Poems

Everything has death in it.
So many deaths in one lifetime
Death of cells, death of notions , of past loves , of youthful fancies and delusions
Out of all this death something grows.. eternal
A seeded moment
Inspiration ignites
A chance
A happenstance
A catalyst.

One drop of moisture  and the apparently inert, dormant dry desiccated life bursts open!

Hard and fast
Hard and true
A hard nut to crack
But crack it does
Yielding to the inevitable
Destiny we say
DNA
Dazzling New Arrival

I seek the door of enchantment
To slip through the slit in a daisy stem
And come out into sunlight,
To pass through the green door
And be lit up again
By the enchanting breath of ferns
The neat-toed leap of a deer
And to know again that this light –
The light that makes the moss
on the beech roots ignite
Into soft-shaped emeralds – is reality
Not the scorned territory of childhood
And that I am right to seek it
Though I never know where or how the transparency
Between the two worlds opens.
I can only search the waysides
Until one foot slides into a rabbit hole
And I find myself face to face
with the coral eye  of the pimpernel.
Such meetings are small epiphanies that pop up
And open as flowers do each day,
Million upon million breaking
Their sealed lips for the first time
To let us in.

Consider the doors that remain unopend……

Silting though all the impressions of your life,
What about all those moments that mind and memory filters out?
Something notices, something chooses.
What now lies hiden?  sent to live the shadows, in the liminal,
Along with all that’s lost:
Like the creative idea never realised, an impulse to action never followed through,
Or the dream that isn’t remembered on waking,  opportunities are missed.
There have been choices made, that changed the course of the whole river
But what about the other streams we rowed right on past headless?

Will you look at me, take a good look at me and tell me what it is,
That you think that I am?

The words unsaid, the spaces between words, the difference between the word
That lies trapped between pages to those given voice.
The pregnant silences that remain undigested.
All the eggs that are reabsorbed back to into the womb of our comfortable notions.
The road less travelled, but this is the road not travelled at all!
No animal walks here, even the wind’s deflected past, the new season fails and
The soil lies bitter.
Like an archway standing in a field that cries out ‘ enter’,
But what happens now the arch has crumbled leaving only a bleak vista without
Any imaginings?
A doorway into this walled garden used to stand open,
Now even the wall is gone and the garden too.
Can you even hear the suffing as this tide turns?
Listen even the sea is holding its breath!
And who notices as night and day hang suspended?
And who watches for the boats return, the trail of salmon,
The flight of birds returning?
As we walk tracks of loneliness,
Sheep wandering in the hills.

The soul searches the skin
Water searches the rocks
For the places worn thin
Where one gives and lets
The one into the other.
Under the great Twmpa the mountain God
Hunched, Atlas upholding rock on that muscled back
But one day he will break through – his hair
Will blow with autumn bracken
He’ll know the piercing hymn of kites
And how the sun warms
And then covers her face with darkness and starts.
When under the great mountain
The great mountain God stirs –
The flood of light concealed in matter released –
His back will turn to rippling gold
And each dark mountain thing – stone, earth –
Will surprises us with light
Where we saw only blackness.
Above the Twmpa the sun
Spawns tiny dragons, thousands of ragged mouths
Quivering as they rush and rattle
Through the universe flashing
Red-yellow tongues, eyes bugled to bursting
In the heat of release
Burning on the path to extinction
Feathering the trees, the mountain
Our upturned faces with warmth
Melting our masks, our pasts
Until no lines remain
No wall no skin
Until all lets go of all
And we are free
To run and lie in the shallow scrapes
In the fields with the hares
And are gathered up again
In her white arms, our pelts and hearts
Throbbing under her hand.

Fairy quality on the edge of the known
very very light
airy no things

Claim your space
space is no thing

We have to make space for this
no thing place
the magic rim
where worlds meet

Like the place of change
where working surfaces meet

The hand on the wood
the wood on the bowl
and the magical sound
that comes
and transforms the
unseen senses that receive it

The knowledge that was sound
and then silence
transformed into actions
which manifest something
more than the knowledge

Which carry it on and on
and on through different forms
continually creating

Seed forms
continually forming

Women coming together in
service of the whole.

