Red patches appear,
Glow in dark'ning summer greens:
The pond is cooling
Friday, September 24, 2021
Reactivating the Blog
September - reactivating the Blog
Recent poems
I have been working on other projects for the past month or so, but now, with the publication on Amazon of my poetry book "Musings" I am returning to what I hope will be a regular schedule. So here is a short string from the past weeks -
Beg to Report
In the 3.20's of the night – yet again
Beg to report
Signs of life on the surface of this human brain.
Crackling the same old way
Following ancestral paths
Out of the wells of consciousness
Coming up with the same questions
Battered by the same storms
Beg to report
Primal thoughts are bubbling to the surface
Pouring into ancient molds -
These halting moments of wonder
Struck our forebears, who thought like us
Who peered with the same familiar apparatus
From their lonely archipelago of time.
Bearcamp Pond, late August
Misty morning, grey.
Dark sky sombres the water
Tones down summer's green.
King of a Fragile Realm
Small palace, set in half-tamed woods
Old pastures, rocky streams
Dirt and tarmac roads winding through.
Outside the human world dwindles quickly -
At night the quieter sounds emerge
The to and fro of wild survivors
And under them the silence.
My morning swim in lakes the hour makes private,
My royal bath in waters pure, preserved for me.
Here inside the palace I am king
Surrounded by ancestral furniture
Hoarding millions of words
Shelves of ink and paper
Muttering museums of talk,
The paraphernalia of eating and drinking
The images of art and tribal record on the walls
The fabrics of comfort and display
Machines, no not to think but receivers and transmitters
To access gather organize and store
A library so vast it beggars all the treasuries
The vaults and armories of ancient kings.
Here I sit and summon the riches of the Earth
The local goods not good enough for me -
My coffee arrives from Ethiopia
At the click of a mouse, no coins across the counter
My tea by magic carpet from Darjeeling
My wine from anywhere, the oikoumene of the grape
From all the seas and corners of the globe
The flesh of animals that walk and creep and swim
The vegetation I decree is fit for me
All comes in plastic packaging
Supply chains at my casual command
Driven by fossils heaved up from the ground
Delivered by the young man carrying the package to my door.
The ultimate fuel is money
A mass delusion,
Conspiracy of estimated worth
Comes in waves, in and out
Numbers washing through machines -
I am on my throne believing I control them
They are my unruly subjects
Washed in and out all day, all night
At the whim of my royal, royal dream.
Summer nights
Here on Earth I wade through shadows
Skirting the edge of darkness
Threading a path through pools of silence.
In impenetrable night I tend to exist.
I am standing in the rain
The stabbing wind's blind fingers
The atmosphere thinning
Gravity slowly losing its grip
Bear me out.
Out beyond, to the breathless stars.
Morning observance:
Suspended 'twixt Heav'n and Earth
Diving in the pond.
2022
It's time our time our time of life
In 2022
For us to rise above the strife
in 2022
It's time to step to centre stage
In 2022
To break out from our mental cage
In 2022
For we are what the planet's got
In 2022
Our faults don't matter, not a jot
In 2022
For now the wolf is at the door
In 2022
And night has come, the flames will roar
In 2022
It's up to us, the random team
In 2022
To be much better than we seem
In 2022
So we are saviours of the world
In 2022
We share a fate we can't escape
In 2022
The Earth will burn, the waters rise
In 2022
And we shall fight towards the light
In 2022
We're not the ones the angels choose
In 2022
We look as though we're bound to lose
In 2022
The winds will howl, the clouds will glower
In 2022
Brave speeches will proclaim the hour
In 2022
There's no one else to hold the line
In 2022
It's no use looking for a sign
In 2022
We're headed for the cliff, my friends
In 2022
With no more dreams to patch and mend
In 2022
It's down to us,the worst, the best
In 2022
To change the world, survive the test
In 2022
We're just the same we've always been
In 2022
We have to find the golden mean
In 2022
There's nothing new that we can find
In 2022
We have to fight but still stay kind
In 2022
For we can't win unless we love
In 2022
And we'll invoke the powers above
In 2022
For inspiration needs to strike
In 2022
So we can learn to dam the dyke
In 2022
And we're the same old motley crew
In 2022
And sacrifice is what to do
In 2022
So now's the time that truth will out
In 2022
A time that we are cleansed of doubt
In 2022
The time of waiting now is past
In 2022
The criss now will bind us fast
In 2022
And we must carry all our strife
In 2022
And strive to save the planet's life
In 2022
So here we are, a sorry lot
Who wish upon a star
But we are what the planet's got
The door is still ajar
And in our minds we pull the blinds
Th sun still shines, the sky is blue
The road is ahead is one we dread
But every dawn is hope anew
In baffling, daunting challenging
2022
The Spirit of the Woods - a hymn to diversity
The Snapdragon film project has as its theme "The Spirit of the Woods." A core idea is the wonderful diversity of our local natural world. A Columbian might think our biodiversity a little sparse compared with the lands further south, but I find it pretty close to the principle of plenitude of St. Thomas Aquinas, that everything that could possibly be created in this world is out there somewhere.This hymn/ode is spoken by the humans who are denizens, accustomed to the wonders around us.
