[Byzantine Bindings]

Sunday 31 August 2014

Saturday 30 August 2014

Moss on the Landscape


Mystery
revealing itself through
metaphor
experience calling
echoing
deep within primordial remnant

stuck
to the bottom of the pan
clinging stubbornly to
the future
across
time and space.

Gently
Japanese Moss Garden
seeks
Featherbedmoss
with view to
long term relationship.


Friday 29 August 2014

Entering the stillness of creation and listening well.

Preaching to the Converted
What is a garden?

How - like God -
or anything we make up-
is a fantasy
we weave
on top of what's there.

What really goes on
in reality
like time
before clocks
or when they stop?

Walking backwards
regaining momentum
taking responsibility
listening to the voices.

Four choice words left.

Wednesday 27 August 2014

Back to Basics

Cinquain
story
folk or fairy
something for the children
dealing with the daily ritual
tension

50 Word Story
she worries that none will see her egg
symbol of new life
symbol of hope
gathering around
things of greater import
fish man mouse perhaps
no boats
impish grin clerical approbation
what of the half way there people
similarly out of touch
it's hard to keep pace
without daily discipline

500 Word Story
And so it begins. After much worry and consternation she was safely delivered of an egg which at the time she considered a great feat. Understandably the others, some in the shadow some in the sea, fell around laughing at the way she took herself so seriously. This made for poor self image and great squawking around the farmyard.
The birds of the air and the fowl of the earth shall too have their day, it is written, in the book that no one read anymore, or at least read with no understanding. It suited the clergy, the mouse and the fish.
"Heavens above", she cried, "will no one listen to my plea?"
Widows and orphans it seems and hen's with newly laid eggs have no champion in these days. She made a vow to see the king, he would understand as he had eggs for breakfast every morning. She set off with a will to entreat the king.
The plan had a mighty flaw, true she had heard 'king' mentioned and understood the magnitude of the task, but quite where she might find 'king' she had no idea. Round and round the farm she scuttled making a nuisance of herself and bumping into everything along the way.
Thoroughly tired out, she collapsed all of a heap and laid another egg.
What on earth is this story about, why can't I even find a beginning, never mind a middle or an end. It's not even a farce.
It's more practice you need my boy.
Says who?
Says me.
Who's you?
The Turner of the Story Wheel.
I never heard of that.
Well now that might just be because you are sulking m'boy.
Come over here let me turn the wheel for you.
I don't know about that.
Well it's up to you, but you don't seem to have made much progress on your own.
Ok, how does it work this turning the story wheel?
Well, first you take an idea, maybe a character or two, even a situation, time of day or night if you want a scary story. Anything can be your idea, it's like grain you see, or sugar.
Grain and sugar?
Well nuts and bots and metal then.
Has to be something to grind, something to make from. Nothing in nothing out, that's the way of stories.
Huh?
If your mum sets out to make a cake...
She don't bake?
Well if she did, first there has to be a will, then she'd take ingredients. Well, them ingredients are like nuts and bolts, metal and wood, fire and air. What's done with them is story, but there has to be a will and ingredients. Thought and things...

Five weeks to Goose fair.



Monday 25 August 2014

Trying to be true to himself (Week 4)



See the black tarmac road upon which you walk
clap hands.
See the black-crow road fly up
around you
under your very feet
ten thousand thoughts dispelled
on what do your certainties now stand?
Thought is not reality
tread upon that road.

Sunday 17 August 2014

Beyond Thinking

I think that listening with the heart requires a different processing than that of brain sense. The lines of communication are different, the receptors and transmitters are different. The language codes are different and knowledge a strange glancing affair.

Sunday 10 August 2014

Right Direction

"The Lord God planted a garden eastward of Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed" 1

i) East
is where we belong
in the airy
morning
sunshine
at the dawn of the day
there
our first allotment
of
food
life
morality
at the river's
four heads

ii) South
the summer sun
we travel to
gathering warmth
cultivating
by
cunning fire
red things
among the green
and browned
earth
in the sun
golden rays

iii) West
our longed for
babbling watery
home
of restful
gathering
in browns
oranges
fading greens
reflected
in cool clear
hazelnut ponds
streams and brooks
leading us
sinking sunly
homeward


iv) North
the winter
stony
resting place
wet wild winter
overtakes
chills bone
marrow
sparse beauty
white frosts
purge old ways
encourage
focus on the
necessary things.

1KJB Gen. 2:8-10

Friday 8 August 2014

Threshold.

Standing guard at the doorway.
Touched by the Green Knight’s holly axe.
“Same old same old?”
“Yeah I know, tragic isn’t it?”

Now transformed into a tiny wren
- The King Of All Birds
unregistered then
only later -

On creaking growing shoulders
willingly stooping through the gateway
on the other-side
in the otherworld

There stands the impenetrable blackened trees The Forest of Self-Doubt
Rearing up suddenly from up here they are as clover.
Striding together towards The Great Ocean of Drowning Indecision
wading through
shrinking to a tiny shiny puddle
Heading for The Great Mountains of Unworthiness they become as dust to his ever increasing size.
Striding out now
arriving at the farthest reaches of the cosmos
in frustration he lets out a great thunderous roar which echoes throughout eternity.

Quietly slipping off his shoulder now
going where even he cannot
through The Immensity of Darkness
flitting in and out of hedgerow whose light
dark shaded face-fence bounds the allotment.

At home here returning to scale and size
a momentary truce is declared
and peacefully the web holds its breath
sensing a tear in the fabric.

The trees cough apologetically
awaiting my return.

Back at the doorway soon enough
finding a gift
a trug of harvest vegetables
significantly
and
tied to it with threads of brightness
allotment gate key.

giving thanks
leaving the doorway
moving to another future
whistling (you remember whistling)
whistling to the dark.

Thursday 7 August 2014

What Won't Keep?

It's about visiting mum
and the relentless
monotony
the anonymity
ordinary magic of it all.

How does it all happen
fall into place
who knows
you turn round
and life seems to have happened
without your knowledge
notice
or consent
but there it is.

Wednesday 6 August 2014

Death in Life



There is a rhythm
to it like the
sea
sons
return to home
where growing took place
in hardly cultivated
hostility
often
alongside
nature's own patterns
and rhythms
of
seed and
sow
ever turning
circles
interfacing
interlacing
interlocking
intercoursing


Tuesday 5 August 2014

Autumn

Thinking back
remembering
this and that of the coming stories
the lifting
the digging
and the fruits of autumn 
bestowed upon us
death companioned us of course
but sitting round the fire
seemed presently absent
in our comfort

there may have been much more of it
of shell and sword and flame

but it hardly seems important now
in the crackling twilight
is enough for one man's dreamy eye.