Candles Quiet

 

The pulse of a candle

Expands and shrinks

With the breath of those

Who pause

To watch

 

Faster it flutters

The flicker fizz of flame

Throbbing as it throws light

Sight blurs and twists the room

A geometric dance of lines

Chasing angles in a fit of joy

 

Angels in your mind

Link up with one another

The rational brain is unlocked

And allowed to walk off

Somewhere else for a while

Restless energy

diminishes in waves

Replaced by a blissful balm

An Autumnal Bath

 

Following ancient gunnels like a torrent

of water

Curious, mindful

Pooling in a white bone pit

At eye level with the ground

Awaiting wonder I watch

The spiders have been at it

Their silver webs lace the ivy mat

This phantom geometry

A patient beauty humming with existence

 

Everything in its place

 

Take this fallen tree

Its roots hinged out of the earth

To form a living throne

Seat of the everlasting now

The root formations mirror the interlocking

Of branches in the canopy above

They are the flailing limbs of woodland sprites

They pattern the sky

Just like they pattern the under world

As it is above, it is below

 

I press my fingers into the wet moss

New bliss

I note the soft spongy bark

New waves of bliss

I lie in an autumn pool of colour

In pure incessant red and yellow bright

Heaped leaves where my feet once were

Now whipped up in a cyclone flurry of earth scent

Oh yes!

The depth and substance of that smell contains

Life

Contains death

Gives way to life

Death to life, Alive

Gazing at Swifts

Black dots of activity swirl in whirlpool intensity

In blissful radial symmetry

Swifts frantically prepare for night

Form phrase from flight

 

Birds in natural chaos

Order themselves in a flurry of spirals

Darting in clusters for their home

The gasping jaws of the cave hold safety

They weave between stalactite in glee

Oscillate like water breathtakingly

 

It is an urgent surge

The days last dance

Fork tailed swifts charge the last throws of light

Scatter in reds and freewheel on air

Where the river leaves the mouth of the cave

they muster with hypnotic energy

I know in that moment

Part of me is forever free and made for synchronicity

 

Unnamed

Water makes the world chant

A steady whisper heard by billions

of twitching bodies

Resonators constantly receiving

the unfinished news of the living

 

Liquid norms undulate above and below

Even within us

We clatter and churn like water contained

Dash after dash after dash

No longer at home

On our home

 

Listen to the humming secret in your body

Beyond the unseen and insular

A mysterious and intimate knowledge waits

A language we were born with

Wordlessly it cycles through our existence

Evaporating off the dry husk of hardship

Returning in fresh downpour time and time again

Echoes and Edges

Echoes and Edges create sonic worlds inspired by poetry. I had the  opportunity to offer some of my words for them to improvise over. It was a pleasure to hear how the words animated and took on fresh expresssion as a result of their work.

You can listen to their latest response to one of my poems 'On these things and more' -  here

Chatter Speech Screams

Anthropocene we know you will not pause 

Gears grind gung-ho, macho ideas win 

for now, drowning rains we debate the cause 

We callous conquerors turn from dark skin 

Elemental fury has me shaking 

Land ice is sweating to kill in cold blood 

The seas surge god like, human hearts aching 

Flood after flood after flood after flood 

The angry planet holds some special good 

You can hear it at the mouth of a brook 

Each tree has a tongue speaking for the wood 

The loose jaw of nature an endless book 

We have to realign, do something and weep 

Change is here, we are all called to leap

The underwater sound of Heavy Hearts

Last night I was visited by Killer Whales

The thing is I never usually dream of other animals

We were on a kind of theme park glacier

The Whales grew increasingly impatient of the hoards

People who interpreted their presence as a sign

evidence that the human project was blessed

The scientist she told me that the Wales want to be acknowledged

That they wait vigorously to pierce our hubris

so they can broadcast their soundscapes of truth

Visceral messages which would melt our hearts to water our brains

And dissolve our muddled certainty

These creatures are restless to repurpose confusion  

They do not play with our fear they seek to channel it

We have gathered tears from their tear ducts for decades

Yet still ignore their grief

 

A groaning churning world preoccupies us

We dally with positive spins

Thin, cosmetic delusions

The longing for a panacea twists us up

corkscrewing our heads deeper into the sand

Swerving past the gritty grains of truth

As we dash around for cinematic moments of hope

And cast ourselves as saviour to the play things.

