March Haiku

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Like something holy
a thousand suns
in the lotus blooms

     For the one
     who knows me for who I am
     sugar moon

Metanoia...
across the lake
flittering swallows
                                  
      Waterfall...
      the silver-light
      of echoing stone

Over the river
in the rain
kingfisher's fire

        In the pre-dawn light
        the lambent glow
        of a fading star

Faint music
in the twilight shadows
lenten moon

         The golden hour
         on a gentle slope
         daffodil trumpets

Two lovers
outlined in silhouette
peach blush sky

          Expanding
          in the swirl of snow
          a growing quiet

In your eyes
the whole world dances...
Northern lights

          Small paws
          on the window ledge...
          cat's silent meow

Small butterflies
above the celandine...
Spring's warm breath

        Opening her eyes
        to the thrum of green... 
        Gaia awakens
                
Letting go
of everything that hurts...
wide open sky

           Mist clearing
           across the valley...
           a veil lifting                                                

This love
growing stronger, goldfinch 
in the silver birch

         The pull
         of something wilder...
         dancing breeze

The give and take
of negotiation...
young deer in the woods

         Brown hares
         in the flower meadow...
         full pink moon
                                                             

For now I’ve decided to come away from Twitter and return to the tranquility of my own blog for a bit. Also other areas of my life are demanding my attention. For all my friends from there, thank you for your friendship and for all the creative inspiration! Best wishes and see you soon x

To Make Poems

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To make poems
out of sunsets or rainbows,
the wings of dragonflies
or a river’s song
is to embrace the unity
of all things,
is to make a person whole.

To make poems
is to listen to the whispers
of the changing seasons,
to the birdsong at dawn.
The dreamers will tell
the forest’s story, the light
springing from the soul.

To make poems
means to include your neighbour
as yourself, to ride the waves of experience
through the vicissitudes of aching,
pulsing life. To make poems
means always to be falling
endlessly and helplessly in love.

Blue Sky

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A monochrome day, a trapdoor,
a cell window
framing a bare, pale light,
the sun off the pavement
much like a compass

pointing the wrong way
and needing to give yourself over
to love and forgetting,
the yin and the yang
of the second door
painted in green –

and it has come to this,
to tasting your name
in the aroma of wine,
in fresh bread from the oven
and to loving you now
as I loved you then,

written through him
in cool, clean air
across the intimate distance,
reflected in mahogany eyes,
in the brush of wings
as a bird takes flight –

all this we have and more
deep in our solitude
and the door melts away
leaving a heart beating
between strangers
and light, a river, blue sky.

Changes

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Something stalks this track at night. Its eyes are green. In another part of the world a war is raging. Sometimes I wake in a sudden sweat. The air is still, the night quiet. I slip out of bed towards the window to take a gulp of air. The house creaks as I inhale – the sky is clear. One night the stars looked in such a tangle, like our fairy lights did at Christmas. Now it’s March and the weather’s changed, warm and full of birdsong. On my walk a butterfly lands on the path just ahead. The circles on its wings look just like eyes. It flutters up as I approach in an arc of vivid colour. This is an angel in disguise, I say but no-one else is here.

Love Speaks

Love speaks in tongues
with a voice low-pitched
like soft music left on repeat,
like the colour of cinnamon,
vanilla or nutmeg,
or the throb of a sunrise,
the air a vibration of wings
drenched in a flower’s kiss –
is bliss
and the tenderness
of gently falling snow,
twelve stars circling winter
and spring drawing nearer
like a flame.

Sorry, I don’t often get gooey like this, but… happy Valentine’s Day! 🙂

Stories

There are stories told these days
that often seem fantastic, shifting
like the shapes of clouds
or the flight path of birds. When I close my eyes
at night, the story continues in its own black
sense, as though estranged from all truth
and reality. “It’s for the common good,”
they say, “the threat just keeps on growing.”
Meanwhile my dream room spins
around me like an injection
dissolving in my veins, the lights
blink in and out. And here there is no map,
the tables turn, the world speaks
as though in tongues. I wake
to hear the sound of an occasional
siren, a barking dog ~ and birdsong, a trill
so clear and high
it makes me feel I could both smile and weep.
I get up and draw a line across a sheet of paper,
watch as a low sun wraps everything in gold.

Autumn’s Kiss

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Put your ear to the lean-to trees
folding one supine branch into another,
where every day the sun glances through,
lowering as the seasons change
from glass-sharp light into lengthening shadows
flung across the fields –

can you hear the sound,
the low pulse in the dusk
as you walk towards the twilight
and leave woods so deep
they feel like home?

