nature

Autumn Fisherman

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True, this life is not perfect.

There are problems and difficulties

In the body,

In relationships,

In the wider world,

Spiralling into

Apparent madness.

–

But as I sit here

On a train

Watching the countryside streaming

Under a overcast Scottish sky,

I spot a tan and autumn fisherman

Wading in peat-brown fury,

His line arcing for trout or salmon

Or just the chill water, pulling,

And I am brought to the wonder

Of a grey morning

In which our fleeting touch,

Half a moment shy of his hook,

Is sweet with life’s meaning,

And for a second

I feel

It was not a silvery fish,

Taught and tugging,

But I

Vibrating on the end of his line.

Single Eternal Note

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I won’t go into the day save to say it was grim as an overcast sky, hungover and car sick. But now, on a beach polished golden by late afternoon light, two cold beers – my companions, refreshment beading bottle-green glass and glugged so thirstily, the whole of reality is changed, altered.

The wind moves constant through the pines, and unseen birds twitter: Vibrating needles hum a single eternal note.

The tide is in, lapping gently in the push of cool waters. Oystercatchers shrill low over the glistening brine, every wavelet capturing the blinding sun.

Moored sailboats jostle anonymous, swayed by tide, current and breeze, their lanyards chink, chink, chinking, tolling a finger-tapping rhythm, a morse code of freshness.

The wind moves constant through the pines, and unseen birds twitter: Vibrating needles hum a single eternal note.

The sun is on my back like a hug from behind. I look up, and the beach is near deserted. My companions are spent and silent, drunk.

The sunbathers have packed up, leaving but a memory’s shape pressed in the sand. Only a lone young woman remains, sitting on the wall, reading. There is a deep silence inside her, a peace made of the ever-flowing wind.

The wind moves constant through the pines, and unseen birds twitter: Vibrating needles hum a single eternal note.

Behind the woman is the row of trees from which the birds twitter. Their trunk-bodies are sculpted by the air; their faces swept clean; their hair creaking; their needles vibrating with the sound of reality.

I can taste the world, the whole world, brought by the wind and the twittering birds, constant in the fronds of the trees, creaking gently.

The wind moves constant through the pines, and unseen birds twitter: Vibrating needles hum a single eternal note.

I can feel the world, the whole world, called by the wind and the bird’s constant twittering, and the oystercatchers cutting the sunlight from the waves, and the chink, chink chinking of lanyards drumming on aluminium masts.

I know the world, the whole world, found in my broadening heart’s cool waters and the sun’s hug from behind. I know the loving world contained in the constance of silence as the wind moves through the pines and unseen birds twitter; Vibrating needles humming a single eternal note.

A Breeze

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A breeze strums

The feathers of the Scot’s pine

Towering above my garden,

And a wind chime

Gently interprets

Each gust.

There is a magic in the creak

Of the flexing branch

And the twisting sinews

Of fibrous bark;

An instrument

For the wind’s fulfilment.

Always, a dove coos

When I find the wind-full tree

Of my life

Existing in the silence

Of a tangible happening,

Drawing out the now

From its hiding

Until I am like a finely tuned

Sensing apparatus,

Filled with the sticky movement of sap

And vibrating

With the sweet resonance

Of life’s thrill

Through fronds of waxy needles.

Picture

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In the floor to ceiling window

Opens the picture:

The river

Glassy with the sky,

Smudged with autumn morning,

A pale blue glaze

In which mists cling

And spiral,

Calling back

The chill night

That stilled the dew drops

To a crust

And freed the tattered leaves

To mulch beneath the trees,

Sending out

A sweet and heady breath

Of spores

As life withdraws,

Releasing jealousies,

Indifferent now

To the russet matter

Discarded.

Untethered

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I hold my opinion

As you hold yours:

A collection of ideas

Raised on the twists and turns of our lives:

Individually accrued

And shaped into a weave

That we wear like coat:

A personality,

An identity,

Who we are, perhaps?

–

Can you be loose

With the luggage of the self,

This weightless stuff

Made of weightless thoughts

And thoughts amalgamated into belief?

–

How real it appears

How solid it seems

As if the weightless thoughts

And invisible ideas

Made something tangible,

A thing, actually there in the world.

–

Better to be loose

With opinion.

Better to see it

As merely a point of view

Among eight billion,

No more or less valid

Than the next,

No more or less serious

Or stupid or laughable.

–

Better it drift off in the wind

Better it evaporate under sunshine

Better it be like a friendly shadow

Whom you love

Despite its ignorance.

–

Be free unimportant opinion

Who I held so close,

Be free

Here in me,

For I see you small

And light and fragrant

And harmless,

A nothing who might alight

My indifference

And flit there unworried,

Restful for being wholly untethered.

The Fluid Of The Air

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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.

Cool Breeze Beneath The Plane Trees

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London is sweet

In June’s ownership.

Roses billow

From front gardens

In to quite, shady streets.

There is a cool breeze

Beneath the plane trees,

And reality flexes

With a deep breath

And a mind expanding.

I read in the paper

That rare orchids had materialised

On a green roof

Among towering edifices –

An astronomical improbable chance!

Someone was quoted saying it was miraculous.

It made me wonder

What other miracles

Are yet in store,

Idling just off stage,

Unseen in the formless realm,

Unexpressed possibility

Awaiting only

A nod of our head

And an invitation to be.

May Rain

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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.