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Untitled
photograph
Chopping Winter Wood
Last night
Brought a frost,
A coating of crystalline white
Drying the air, stiffening every leaf,
Crisping every damp thing,
Stilling all life
But for the sparrows.
Into this
Plooms my breath,
Brought momentarily
From the invisible;
I feel wonder at the breadth
And reach
Of the ether if my being.
I select a log,
Choosing one with flawless grain,
Straight lines, unknotted,
Placing it upright.
I lift the axe, aim
Half heft and half let it fall.
If it is true
My kindling spilts with a snap
Akin to the most beautiful synchronicity,
The grain parting
As if only a thought’s worth
Cleaved it separate
And clean.
I cut more,
And while I swing my axe
And watch my basket fill
With rough cut pieces,
I listen to the sparrows
And the stillness,
Enjoying my breath
Realising wintery all about me.
The Blazing Heart
Perhaps you forgot
The searing light,
Buried it
In low-mood thoughts
And reason
As heavy as chains.
–
Oh, yes, you say,
Give me the nicotine of thought
And worldly misadventure.
Let me overlook my overlooking,
Let me ignore my ignorance
And dwell outside myself
In a swirl of worries,
While the light is left unacknowledged.
–
Instead,
Remember, not the cold intellectual light
And the optics of the brain,
But the warm body of love
Inside yourself.
–
Remember the needless state
Where the heart floats
On ethers,
And worries are nothings,
Neither fears, nor even yours.
–
Remember the you
Before the you
Who carried the weight of living,
The unfettered you
Buoyant and watching,
Alive in the now
From which all springs forth.
–
Remember the sun of love
Blazing in your heart,
Remember remembering,
And the knowing
That the heart has always, always burned,
Is never dulled
And will never ever grow dark.
The Looking Of You
There is a looking,
A looking into yourself
Where the eyes
Become ever wide.
Ever and ever wider
Grows seeing
As though astonishment
Were limitless,
And what the self is
Is no less
Than all.
And yet there is greater seeing
And wider eyes,
As astonishment
Is refreshed with each
Step into yourself,
Each looking wider still,
Seeing drawn into
An infinite expansion
Into seeing itself.
Ever wider sees the I
Behind the eyes,
Ever wider
Becomes the I.
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.
While The Sun Set
While the sun set
Our thoughts got caught
In the sticky thorns
Of the news
And we all remarked
On how terrible it was.
–
And as the sky became redder
And wider and filled
With darting bugs,
Feasting bats upon the wing,
We said it was a travesty.
–
And when the moon,
A slither in the vastness
Of horizons broad as beginnings,
Slipped from behind an effortless cloud,
We continued with our worrying stories.
–
And at last, with but a pale glimmer
At the most western face of the day,
The final moment
When night was not yet night
And day still held sway,
We woke up,
Realised everything was alright
And that life was in fact joyous.
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.
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 