Oaks whose arms reach so wide
they cover half the sky,
beech trees and birch and aspen

and God, I wish you could see
how the light changes from spring
into autumn, feel the crunch underfoot
and the wet backs of fallen leaves,
gold and copper tinted –

the startling colour
of jays on a cheek-cold morning –

blue, blue, blue –

I don’t want to stop, just keep walking
on this trail listening to the jabber –
magpies, crows, the broil
and surge of a swollen river,
cows to the far-side, roe deer bursting
from the trees. I love this place,
the smell of sheep and soil, deep wooded
silence, birdsong –

even tonight while the weather’s strange –

strange colour of sky –

no sense of isolation, no loneliness,
just
one full kiss
and the whole of it
is mine.

From the Land of Dreaming

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You can dream all night upon this ocean

where a feather floats in spirals

as the water spills and heaves

in circling eddies, waves of wind and salt

breaking through your sleep

like the gulls and terns

flaring from the surface throwing out

a different kind of light. I have always heard

the ocean’s voice in the cries of children

and adolescent longings, in the what ifs,

maybes, buts, in all the myths and toils

of forgotten ages. Somewhere a butterfly

flaps its wings while a mounting squall

of water breaks overhead like a falling bridge,

crashing to the beach in a spew of foam

and plastic waste. The tide rolls back

leaving something rippling, glinting dark

and silver along the shoreline,

spreading in tributaries across the flats.

I still my breath listening to the pounding sea

thrumming like a heartbeat, wondering

on a future time when all our better angels come.

Circulating Light

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Under a patch of sunlight
glancing through the kitchen window,

shawled by the dangling leaves
of a house plant twining along

the edge, the glint of sky outside
and a freshening breeze bringing relief

from the fierce August heat. Each summer
is the same yet different, the years

passing in an eyeblink and suddenly
announcing that you’ve aged,

the threads of blue veining along your hands,
the lines growing around your eyes.

And you wonder how to tell it, the tale
so impossible to say, as though life were folding

in on itself and becoming something like air
or water, something like electricity or flame.

In the silence, the light dapples softly
on the walls like stars twinking in and out

and you turn away to go into the house
feeling younger, hopeful, safe.

Collision

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Heading home,

two crows tumble

across the fields

tethered to gravity and dusk –

dogs bark

and on the news,

another war, another atrocity –

nothing changes,

events turning like the page

of a well-read book,

as though the centuries

were colliding,

falling

and spinning into night.

I keep the memories close

of your warmth,

the inflection of your voice

the day you spoke of love.

Midnight

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Tonight, you feel like fire, hot

and burning with stars.

It’s midnight out in the garden

and I tell you I feel drunk,

kindling with stars,

straining my head back to take them all in,

the whole panoply arranged across the meadow

like a TV or movie show. Look,

there’s Venus and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn,

a full Aquarius moon. They say our bodies

are composed of dead meteors,

a thousand atoms from space. You remind me of dust,

a stream beneath my skin of celestial ash

circling about me, living and breathing

and threatening to spill over,

soaking the darkness that pools at my feet.

I can’t keep you in. You’re a storm

waiting to break free.

The Swallow

The swallow,

that crimson-throated shimmering herald,

sheen of the skies

and lover of the summer,

wind-rider, sky-diver,

cartwheeling aerial acrobat,

strong-winged swing devil,

twitter-flitter, fluttering thing,

master of the aether,

that screaming swift and inkonjane –

wheeling, dancing, forking

far-flung thrum of thrilling electric blue.

A Poem

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A poem is a way of seeing

wet cherry trees in the rain,

a dragonfly on the wing

flitting from reed to reed,

or a swallow dancing

through an open sky, or a red kite

hunting low to the ground

like an arrow. A poem

is the strange flicker in a human being

seeking somewhere else to talk,

speaking words to build a grail

to the imagination, a home

for when the night falls

in a deluge of shadow.

The poem is a lamp, a world.

Lightning

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Lightning strike,

the build of cloud on the horizon,

rain, thunder, the disconcerting flash –

like a sky inside you

thrumming, opening up

with thoughts

of touch, your lips, a dream,

a forest creature out at night

and lingering there, tasting waters

at the river’s edge. Something leaps,

a bird, a spark, some small hope

bursting through the endless,

boundless dark.

Some Things

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Some things 

are hard to say –

your throat choked 

with grief and ash,

wanting to be like water 

pouring freely 

from an open wound –

in the heartbreak song 

of a nightingale, 

or a tale of a fierce wind, 

a stag, a silver

crisscrossed spider’s web,

horse, bird, feather, wing

all daring you to come alive 

and be like flame.

Longing

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I think too much on death

wondering if when we die we wake instead.

But the gods seem angered –

it’s written in the stars, they say.

Yet morning arrives all mist and silence,

just the early thrush, a fox’s cough,

the slow rise of sunlight – glitter on dark water.

