from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Tuesday 15 May 2012

writing the bright moment: zen & poetry mini-retreat


The deep silence of no words. I allow myself to fall into the well of it, with these others, companions on the journey.

Outside, the deep silence is the tumultuous hum of the earth with its many inhabitants here in this tranquil woodland garden; the air with its congregations of bird-voice; the rushy songs of millpond and leat, their registers and octaves. Wind whips and snaps the prayer-flags strung across the terrace – they belly and billow like sails, on the verge of leaving.

the way the dusk light falls rosy
on the flanks of Meldon
the way I have eyes to see it

the way the world unselfs me

On top of Meldon, shouldering cloud, a single sheep, like an unpenned thought.

At supper tonight below on the moonstruck millpond a single wild goose called the deeps over and over until the water answered with another.

These days I offer purchase to ivy / allow ladybirds to nest / in the cracks of my bark. / The wren's song / is also home

across the valley
the green path is a greenpaint finger 
drawn across the russet hillside
now here
now there
it zigzags
all the way to the top
and then it keeps climbing
into pale dusk air

I am clad in the world / it lets me wear its technicolour selves / until we are all unselfed...

2 comments:

  1. 'the way the world unselfs me' - what a wonderful verb! I would say it's what your poetry does :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. David - as always thank you so much for your affirmation and kindness.

    ReplyDelete

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