Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cold, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, seasons, time, Wales, Winter on May 19, 2022| Leave a Comment »
The minutes crack open and bleed cold.
Breath is chapped and hesitant in semi-quavers, a minor key.
The hawk is ice that hunts unrepentant the mountain heights.
Slay complacent warmth, the fickle needs of small hearts.
The flutter of joy, cackle of crow.
A silent field: whiteness extends to the very mists of deep mind.
Carved walls at the edges of space, words written there:
We are extinguished and free.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, art, bardic, cold, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, metaphysics, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, the numinous, time, Winter on March 13, 2022| Leave a Comment »
THEIR NAMES
Their names are the doors they wait behind.
Dreaming, dreaming, they thus dream us.
A silver moon scythes the snow fruit that admits us.
Timeless is the round dance of breath.
There is constant war in heaven, and hunting,
And fast, hot seduction.
How else, otherwise, could it be here?
The stars pour themselves into the hills.
There will be ice upon the marshes.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bardic, celtic myth, Mabinogi, moon, myth, night, Taliesin, Winter on February 17, 2022| 4 Comments »
MOON DISC WORDS
Winter moon
Burns cold,
Burns deep.
.
Afagddu
Gwionbach.
Sun and moon.
This cauldron earth.
.
Winter moon
Looking down.
How many waters?
How many streams?
.
Winter moon.
Keeper of souls.
Cool breath of words.
.
Winter moon.
Cauldron warmed
By breath of nine
Maidens.
.
Winter moon.
Cauldron bubbling.
Road of souls.
.
Winter moon.
The gatekeeper asks:
What is your name?
.
Winter moon.
Born with no mother,
No father.
Bright browed.
.
Winter moon.
Taliesin.
Eloquent silence.
.
Winter moon.
No stunned poet.
Radiance of starlight.
.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, nature, photography, Poetry, seasons, time, Wales, weather, Winter on January 30, 2022| 2 Comments »
A small breath of wind lifts the mist ‘til more blows in.
Two days, three days frost, has melted
And the birds are in the leaf litter.
The mountain’s voice says
‘Winter is not over yet’
But here in the valleys there is a small respite.
A day or two, perhaps, of gentler thoughts.
The world revolves around us here.
There is lamentation and the groans of fools from afar.
The waves, perceptible and arcane,
Encroach on the plans of contented futures.
But here, for a day or two,
Will be blue calm and the hope
Of buds and roots.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, landscape, New Year's day, Poetry, rain, time, Wales, Winter on January 1, 2022| Leave a Comment »
NEW YEAR’S DAY
When there is nothing good to say
Then silence is better.
It is a calm day today,
Small rain in a dark sky.
Above the quiet valleys,
A high wind from the west is roaring.
The last day on Earth will be like this:
Resting in its own beauty,
All known, nothing named.
All reasons self-extinguished.
Watched over, cherished, belonging.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, Christmas, eternity, existence, landscape, landscape photography, moon, Poetry, time, time and space, Winter on December 25, 2021| 3 Comments »
CHRISTMAS NIGHT, CHRISTMAS MORNING
The moon strides through mist.
He is one: half-dead, half-reborn.
The garden is all jet and water –
The black shadow that is time and space.
There is no truth here but stories,
Is what we learn if we live long enough.
The river in its shroud, past the silent graveyard.
Nothing for you to do but weep and sing,
Says the sighing pines.
Nothing but to find beauty here and sing it,
Says the sighing pines.
And the stars look down in envy.
They would fold their wings and walk
These muddy, leaf-strewn paths.
They would feel the cold air of morning,
Let go of hope and fear,
Sing with sun and sparrows.
Would build their small fires,
Feast on emptiness and fullness.
Eternity weaving clothes for itself.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nature, Poetry, time, Winter, winter solstice on December 25, 2021| Leave a Comment »
HEART
Heart anchored to this land.
No need for more questions.
The slow breath of seasons.
An Ivy road that clings and wanders
About the steep sides of Mynydd Troed.
This voiceless white sky calls
Into a vast unknown.
Three days stand still:
The cold of motionless time.
Take it to heart.
Let the silence of it
Dwell there a while.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged admittance, ancestors, awareness, Bardic rant, bouncers, consciousness, continuance, doorkeepers, extinction, future, landscape, landscape photography, metaphysics, myth, Poetry, spring, time, Wales, weather, Winter, worthiness on March 31, 2021| Leave a Comment »
GATEKEEPERS
Sometimes, sometimes, and maybe always,
The doors can be so big
That they cannot be seen.
There is, they say, a wall
At the edge of the universe
So far away, so far away
That light from there has never reached here yet,
And never will.
It is neither winter nor Spring.
The year is a troubled child, roaring.
You know how I write:
I wait for words to come.
I do not send in dogs to flush out the birds of dawn.
I wait, to the souls of rivers and owls, to the world’s breath,
‘Til one by one, they come, gathering lightly,
Bright buds, whispers from the old roads.
And they may dissolve again.
They may dissipate, the offerings of time and waiting,
Just not enough to stay or settle.
The giants were called obstructors.
You might say, doorkeepers.
You might say, guardians.
Huge enough to carve out universes from their skulls,
Rich enough to give a thousand conflicting cosmologies.
It shall be storm all day today.
Waters bubbling down
From the cauldron of the hills.
Clouds dark and eloquent as Afagddu,
Dark as a cormorant preening on his pylon.
The layers of darkness arranged
For a perfect dive into silence.
The world has tipped.
Its weather spills out across the globe.
Excess and extravagance
Eating the hearts of the poor.
We await a new inoculation against greed.
But all our heroes of success
Only hasten destruction.
And so, I bow to the obstructions of giants:
The doorkeepers who block the way
And ask the riddle.
What skill do you possess
That you think would allow you to pass?
What quality, what virtue, to ensure
Any continued existence here?
What is the art that will not destroy?
What is the craft that we have never encountered?
What reasons can you make sound reasonable,
Sliding your guilt out of sight as if it were not yours.
Can you learn harmlessness?
Facing the storm you have raised
Can you abide at ease in the flickering light
Watching the helpless ones be swept away,
Swept away.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, art, consciousness, deep ecology, landscape, landscape photography, mystery, night, Poetry, seasons, stars, Wales, Winter on March 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »
STONE AGE
Snow clouds drift below moon and stars.
The river roars its long distance.
.
What can can we do
But breathe in the warm smoke of fires
And huddle down into the skins of animals?
.
In this way
We become the world’s eyes
In long winter.
.
Hunters of stories
In the mists.
Recounters of the long herds
And the cunning wings.
.
Sustained by the strong life of others.
So we may sing their praises
And with our hands
Shape amber and jet
And flint and bone.
.
Beneath the one tree of starlight
And dancing, rising sparks.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Haiku-ish, landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, seasons, Winter on February 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »
VIEW
Hokusai would appreciate the view:
Garth Bank rising like a sleepy Fuji
Framed by those leaning pines
And the placid, silent sky.
He would have changed nothing,
But chosen the lines for beauty
And the colours calm and dun as the day.
A landscape without pearls,
Though edged by snow hills.
One by one we lose our weight,
Floating upwards to eternity.
The two rivers whisper it
In their deep and hidden ways.
I catch the scent of planed hinoki.
Last day of January.
–
simonhlilly 