Claim your space

-Opening-
Riven, Rent, Rupture
Crack, Cleft, Crevice,
Subterranean,
Subcutaneous Chasm.
Cavern of the Breath,
Breath of The Ancients
Breath of The Earth
Breath of The Mother

In drawn
In drawing in
Come into Communion and
-Listen-
As the child dreaming under the ribcage,
Belly deep.
As the listening yet unborn,
Hears whisperings,
Of all the hidden secrets of the heart.
-Listen-
As this seed distils
Settling onto soil
-Listen-
As this small perfect Universe of potentialities
Nestles into darkness.
-Listen –
Moist red warmth,
Smelling welcome
-Listen-
As soil and stone listen
To the stirrings,
All the possibilities that lie wakeful
-Waiting-
Imbibe this new soul’s essence
As the breath flows in
-Breath-
Open my heart!
This soul to hear
Thy Will
Your command To Be!

In a dream
I walked amongst the ancestors,
They tended their fires,
played flutes and drums.
and danced as only the elders could.

I watched as an old woman
took ashes from the fire
and spit on them.
Then rolling them
into a ball,
which she tossed
again and again into the air.
With each toss,
the ball changed,
until it was a tiny replica
of our own Earth.
With tears in her eyes,
she handed it to me.

I held it up against the sky,
and was amazed to feel it vibrate.
It was alive!
There were tiny birds in the skies,
the blue rivers and the seas
churned with fish and water creatures,

The land itself was alive
with animals, insects and reptiles,
many of whom have been extinct
for longer that I have lived.
This tiny blue and green Earth was perfect,
unblemished, it was as it had been
when the people themselves
were brand new.

I looked into the old woman’s face
and heard her say.
“Go back now,
be the voice for those
who cannot speak for themselves,
and for the Earth, our Mother.
Hurry child, time passes quickly.”

When I awoke,
I held in my hand a ball,
colored blue and green.
I held that tiny ball
up against the big sky,
and whispered,
“Yes grandmother.
Yes.”

In A Dress Made Of Butterflies   by Sandra Lee Stillwell

 Descent

 Take your bird, take it where no bird flies,
walk the passage down,the long mile,
open each pair of towering metal gates,
pass through and let your feet trust the path that keeps dropping, make the descent.
Soothe the bird, a sparrow once lively on your shoulder and chirruping, as it falls silent,
and then at the next gate stops fluttering from hand to hair to arm but settles
and clings to the cloth of your shirt.
Go down.
Let the bird creep inside your breast to nest in your heart
as the silence deepens and expands at the Earth’s core,
the waiting room where nothing is ordained and anyone may appear or slip away.
Here you no longer feel the bird in your breast or the outline of your body –
this is the great well, black and still, not with death but with the magnificent incertitude,
the slate wiped clean of past and future.
Bow your head, bow the body, bow the heart, the mind,
the soul as the dark space wipes its charcoal cloth over and over until in places the darkness
gathering grains of immortality for its next flourish,
the things we never dreamed of taking shape.
What has not failed? Your eyesight gone, your organs hard or in decay
but still you make your journey here to the centre of the earth
where wings flicker in and out of the darkness,
tempted between that and the scintillating joy and weight of becoming more.

‘Hurry!’

Yes, it is so, there is no time left.
There is an urgency that is felt by the whole of creation,
But at a level so deep that we are normally not aware that it is there.
But I felt it today.
I felt my own body with flames all around it,
Standing, holding my arms and hands up in desperation and longing towards God.
And I felt the whole of creation doing the same.
It is too late for us as human beings to do anything any more,
Because the tipping point has passed;
The only thing that can save life on Earth is for God to come back into this,
His world.
I saw the trees standing, as I was standing,
With branches and leaves held up to God.
And light rose from them – but not high enough.
And the mountains and the rocks and the stones were standing,
With light around them, calling upon God to return to Earth.
And the rivers were calling, and the clouds reaching up with hands of mist.
And the grass was singing its song to Him.
And the animals stood still, and lifted their heads and their eyes to Him.
And light rose from them too, but not high enough.
And the birds were flying, and their song was as light, was their call to Him.
And the bees in their hives were humming a deep moan of longing to Him.
But none of this was yet enough.
The light of creation was rising towards God,
And creation was crying out to Him,
And I could see the light above,
But it was as if it was waiting for something else,
As if it wasn’t yet quite time.
Or the longing of creation was not yet primal enough,
Or urgent enough, or total enough for Him to respond.

This is the one thing needful,
That the two lights come together,
And it needs to be witnessed by human beings.