It is the rocks that make the river sing,
The world that gives us song.
Bones creak, branches heavy with snow,
Breath captured must release.
Spring will come.
—
Posts Tagged ‘Wales’
It is the rocks
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, being, landscape, photography, Poetry, Tao, time, Wales, Winter on January 24, 2018| 1 Comment »
The Blessing and Poison of Good Words
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, darkness, landscape, mystery, photography, Poetry, Wales, Winter on December 28, 2017| Leave a Comment »
—
THE BLESSING AND POISON OF GOOD WORDS
no moon, but a single
sickle call of an owl
in the deep valley
cold stars are winter’s eyes
as warmth leaves the world
and darkness wraps all up
as close to silence
as one can think.
by rivers and stars are we lifted up.
by rivers and stars are we brought low.
silent voices dipped in cloud.
I shall sit in darkness and dissolve into light.
dissolve into endless light.
dissolve into light.
Lost Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, Basho, Haiku, Haiku-ish, landscape, Poetry, Wales, Winter, winter solsice on December 21, 2017| 3 Comments »
LOST HAIKU
Autumn leaves.
The path ahead obscured.
That is why I am so late!
—
Only one leaf left
On the old tree –
And that is a bird.
—
(Basho on biophobia)
The old pond.
A shopping trolley pushed in.
Profound emptiness.
—
Midwinter road.
Around the corner:
Sunshine.
—
A half moon sunk low.
In the valley. Listen!
The river, shivering.
—
The past turns haiku.
The valleys dissolve in rain.
Dissappearing light.
—
To culture silence
Become that grey backed heron
And watch unhurried.
—
Dark water
The ash bows down
Reflecting.
—
The smallest day.
Mosses, lichen, drip their own green light.
Darkening woods.
—
Foot in mouth
I walk words
Tasting damp leaves.
The spiral of green moments.
—
Longest Nights
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landcspe photography, longest nights, myth.landscape, snow, Wales, Winter, winter solstice on December 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »
LONGEST NIGHTS
the smoke of owls
and the sparks of their prey.
the howl of darkness
and the howl of the dawn.
mist tumbles off the snowline,
jaundiced is the air.
fields lie fallow,
their farmers large as hills
and dark, watching for good time.
tumbled clouds tangled
in the sallow valley.
Scarce enough warmth
to go around the village,
scarce enough words.
a golden light within
everything, though.
pooled translucent light.
a river story blessing.
a famous birth
and a death that disguises glory.
—
Bless the Bones
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cambrian Mountains, change, cold, landscape photography, pattern, Poetry, seasons, snow, Wales, Winter on December 14, 2017| 1 Comment »
the year sweeps seasons
like a passionate cloud
from these soft hills.
and the bitter cold is here
and the turbulent waters
and the fire that talks loud and soft,
singing of snakes and angels in the grate.
and the hush-now, hush-now of cars
speeding past to work in the draughty town.
the trees dark and bare
sliced in thin moonlit night.
yesterday, the deep, blue-shadowed snow.
now, a knifing wind, a fast melt
and word of valley floods.
bless the bones of things,
though they may ache and ache.
on bitter slope the memories slide.
it is a thin sinew
holds everything together.
—
Haiku from a Chapel of Mountain Solitudes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, chapel, Haiku, landscape, landscape photography, peace, Poetry, Soar y Mynydd, solitude, Wales on November 23, 2017| Leave a Comment »
SOAR Y MYNYDD
Where we rest
Deep in the mountains:
Soar y Mynydd
Hung in autumn air
Its white walls glowing:
Riverside chapel
Neat as it may be:
A congregation of leaves
Patiently waiting.
Soar y Mynydd.
Even when people have drifted away
The river sings hymns.
—
To Wake in Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cold, landscape photography, Poetry, seasons, waiting, Wales, Winter on November 19, 2017| 2 Comments »
TO WAKE IN WINTER
To wake in the long darkness
And feel the slow cold seep in.
