If I Stand A Long Time By The Water

It was joyful to hear the merry whistle of blackbirds as they darted from one clump of greenery to the other. Now and again a peaty amber colored stream rippled across their way, with ferny over-grown banks, where the blue kingfisher flitted busily from side to side, or the gray and pensive heron, swollen with trout and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the sedges. Chattering jays and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead, while ever and anon the measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the great green woodpecker, sounded from each wayside grove. 

– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

. . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWliWrfgFgI

. . . . .

Surrounded Now By An Aura Of Hush

What is it you are trying to say exhibited here with such a dark-eyed intensity – 

birds on a wire sitting steady like rocks with a purpose yet conscious of nothing in this lush

October landscape filled with an innocence, breathing the air that is forever changing

at this hour in the light of a new idea silently evolving from some deep mystery.

Who assigned you to this silence?

The muse of inspiration, or the one of imagination?

. . . . .

I see that the life of this place is always emerging beyond expectation or prediction or typicality, that it is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated. And this is when I see that this life is a miracle, absolutely worth having, absolutely worth saving. We are alive within mystery, by miracle.

– Wendell Berry

Tell Me What You See

Under an autumn sky

the instinctual habit

of a disturbance of leaves

sweeping across the floor
outside in an anti-clockwise motion

startles the overlapping silence
of secret things we can’t know, 
bathed in the crisis of light.

An assortment of feelings -

real and moving, sharing space

with cumulative intakes of breath,

circulate in no particular order,

combining with new

and diverse interpretations

subtly connected to

the tenderness of

an imperfect language

whose stream-of-consciousnes

mimics a soul

entrenched in thought –

myself amongst it

in this present.

The Heart, A Rage Of Directions

…but being your own story

means you can always choose the tone. 

It also means that you can invent the language

to say who are you and what you mean.

– Toni Morrison 

. . . . .

I lost my way, I forgot

I lost my way, I forgot to call on your name. The raw heart beat against the world, and the tears were for my lost victory. But you are here. You have always been here. The world is all forgetting, and the heart is a rage of directions, but your name unifies the heart, and the world is lifted into its place. Blessed is the one who waits in the traveller's heart for his turning.

– Leonard Cohen, from Book of Mercy

. . . . .

I would hurls words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if 

an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, 

to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all, 

to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human.

– Richard Wright

There Like The Growth Of A Tree

Inside and around, its presence made visible in my head. Words unguessed by others caress a further darkness drawing the eyes inward toward a shy interior. And what about the secrets between things, hidden as a dementia, coming across as many things all at once. I wonder why just now, having read the poem, an anxiousness catches light and pulls me up from wherever I've been. This new presence – an always welcome surprise.

. . . . .

Entrance

(After Rilke)

.

Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight,

Out of the room that lets you feel secure.

Infinity is open to your sight.

Whoever you are.

With eyes that have forgotten how to see

From viewing things already too well-known,

Lift up into the dark a huge, black tree

And put it in the heavens: tall, alone.

And you have made the world and all you see.

It ripens like the words still in your mouth.

And when at last you comprehend its truth,

Then close your eyes and gently set it free.

– Dana Gioia

. . . . .

Entrance

Whovever you are: step out in to the evening

out of your living room, where everything is so known;

your house stands as the last thing before great space:

Whoever you are.

With your eyes, which in their fatigue can just barely

free themselves from the worn-out thresholds,

very slowly, lift a single black tree

and place it against the sky, slender and alone.

With this you have made the world. And it is large

and like a word that is still ripening in silence.

And, just as your will grasps their meaning,

they in turn will let go, delicately, of your eyes . . .

– Rainer Maria Rilke

. . . . .

The tales we tell are either false or true,

But neither purpose is the point. We weave

The fabric of our own existence out of words,

And the right story tells us who we are.

– Dana Gioia

Nature's Resolve

Motionless, the ears don't hear its hushed breath as it lay mute in quiet pause surrounded by the expeditious movement of a burning landscape. Yet within that cloistered space the flame of it awakens the soul, offering an effortless nudge – even as in stillness it rests, drenched in the habitualness of the day. The blur of greens, yellows, reds and browns mix with a constant blur of light and you feel something of fall standing amongst its elements, and you wonder too, how to translate the passing of it. Much later, at the time you step back – away from that musing, something coaxes your spirit to continue its dance midst the sunlight there.

. . . . .

October gave a party; The leaves by hundreds came - 

The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples, And leaves of every name. 

The Sunshine spread a carpet, And everything was grand, 

Miss Weather led the dancing, Professor Wind the band. 

– George Cooper

To Capture Its Evanescent Spirit

As happens sometimes, a moment settled 

and hovered 

and remained for much more than a moment. 

And sound stopped

and movement stopped 

for much, much more than a moment.

– John Steinbeck

An Interim Serenity

And I am not sure

what calls me in.

A pull of colour

intensely lit.

For the time being

the heart gallops.

. . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnpxTS0E4Gs&feature=related

. . . . .

Never Really Silent

Passionately gather up

the vowels and consonants

pulsing through thought.

. . . . .

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

– Robert Fitzgerald

Another's Perception

The eyes gave listen 

to a quiet occurrence.

. . . . .

What was imparted in that stillness became
a preferred diversion from the idleness of the day.

The Dearness Of, The Sweetness Of

It is a generosity, a charity you bestow on yourself. And though at times its soul stays hid in some auxiliary room, taking on a different form at different times, there at the edge of one's knowing, let its optimism inch its way back into consciousness. Connect with it – it will appear as a blessing.

What Has Been Created

Weaving in and out of possibility – a voice rushes up from the centre of self. Out of inspiration a thousand drifting fragments of thought playfully coax one to dash outside into the clear contours of a complex landscape so as to render something specific in the smoothness of another world’s edge, to honour its spirit.

. . . . .

Mounted, its life 

in the space of this moment. 

Without Intention

The dewdrop fell 

into a great wilderness.

The lens zooms in to catch it.

But instead – a glimpse

of a spider's web.

. . . . .

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

– Martin Buber

Carried Forward By The Wind

In a simple way

an element of life,

by design, catches fire.

Its confusion has

a directness to it.

. . . . .

Miles from here the stirrings of fall.

. . . . .

Casually, a flock 

of Canadian geese 

circle then disappear. 

Yet their shadow 

lingers, dictating a 

quietness that swallows

an initial beginning. 

With a kind of detached 

sweetness an inception

becomes lost, and stays 

like that – hanging 

on that vast horizon of 

another's interpretation

in other shades of light.

A Fragment Of Language

Bit by bit poetry taught me to think in more than one direction.

Everything I came to know of it – its charismatic strength, 

its fire of transformation, was brilliantly animated by the spirit,

and its voice becomes ageless within the hourglass of time.

A Space Of Contemplation

a perfect patience

AND otherwise –

a perpetual peace.

Agglomeration

Beginning with an impulse, an ever-present multiplicity in this particular place

at this particular time becomes a medium of expression in this hour's light.

Eloquent Digressions

Unending complexities – vast networks

intrinsically unique beyond description,

resembling the inner workings of a heart,

every detail burning as bright as ever.

Drawn To Its Influences – Suited To Its Mood

We make of it what we must.

In the form of a translation.

The nameless and the named.

Its Early Fall

The beauty of the world 

which is so soon to perish, 

has two edges, one of laughter, 

one of anguish, cutting 

the heart asunder.

– Virginia Woolf