We are the people of the woods
We know the paths, the trees, the streams
We know the rocks, the thickets, the flowers
We know very mushroom, every fruit, every acorn
We know every animal, every mammal,
Every bird, every reptile, every amphibian,
Every fish, every insect,
Every spider, every beetle,
Every ant and every bee
Even the ticks, the wasps, the flies that bite
Even the larvae and the babies
The caterpillars and cocoons
The creatures that hide underground
That burrow under the leaves, among the roots
Deeper and deeper into the world below
Under the forest floor.
We know our kin, our brothers and sisters
Moose and bear, deer and wolf
Coyote and fisher, skunk and porcupine,
Racoons and weasels, beavers and foxes
Chipmunks and rabbits, squirrels and voles,
Salamanders, turtles, lizards and snakes
Leeches and catfish, perch and trout
And all the great parliament of hundreds of fowls
Eagles and owls and hawks and ravens
Turkeys and herons and geese and ducks
Loons and kingfishers, robins and wood thrushes
Finches and warblers and brave little chickadees
Cowbirds and hummingbirds, crows and bluebirds
We know their habits and songs and migrations
We know their foods and places to nest.
We know the dragonflies, butterflies, moths
We know the billions of creatures too small to be reckoned
That fill in the fabric and make it all work.
We know the murmurings of the wood-wide web
Under and over and above and around us
We know the dawn time when sunlight is golden
Slanting and picking out light prints in darkness
We know the wakenings of creatures by day
We know the chorus of life in the mornings
The rustlings the snuffling the scratchings the paddings
The silence of the little ones when the mountain lion goes by.
We know the slow descent into twilight
The sunlight caressing the line of the mountains
The still of the lake surface ruffled by breezes
The plopping of frogs and the jumping of fish
The pooling of darkness, the gathering of shadows
We know the quiet of the snow-bound deep winter
The quiet of the forest on hot summer days
We wake in the darkness of night hunters calling
The hooting and screeching of owls as they're flying
Silent and deadly for each vole and mouse.
And under the quiet and the business of living
The calm of the spirits, the souls of the woods
The breath of the centuries, the ages of Earth,
The times that we're part of, our brothers and sisters
That all of us share into death and rebirth.
This is our city, our city of nature
Its palaces, temples, its treasures and byways
Nature's great city where we have our place.
An Early Swim at Bearcamp
Pure blue dome the sky
Solitary loon diving
The world holds its breath
Ripples
Into the dawn pond
Ripples of water, air, light
Go out for ever.
Blown Away
Blown away
Born from dust
My bits and pieces
Accumulated
Caught majestic fire
Fused, concentrated,
Exploded in a cataclysm of change
Blown away
Clouds gathered
Reaccumulated
I was assembled again
When I was born
The world blew me away
I was bewildered
Swept along a corridor of wind
A headlong flux of time.
Then love came
I was blown away
The cocktail of chemicals overwhelmed
I fell and fell and went on spiraling
Time took its course
Snaked through the days, the years
Blowing them away
Then in the end
The winds of Death will rise
I will be ashes, dust
Blown away
At this point
I cannot be created
Cannot be destroyed
Just blown away
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