 

Play things they are not

They want to be met

They have been tapping out a message

Let’s start there

Swimming through the broken ice of reality

Their heavy hearts are more than facts

Their swirling every day is not friendly

The life all around us is kinetic in its disbelief

Insisting on relatedness

Calling to our wild selves to awaken

And commune with the textured anguish of the deep sea

Their urgency will soon be ours

Discomfort crashing in with intuitive waves of knowledge

Intrusive is the truth

That time is up

 

Killer Whales burst in to my consciousness

Wanting to be acknowledged

Some humans have been diligently listening

I woke up from a dream to write this

On these things and more

When all about you is tornado

And despair

Think on the unrelenting scale of space

And the persistence of a seed

Think on those eyes shut melodic moments

On limbs everywhere responding to rhythm  

Think on those who share what they have

And when more room is made at the table

Count the ways we look beyond ourselves

When all about you is indifference

And cruelty

Dwell on ravished land restored

And moments of play and creation

Dwell on the glimmering touch of rain

And the vulnerability of honest communication

Live in the unfurling flourish of a fern

In that spiral eddy of a lazy river

Then measure the scale of our collective imaginations 

When all about you is shaking

And sorrow

Keep pace with the surging voices for fairness

And the flight path of a swift

Keep pace with roads blocked in the name of peace

And every night spent under an open sky

On taking a stand and being stood by

See the shape of smoke at fireside cooking

Weigh the immediate joy of gratuitous giving

When all about you is yawning

And broken

Meditate on our distance from the stars

And your footprint on the sand

On the expediency of a feather

Hear stillness and singing and laughter

Meditate on first smiles and last smiles

And a gaze returned

On lifting up another's voice, on pause, on listening

Sense the pleasure in logic and the art of intuition

Yes, ruminate on justice, purity and goodness

Know the quiet truth of your changing feelings

Know that people are taking risks for beauty

A Celebration (BC)

I cherish the imprint of that day at the beach when we gathered together

Before duty solidified and we understood our new reality

When the spread of disease was a tremor on another shore

Still we greeted each other awkwardly, the usual embraces blocked   

Our gaggle of friendship both bonded and stretched by uncertainty

Sense of time stalling, future oblique, for some work already lost

Walking in pairs there is speculation over what more will be lost

The footstep rhythm gives traction, we are drawing strength together

Learning from one another what our response can be to uncertainty

We have met to be held by the landscape, the ground of reality

Outside wide open, our community will not remain blocked

Tracing the glorious flourishes of a slow river to the shore

Shoes off now, warm soles, dirt turns to sand on the shore

Sunlight thrashes over a new horizon, it finds us lost

This global concern so intimate our collective future blocked

Radiating heat and truth the earth is holding us together

So many in danger of falling through the cracks, this is the reality

The fault lines were already there, let there be no uncertainty

Wind whips through my hair, clarity replaces uncertainty

The glance and drag pattern of the sea strokes a glistening shore

Ripples rush off packed sand, it is an iridescent reality

In a totally new way I am in this moment, lost

Our smiles touch and this fresh presence we all share together

Hushed conversation gives way to laughter we are no longer blocked

Somewhere certain elite scramble to profit from disaster, they are blocked

I have a fleeting hope they will change, or listen, or melt into uncertainty

Meanwhile clothes are abandoned, the gentle waves call us together

Swimming is life, we breathe in a cleansing, inhale the shore

Sand falling through time, a groaning system forever lost

Perhaps we are in the birth pains of a new reality

We dance to warm up, born is a playful reality

May this world wide tragedy flush out all that is blocked

Let us struggle and dream for what might be gained as well as lost

Where there is wisdom let it be claimed by submitting to uncertainty

We dash off dunes, rejoice in the sun, give thanks to a cartwheeling shore

Devising games, sharing and innovating this is how we are together

That day we were not lost but present with reality

In lockdown may we be alone together and not remain blocked

Remembering the stability of our shared uncertainty on the pristine shore

Another Now

Our imagination is in a wild dance with reality

Feral thoughts collide and

populate new territories of the brain

Iodine stains creep across the

stretch of a prostrated mind

Darker tinges leak into one another

Pollute innocence

Create dissonance

I divert the sinister advance with movement

In my body

One foot forward and twist and shake

Rhythm and breath transfer to stillness

Shook silent

Seeking the quiet creases of

this pickled fist of panic

Where all that is good swirls

I pay attention there

Grasping hold of precious fluid

White matter dashes with light

and waits for the dark

Ascending to a higher place

Look outward

Feel this moment

Follow the fissures

to hope
which waits in

Another Now

Walking in the dark

Walking under street lamps

Light to his inner broil

Abscence of work is toil

No direction

He doubts each breath he takes

Shadows shrink and get bent

The dance of discontent

Passion nowhere

City fox strikes a path

In the past friendships led

For the people he bled

No plans for self

Too much on another

Owl, wolf, tree still mortal

Death a one-way portal

His own waiting

Crescent moon rests obscured

His faith on shifting ground

Still located around

Relationships

Like the lamps and the moon

He must find his own light

An inner hunger bright

Yet still borrowed

Who generates passion?

What star shines on and on?

Love when the heat is gone

Live for each other