To love, and to war against those
We do not love, is not enough.
Drained and wan, the ache of it.
The decay of worn roads and reasons.
The ravens are silent as they push
Against the folds of cloud.
The hills ripple but they do not rise.
We miss the touch of sudden sunlight
And a simple purpose to go on.
Is patience a curse or a virtue?
—
—
It Is The Changing Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, landscape, patience, Poetry, time, timing, Wales on November 8, 2017| 2 Comments »
It is the changing light
That is making the distant hills dance.
It is the falling voice of crows
That weds autumn to the stilling air.
It is the accumulated weight of days
That pales the valley oaks to gold.
It is the forgetting of our own dreams
That fills us so with pathless grey dawn.
It is only hour by hour in the garden’s work
That we learn a steady, silent patience.
Bending down to earth between a hum of flowers
Doing only what can be done,
Doing only what is timely.
—
Llangammarch Blaze
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, disaster, elegy, existence, fire in Llangammarch, grief, life, loss, Poetry, tragedy, Wales on October 30, 2017| 6 Comments »
Llangammarch Blaze
There now, lay it all down,
The soft memory and the memory of hard bone.
After the year’s first true frost
A dead sheep lies in the field becoming a dance of hawks and ravens.
And on a lonely hillside unremarked
A blaze has born the babies away.
A smudge of smoke and the light of morning
Is no prayer of peace to ones who wait
Empty-hearted for better news.
The village, warm now in sun, silent.
Thoughts unthought of before – friends vanished,
Those known, now unplaced, a hollowness
Around memory clung to.
It is an uncertain anchor to hold on to –
This world that blinks apart from day to day.
Should we rise and flow like the oak leaves
On the cold dark currents of the Irfon?
Or wrap around like ivy, cling like lichen bloom
To this weathered stone.
We are a thin soil that the wind will blow and the waters leach.
The babies are gone who should be dancing.
The mothers silent, slowly dissappearing.
Pick it back to the bare bones.
Feed the world with our ripped out sorrow.
We are nothing. But we were loved.
Once named, now melted back to everything.
A thin soil on scarred stone.
Golden are the tree tops, a palest blue sky.
The ravens dance in their ring, in and out,
While the sun still shines,
While the sun still shines.
written as the news was emerging about the great and tragic loss in our small village. A family house destroyed by fire in the night, a few children escaping, but many more lost. Llangammarch now besieiged by hordes of prying press and film crews.
Llewelyn’s Last Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancient stones, landscape, landscape photography, Llanynis, Llewelyn ap Gruffudd, peace, Poetry, Powys, remembrance, Wales on October 29, 2017| 3 Comments »
Llewelyn’s Last Morning
(Mass at Llanynis)
A bright morning
for Llewelyn.
Sun through cloud,
The white trees
in waiting.
River is hushed
And the hymns
urgent and quiet.
Before you and after you,
these stones:
Ship of God,
anchored in meadowland.
Before you and after you:
This carved stone pillar,
Woven knot
and lichen bright.
In memory,
to lay them at peace who fell,
Their names are
grass’s whisper only.
—
The last native Prince of Wales, Llewelyn ap Gruffudd, is said to have had communion at this small church on the morning of 11th December 1282 before he and his troops were betrayed and ambushed a few miles away on their way to capture Builth castle. It is a small church, not now easy to find, and lies in the middle of a field with only one or two farms nearby. Across the River Irfon at Cilmeri is the well where Llewellyn’s severed head was washed. His troops were scattered and the cause of a Wales ruled by their own nasty, Welsh, nobility ( as opposed to nasty Anglo-Norman nobility), lost. The carved cross-stone looks to be an old grave slab, carved on three sides, but I have found no information about it. In general, these stones were carved between the 9th and 13th centuries – so it would probably have been in the church or churchyard in Llewelyn’s time.
simonhlilly 