Amid the reeds, still and motionless

a heron, hook-necked, moon-feathered.

I watch, hold my breath, but the heron startles,

lifts off in a clatter, wings opening

into the weave of its becoming. I wander home

longing for the night, your nearness, your touch.

The Gift

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The moment of waking, his soft breathing,

the garden, frost on leaf, is darkness,

is a question arising unannounced,

yourself at the very point of turning back,

the path running off to night – is stars revealed,

trapped crystals in an hour-glass, time circling

around Saturn’s rings, and I, standing in the midst

of stillness, of a gift I cannot name,

return to his voice, to the window’s orange glow.

Song

Photo by Louise

Looking at this world from my garden

I see how glorious life can be

on this day of endless sky and sunshine,

a tiny bird landing on the fence

to pronounce its song without shame

or embarrassment about its voice –

its song trills, loud and unapologetic,

as if to say ‘sing your own song

and do not be afraid,

live how you were meant to

despite the madness in this world.’

Maybe I’m tired of always lying

and pretending this is how it’s meant to be.

Life could be made of song

if only we could see,

if only we had the strength to choose it.

Spilling Over

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Some days spill over

like water from a glass

compelling you to write them down

as though you were composing music

or a song, as though you were clinging

onto life by your fingernails

at the edge of a sudden fall, each letter

of the alphabet a fortress

against the ruin, a new space

to inhabit within this lilting sound,

and even as my hand stops on the page,

the tune still plays,

the lamplight flickering in and out

as darkness sinks silently into dawn.

Nocturnal

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Some nights I lie awake in the dark

chewing over my mistakes, my wakefulness

a phase pulling me out of time

and on a journey

through the phases of the moon,

tonight, a yellow disk

in a sky full of stars

and in the corner of my eye – did something flash?

I thought I saw it, an angel twinking

into existence and alighting softly

by my side. I’m sure I felt the brush of air

as it landed and folded up its wings –

is this the end? Is this my final reckoning? –

my head bangs and I’m feeling suddenly seasick,

the woods outside my window

creaking and groaning in the wind

like a mad witches colloquy

gathered from the netherworld, sent to exile

and curse my own. I’m rent by pain

and mind games, dizzy within my brains cage,

my ribs cracked and aching

as though I’ve been beaten to the ground. Breathless

I witness the morning glow

cresting over the canopy, the night a ghost,

a premonition, a dark bird in a tree.

The Turning

 

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Hurrying home in this darkness, in this rain,
there is a sound that’s easily missed, a still point
before a turning where the tug of the moon
holds the world in place, the house on this street
just like any other, dim under an urban twilight,
grey in the orange glow, and I’m walking blind

amid the shadowed shapes; the child’s broken toy,
the debris littered along the underpass, the emptiness
of the night. Just ahead the sharp cry of a cat
in some alleyway, piercing skin and bone,
the dark washing inside out, a figure etched
onto the wall pointing towards the blackness of a void…

“It’s all in your mind,” whispers a voice I cannot place,
as if I didn’t know, as if I wouldn’t escape this bind,
this gun at my head if I could, those yesterday’s,
and all those days before hanging around my neck
like tokens of betrayal left soaked and sodden
in the unmanned outpost of this heavy half-light.

Meanwhile, the shadow leads me further on, zig-zags
along the ground, running on ahead like a hound
that won’t stray from its scent, disappearing
into the murk. This is it then; the long haul, the be all
and end all of it, not knowing in which direction
to begin, to have some hope of distance covered,

some moments of release, the rising wind at my back,
the keys in my hand, my foot at the door. In my veins
lies the lure of another country whose sky resembles
a smudge of indigo shimmering in the distant heat,
where the guru holds satsang by the ancient temples
for the workers of the sweatshops and factories.

What is life for you, a heaven or a hell?
Both turn on the same wheel, he says – an awakened sage
who talks with a candour searing to the deeper parts –
only you get to decide which it is. And there my thoughts fall
to the patterns of starlight and shadow, murmurs
in the slipstream, the hush in the dark which brings me back

as the night deepens and the moon hangs low and full,
in this world within a world, this dream within a dream
that has no end, its walls paper thin, where I might
stand or fall or begin again. In this I’ve chosen, no going
back, just the blood-rush, the unspoken wish as I hesitate
by the splash of rainbow pooling on this sliding slick of road.

 

 

A poem from a good few years ago now, but one that came back to me recently. All things seem to go around in cycles, but bringing ever greater insight and knowledge each time. I like to think there’d be an end at some point or perhaps a different story, but I guess the moral is to slow down a bit and enjoy the journey, putting things to rights if possible and learning as much as we can. That’s my take anyway. One day I’ll get this life thing right. 🙂