A Knowing Valley

Auditory map making

Places me present

The fanfare chatter of the river

Doesn’t speak any language of mine

Yet such a deep time chant

and chuckle

Jostles the particles in my body

I bristle and unfurl

All the same

 

Clatter of water against the bank

A reclining tree splits waters passage

Boulder after boulder

The scattered flanks of ancient drama

Insist on silence

 

Blues and whites dash the light

Shallow parts in constant chase

Persistent purity cleanses my withered brain

As the depth of the bend slows the flow

So too does the pace of my heart

 

Tidal wave of trees

Green life surges my senses

A connected wall of life

Held by insistent roots

The unseen landscape

Below the ground

All symbiosis and open mouthed kissing

Until it reaches cold rhyolite which hums

The same tune

Only at a slower rate

 

Wondrously, water reflects light

Animates matter

All things imbued

this valley sings with a rush

A place of slow ways

and tired work

dignity, purpose and beauty entwined

Now ready for change

 

Oaken moss meets my mouth

as I suck like I did the sponge in the bath of my youth

Birch trees bend sexy in sun

I walk up

Once wooded hills

Saxifrage breaks the stone of my heart

And I remember who I am

A Sudden Softening

I hope I will always remember

Your laugh

As we played together on sunlit floor.

I stacked and you smashed.

Your laughter unforced, unblemished

Was an invitation to let my heart go unguarded.

Since you were born I’ve known a trembling kind of love

Then, me crying with laughter we share a simple joke

An ambushed heart giving way to some ordinary healing

Peels of glee, a real purity

Adventure 1

We have had to buy a van

No one intended it per se 

Yet we were supposed to be there yesterday

And everyone allowed to drive

Has a broken car

Or ran off because the mountain of grief

they were under

Started another avalanche

In their brain

 

She is called Emily

Has it painted down her side

With shaving foam

And we are hurtling down the

Jack knife tar

Trying to get to Bristol

There is a cheese board going around

Driftwood with cheese daintily balanced upon it

Cheese rescued from the supermarket bin

chutney too (stolen)

An axe to slice the cheese

We know we are in luxury conditions 

Handle howls into his bagpipes on the back seat 

The keg of ale gets tapped

The smell arm-locks our desire

And we quaff care free

On our way to someone we once new

And hopefully her friends too

It’s a party already and this will cartwheel

Into early next week

 

The music is head-back abandon and pace

We are scatting what we see over the top

In ecstatic glee

The fizzing electric signs

Fields of weary horses

Crab apple trees heavy with fruit

Flat faced sour eyed women whizz past

Somehow worried

Tight jawed men

Behind the wheel of lorries intent on the night

 

It’s always ‘we’ on trips like this

The ‘I’ is transmuted into the

Two step gait of a more connected rhythm

All thoughts are integrated into action

And if someone throws a punch its only

Because their shadow isn’t yet drunk

Or loved enough

More common would be a pervasive sense

of YES! To all things yes!

No risk, fear flung out with the dawn

We could just keep driving

Pick up anyone else that heeds the call

And go

Just a few hundred quid for the van

And yes its falling apart

But I swear we could be in morocco by next week

Where its rusty red coat would gleam

In a golden horizon

Life Forever ours.

 

The treasure of youth

Effervescent naivety

Where did it take me?

Lost Hum

Phone buried in chest where heart once was

Phone has contacts

And a compass

An app for experiencing oneness

All manner of sound effects

I can’t laugh from belly

Anymore

Or trust gut

Or taste my tears

 

The world splits us

Living splits us

From our true norths

 

Yet living is the only route

 

A dizzy needle

Eventually remembers the force that draws it

It is there we must travel

Unplugged