western Highlands of Scotland. October in Scotland is glorious and the weather was good – not too overcast, not too sunny – so that we were able to see the land in many of its moods and atmospheres. I have selected a few images around the subject of water. I hope you enjoy the visual essay.
Taken from a cafe window in Portree, Skye, early morning looking east.
Fron Ord, Sleat, Isle of Skye, looking across Loch Eishort towards the Black Cuillins.
Clouds reflecting in the still waters of a loch an near Kilt Rock, Trotternish, Skye.
Looking across the sea to Harris from Duntulm, Trotternish, Skye.
Ripples on Loch Bay, Waternish, Skye.
Dawn sky over Kyleakin, Skye. The view from our bedroom window.
Sunrise over Kyleakin, Skye. Waves of light.
Early morning mists lift into the sky over Glen Garry.
Mists, shadows, trees, Glen Garry.
Still waters, slow moving mists. Loch Lochy.
Sunlight enters the woods. Mist rises from the waters. Loch Lochy.
Water-worn pools, Falls of Killin.
Waterside willows, Loch Venachar.
The sky below. Loch Venachar.
The Waters of the World. Loch Venachar.
——
This world
is the Otherworld:
Silver and gold
in turns.
The road flies
to the horizons
where our eyes linger,
longing
for something
right
in front
of
us.
———
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, Haiku, moon, nature, night, Poetry, seasons, sequence, solitude, travel, Winter on September 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »
*
Every other noise
In the storm:
The latecomers.
*
Sounding deep my soul:
The wind that moves the dark pine.
How far seems that home!
*
Only me
And the full moon
In this empty boarding house.
*
Nothing remained to be said.
The wind
High in the darkness.
*
The empty clouds
Fill with light.
Slowly, the moon.
*
Dead of night.
In the empty yard
The dripping standpipe
Is silenced.
*
This sleeping world:
River singing to itself
Under the stars.
*
Halo of the moon
Shifts like a dreaming cat.
The dawn wind.
——
This is a selection of haiku from various times, put together with a similarity of mood or feel. To add to it a very recent little piece:
Little cat
Can’t settle:
Moonlight
Rippling through the windows.
—–
simonhlilly 