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gardening
A Bright New Day
Chittering wrens
Pick from the larder of cones
Clutched in the pine-brush
And absorb the awakening light.
Beneath, I sit and ponder
On the nature of being.
Some would speak of mankind
Separate from reality,
Somehow living above it all.
Yet, I am moved
Upon the turning of the world
In season’s gentle shift
Of early beginnings
And day pushed into night.
Surely this body,
As all walking free,
Feels the thrust of life
In the burst of the bud,
Unopened but profoundly expectant.
Surely all are moved
By the first warm breeze
Tickling the pine needles above.
Who is really alone
When life thrums
Through the body’s instrument,
When the very moon
Sways the water of our moods
And the constitution of our minds,
And new light shines,
Drawing us out
To sit absorbing
Like the first insect
Roused from hibernation’s
Torpid sleep?
The Fluid Of The Air
There were downpours last night,
The patter of swollen drops
On leaves and the absorbent earth.
The guttering dripped intermittently
And sung me back to sleep.
This morning, when I step outside,
The garden accepts me
Inside itself,
Merges me wholly
With the rain-heavy air,
Easy on the breath
And dampening like a sodden blanket.
Bird calls are shrill in the moistness
As if the lubricated air
Conveyed sound more easily.
The separation between things
Is altered and healed
As though my senses,
Conducted by the closeness of molecules,
Reach far beyond
What I might call the body.
Where once there was dry air, the sky,
And things existing in it,
Now there is one fluid medium
Where all things touch.
The boundaries of bark and stem,
Feathered skin or the insects chitinous
Exoskeleton are as porous
As the canopy of the overarching tree.
And the osmosis between
Is a luxuriant movement,
Energy’s transient enquiry,
Unconcerned by the names of things
And free to pass between,
Free to roam
A borderless and singular being.
A Dove Coos
A dove coos
In the the bell tower,
Soft and throaty
And warm
For the chicks
Loved in to the nest.
–
The Scots pine,
Lofty in the graveyard,
Stands still and magnificent
Exuding presence,
Shining with silence
And oblivious of time.
–
The woodland,
Dotted with ewes
And skewed graves stones
Chatters
In warble and whistle.
In the canopy
Birds flap and flutter unseen.
May Rain
The sky breathes
Moist upon the land,
Kisses the newness
Of just-unfurled leaves,
Liquefying the air
Until dew drop and rain drop
Dampen tree bark
With dark mottled absorbency,
And the haze of cow parsley
Scents the sky’s earthward reach
With its Milky Way.
Shriller and lubricated,
Bird call conducted
Through the denser fluid,
Cuts the sweet cloak
Of draping mist,
Amplified inside
The descended cloud,
Defined by its weight
And closeness.
And from the delicate canopy,
Born in perfect verdancy,
Coalesced drops patter,
Splatting loose and percussive
Upon fresh nettle leaves
Yearning for light.
Wonderful Space
The garden is ripe with being
For sunlight
Diffuse through haze
Illuminates
And encourages
All green things
To be
Ever more themselves.
And like the plants
I expose my skin
And open my pores
And breath in
That light,
Absorb
The sweetness offered
Unconditionally,
And drink in life
Knowing, as it is mine
So it belongs to all
Whose hearts beat
And in whose veins sap rises,
And in even the static selves
Of soil and stones
And things thought inanimate,
Nevertheless
A pulse of being still thrills.
The Measure Of Happiness
In the wind chime caressed
By a breath,
And in that very same breeze
On which birds chirp and caw
And flute about the day,
And in the corrugated iron roof
Tink-tinking with a lungful
Of sunshine,
Expanding its sun-trap back
And stretching like a luxuriant cat,
And in the lofty Scots pine
Whose needling fronds
Reach like sensing fingertips
Deep into the infinite:
These all
Are the measure of happiness.
From Soil
February mizzle wets
The lights
Of snowdrop, crocus
And eager daffodil,
Soothes and lubricates
Their birth
Through soil
Mulched humus rich
And frangranced sweet
With spore’s mycelium.
To think,
Some slander this complexity,
Call it dirt and mud
Overlooking the quantum truth
Of gardeners’ gold,
Both foundation
And sustenance
For all.
Photographer
In the moistened autumn air
Morning time is late,
Shuffling from the lengthening night
Through swathes of disintegrating leaves
Let loose the life that gripped
So urgent and productive
To branches now revealed.
Rooks craw in skeletal beech
Where only a smattering of bronze
Tenacious leaf, still reluctant
In the wind, cling jewel-like
And fluttering. And other birds
Pick at the glut of berries
With the needle of their song.
Somewhere in this,
Where the sky morphs
And reveals and holds
The whole landscape,
Walks the photographer,
Drinking in the all that he perceives,
Almost convulsing
With each perspective seen,
Almost pained by the utter beauty
Unfolding in fleeting perfections,
That even if time were his to own,
He could never hope to capture.
Dripping Auburn Golds
The world is dripping
Browns and auburn golds
As russet leaves, untethered
From life’s lunge and thrust
– Summer’s widened light –
Let loose the season’s
Fall, in energy unclasping
The matter made,
As all shrinks away
And narrows toward formlessness.
distilledvoice 