Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘woods’

2017/07/img_2881.jpg

CORNER OF THE EYE
(A touch of faery sight)

I see, and not quite see, this sleek man in blue
Quietly through the oak woods of Sunart,
(Just so, as through your own mind now),
The whispered past and the roaring futures.
Green rock, black root, the boulder house split,
Door leaning ajar, and the elders:
Roof and walls of a tumbled croft,
And hearth music in the song of insects
That drub the late summer air
In the folded waiting of the far north.
Listen to a tuning fork, high and clear struck.
The sense of it continuing on, a breath on sound,
A pulse of wingbeats. That is how it feels,
Stepping between the path and the oak
And the high larch, and the dripped lichen.
Watched by the timeless, curious eye.
Gone, to them, in a single blink,
As they to me, a flit of mind
Between the oak trunks,
A notion of peculiar colour,
Frictionless worlds sliding by,
An atomic resonance,
A flicker of wings.
Only this.

Read Full Post »

MIDSUMMER LIGHT

The woods are settled now and full.
Their heavy green skirts spread cool
And pleated in each valley’s green lap.
Nest and nested, crowned with shade,
They glow of a midsummer evening
Into a slow, white bow of twilight
Patterned with bats and owls,
A stretched and quiet expanse,
The tropic and declination of invisible motion,
A singular silvered attendance upon silence.

2017/06/img_2714.jpg

Read Full Post »

frost scratched morning air.
in each green nest of ivy
Grateful bees murmur.

Read Full Post »

Walking further than intended
A river breeze in the tree tops
And below, streams of birdsong.

The grasses are shooting green
But still in forest shade
The violets in full bloom.

A running stream
A cowslip sky.
At the forest’s edge,
The scent of green.

Deep in the woods
Violets bloom where no-one sees.
Perfected in themselves,
Complete within silence.

Allowed to breathe here
By the forest’s edge
This cowlip sky
A river wind in the treetops.

2016/06/img_2050.jpg

Read Full Post »

Violet blue
The bluebell haze.
Twisted, threaded,
Through and through
The oak green.

The shadow dropped
From big-breasted hills
Rolling in waves:
Valley’s deep sigh.

The road sways:
Head, this way and that
A hound seeking home,
The river snake’s companion.

I am blown free and torn
In this cloud-edged land,
Misted and veiled
All purposes tasted.

A scumble of swifts
Above the black poplars.
A heaven white scent
The rowan, the hawthorn.

The names: a rough reed bed
Tempered with savoured vowel.
Roughshod, a blacksmith’s anvil
Of a language.
Meanings annealed, malleable,
A memory of saint and well
And sandal.

A here and a there
Where miles elongate
Or evaporate.
Where moments grow roots,
Deserve names, a fame
For remaining.

A valley cloud, high and low,
A wooded place, an inhabited mound,
Yew and chestnut,
A fading, rained-upon blossom
An adherence to loneliness.

Read Full Post »

THERE SHOULD BE CUCKOOS

There should be cuckoos.
The warm silver clouds
Low with rain
Sheeting the high hills,
Green and weighed down
With yesterday’s light.

There should be cuckoos.
Floating, echoing hidden
Like a gong, like a memory
Turning over the still heart
Melting tight paths of thought,
Manifest distance.

There should be cuckoos.
Inhabiting every wooded fold
Deep in the world
Now settled, fruiting,
Slowly inturning, indwelling
Heading high to solstice
And then the long
Slow burn to harvest.

There should be cuckoos.
Now the hay is turned and gathered
Now creamy elder scents the air,
Worlds in worlds, layered, established.
Angels barefoot down the lanes,
Honeysuckle fingers, messages forgot.

There should be cuckoos
Measuring this loosening, this hollow,
Replacing thought and song
Answering all, settling all,
Letting go, adrift and floating.
Low clouds, rain heavy,
Warm air’s slow somersault
The swaying grasses, the rippling grasses.
From the green world’s roof,
From its rafters,
There should be cuckoos.

—–

(Ornithologically suspect, as cuckoos here in England usually call most in April, but it was the thought of cuckoos on a warm, cloud-filled day in June, that inspired this flow of words.)

Read Full Post »

20130430-190635.jpg
print of ‘Light of Beltane’ created from tree and other plant spirit symbols
*****

THE COOL GREEN FIRES OF BELTANE

These wild mad-eyed men
Fire burning souls, heart-clawed:
Let them cool and rest
Under the dapple of trees,
Let them silent learn to smile,
Let them melt a little
Considering this fragrant air
sufficient, replete.
Breeze-filled, bird-filled,
A hammock for goodness.

Let them drop their hunger,
The carving of empires,
The bitter profits of belief,
The fierce ambitions for more.

Let them love their sons and daughters
And let them remember the open woods.
Let them not fear heaven nor hells
But let them halt and watch
The small things gather, delighted,
Learning the blessing of trees.

Let the heart melt in May,
Let the skin warm, flesh relax, soul unfurl.
For there is a glory to find beneath all things
And it shall shine through
Enough for any,
Enough for all.
Life under trees.

Let the mountains remain open
Let the valleys be all in green shade
Comforted, rocked, whispered.
For there are sufficient deserts,
Howling emptinesses we need no more of,
No more cleansings nor clearings
Nor impositions of sterile order.

Let the heart melt into May,
The cool green fires of Beltane.
Let the soul, with the souls of all, unfurl,
The branching year blossoming.

Beyond is the cool airs turning warm,
Beyond is a place to rest completed,
Beyond is the dream of violet shimmer
The hum of summer, the nest of light.
Under trees, cooled, dappled, blessed.

*****

Read Full Post »

%d bloggers like this: