boat

piet mondrian river view with a boat

listening to my wistful writings

(i read these posts out loud to see how they might feel

to you -

yes i try and become "you"

to know if the verity that i feel

in the moment of these word's becoming

has any substance)

what i hear are the

soft mumblings

of a man painting the words of himself

against the painterly field

of the resonant whisperings of generations

of his family before him

still searching for the seed of intuitions

that might blossom

into flowers of knowledge and understanding

the arc of return

georgia o'keeffe red and orange streak

the birds and the wind and the rain

and the sun and the pushing

of billions

of green shooted births

through the softening soil

are the song of the arc

of return

-

i heard the spring wind whisper

above the brushwood fire,

"the world is made forever

of transport and desire.

"i am the breath of being,

the primal urge of things;

i am the whirl of star dust,

i am the lift of wings.

"i am the splendid impulse

that comes before the thought,

the joy and exaltation

wherein the life is caught.

excerpted from "earth voices" by bliss carman

the orange thief

john dawson watson the orange thief

i saw a small girl make her way from under the twisted arms of an orange tree.

at first, she didn’t notice me, as her eyes were entirely focussed upon the orange

which she cupped in her hands.

when she lifted her head to look around, her face opened like a pale moon.

looking into her eyes which spread around me like spilled ink,

i bent and swayed like a bed of reeds with each motion of the current of her.

the air briefly stilled. no bird sang. no insect hummed. no living creature moved.

everyone and everything slept, and yet even in sleep the air began to flutter with expectation.

i felt myself drifting like a tiny breeze, hovering towards her along the flowing ink of her gaze.

when in a voice filled with the softness of twilight, she laughed and turned away.

i felt compelled to follow.

mother's day

this is my little bruvver david and i. a very long time ago. i can see a little bit of a skirt and a long apron behind us. i believe that's my mum's mum. a lovely lady with a chuckling laugh, she was a baker's daughter. soft and kind in my remembering. she gave me miniature chocolate bars, and glass bowls filled with vanilla ice cream and mandarin orange slices

"a mother's love liberates".

maya angelou

on this - mother's day in north america -

i honour my mother

...

no more than i usually do mind you

because i have a deep respect for my mother

who was difficult

when i needed a "difficult" mother

but didn't know it

easy going and supportive

when i needed

an easy going

and supportive mother

but had no clue why

was and is loving -

without condition

whether i knew it

or not

(and of course i now know!)

and somehow she knew i'd figure so much of this out

and be alright.

it's very cool

to arrive at a place

of genuine appreciation

and admiration.

happy mother's day mum!

with love from steven

amulet

william henry margetson the amulet

for that beauty of the heart is the lasting beauty: its lips give to drink of the water of life.

truly it is both the water and the giver of drink and the drunken: all three become one

when your talisman is shattered.

that oneness you cannot know by reasoning.

rumi

excerpted from mathnawi, book II: 716-718

wave or particle

the quiet place:

entirely present in the instant

fluid in the long now

wave or particle

i feel my time

caspar david friedrich mountain landscape with rainbow (detail)

soft grey fingers

cross the far hills

and glide across the gardens

i know

that soon they will hold

my own tired hands

.

as they

flow under the darkened house

a song tumbles from my mouth

wordless

self-conscious

it inches like a vine

attaching

single notes

to the inside of the window

.

i write by

the glow of the night-rainbow's arc

whose feeble light

settles like dust

on the leafy curtain

of my creation

silence

christopher pratt half moon, bright stars

the approach of silence

is sometimes a noisy affair

heralded by the march past of

brass bands

and dancing girls

motor cars

filled with people

whose waving hands

cup vainly at the air

hoping to draw some of your attention

to their passing

while you

sit on the smooth lip

of a cold concrete curb -

craving nothing more than a moment

in which to savour the taste

of the silky sweet

hard-boiled candy

that the clown dropped in your lap

elusive

edward john poynter erato: muse of poetry

her eyes somewhat downcast and thoughtful,

she sits on the other side of the table

waiting for the door

to creak open and admit the guest

who will they be?

what will they say?

how long will they stay?

something in the soft compression of her mouth

casts doubt on the likelihood

that the answers to the questions

i fling into the void

won't simply resolve as little better than

the transient sparks

of a falling star

arcing across the pale-silvered brow of dawn

more on erato

this empty rowboat

the rowboat claude monet

the knot had worked its way loose

or perhaps i had pushed it away from the dock

no matter . . .

somehow it had set adrift

this empty rowboat

now turning slowly in the current

i followed its progress from the riverbank

using a well-worn path

in whose dusty script

i could read the stories

of the passage of others

long aisles of trees

ripe with the feathered green

of early summer

peered down

to read the words of my journey

each letter written in dew

on pale clustering flowers

at a widening in the river

i left the path for the purple slopes of a hill

where, safe from the world's gaze

i watched as countless rowboats

- all mirrors of my own -

bumped hollowly against each other

lost in their reflections

down the levels

streamingwater john george naish

tumbling through the levels;

the falling

a dissonant counterpoint to my anticipation

thinking all my life

that i would rise to my place

and not fall

until i came to realize

that tumbling

isn't falling

but letting go

divinity itself

lawren harris north shore

a solemn land of long-fulfilled desires

beyond the plain, beneath the evening star

fire-white from curtains of intensest blue

the five pearl doors open softly

like flashing fish the stars go by

the white, soft lightnings feel their way

to the boundless dark and back again

divinity itself seems slumbering there

all words excerpted from poetry written by mary webb

heaven over water

hexagram 5

hsu - waiting

heaven over water

now is the time to wait and have faith in the natural order of things.

take stock of yourself and your situation,

and work on any insecurities that cause internal imbalance

~

transience

like a silk wind-ribbon

it wraps around

my licked finger

when i point it at the sky

his heart

they run blindly along rain-softened red brick alleyways,

the breeze of their passing like so many silk threads through an ever-expanding eyelet.

rounding a corner, she stops.

her arms stretching like soft arrows from the bow of her shoulders,

she extends one leg behind her.

holding the moment, holding the pose.

she turns her head to watch

as he rounds the corner still running.

his heart races ahead of him - a kaleidoscopic candy-iced orb.

drawing her many-ringed and hennaed hand down her face,

she lets it settle on her hip.

and like a pollen-covered bee,

she gently extracts herself from the pose

and kisses him.

their mouths bloom with a sudden flowering of vanilla, cumin, and cherries.

the thin blue-grey edge of a rope of candle smoke circles their heads.

number twenty three

twenty three

chipped and peeling clapboard

matches my memory of this place

held together by wishes

and here i am again

clinging to a wish

opening the door,

her hair falls across her face.

i remember it fell like that. like old curtains reluctantly drawn back

to let in whatever thin light was available.

she hooks two fingers into the silvered threads and pulls them back behind her ear.

at first glance, i see her eyes are older now.

more thoughtful and considering.

perhaps even wary.

she doesn't remember who i am.

the moment fills and expands and then just as suddenly collapses with recognition.

her eyes glisten for an instant, but i can see that they're just as quickly guttering

like candles in the breeze of our sudden, cluttered communion.

"you . . . here?" she asks with some kind of mid-ground voicing, half here, half elsewhere.

ever the opportunist i lunge at the opening her words provide.

"may i come in?"

her body pulls back a half-step, as she attaches this moment to the history of us, this doorway, and this house.

in her reluctant head drop, in the falling of the curtains of hair back across the window of her face,

we slide into the past.

i take my own half-step backwards suddenly seeking the present, until she says with reluctant encouragement,

"no, come on. come on in. you look tired.

are you hungry?"

***

thankyou very much to my friend for the visual prompt.

both sides of the window

a leafy trellis with roses carl spitzweg

naked apples, wooly-coated peaches

swelled on the garden's wall. unbounded

odour of windless, spice-bearing trees

surrounded my lying in sacred turf,

made dense the guarded air - the forest of trees

buoyed up therein like weeds in ocean

lived without motion. i was the pearl,

mother-of-pearl my bower. milk-white the cirrhus

streaked the blue egg-shell of the distant sky,

early and distant, over the spicy forest;

wise was the fangless serpent, drowsy.

all this, indeed, I do not remember.

i remember the remembering, when first waking

i heard the golden gates behind me

fall to, shut fast. on the flinty road,

black-frosty, blown on with an eastern wind,

i found my feet. forth on journey,

gathering thin garment over aching bones,

i went. i wander still. but the world is round.

c.s. lewis, poems

steps

anders zorn sommarnoje (summer our pleasure)

the portrait

the oars feel soft as bone in his paint-spattered hands.

through the thin wooden hull he can hear the sweet counterpoint of lapping waves.

the words of encouragement he speaks to her,

wash into the wind

as she holds her skirts closer.

fog settles in at the entrance to the bay -

his island studio is ten minutes away.

"stay tonight

we’ll watch the full moon rising

hold on tight

the sky is breaking

i don’t ever want to be alone

with all my darkest dreaming

hold me close

the sky is breaking"

italicized words by david sylvian (darkest dreaming)

easter sunday

i've always wondered

"wondered"

to be in a state of wonder

as a verb: to desire or be curious to know something

as a noun: the emotion aroused by something awe-inspiring, astounding, or marvelous

they go hand-in-hand a lot of the time in the moebius strip of my own experience.

if i'm curious about something, it leads to awe and marvel.

if i am in awe and marvel at something, i am curious to know more.

this morning, i am wondering about this world - this waystation on a much longer journey than the all too brief experience of this plane of existence might suggest . . .

this place is comprised of so much surface beauty that it is simply too overwhelming

to contemplate the incredible detail of even one square metre of it.

that tells me that there is something contained in the unimaginable plethora of its extravagance . . .

a signpost to something richer and more exquisite.

perhaps even, more essential.

~

i am wondering about how my life would be easier and simpler if i hadn't also come to recognize this place as an opportunity for a very specialized sort of work ... but i do recognize it as that and i also recognize

that so long as i am here in this body,

i am meant to do that work . . .

in fact, it's a gift.

this skinny, slowly-getting-visibly older body

and the opportunity i have been given to use it is a gift.

it is a signpost to an opportunity to do work.

in a world that perceives work as onerous and a means to an end

- an end that is very much other than the work itself -

how did i end up seeing work as a gift, and why?

well, work is not just what i do for a living.

although i believe that the work i do by which i earn the comforts and necessities of my life is worthy work

(and 'worthy' in my own lexicon means that i have the opportunity to bring greater goodness into the world).

here's a question or three for you: where does that greater goodness come from?

how does it arrive?

how do we make ourselves available to it and moderate its passage to whomever and wherever it is needed?

in the understanding that has emerged and refined itself through the course of my almost

fifty four years of hanging on for dear life to this turning world,

work is being.

the simple act of being.

and i have come to believe that if a big part of being is work,

then that means that every little thing i do, think, wish, hope for, is one little fractal of the whole of my work which also means

(for those who know that karma is much more than a synonym for consequence),

that i must always and everywhere bring whatever goodness i can, into the actions that are my work.

that's hard work.

truly it is!

my work is about the quality of my being and my doing.

and so beneath the surface of my human existence there is the opportunity to bring goodness into this world.

that's what i know.

for now.

the habitation of the blessed

"the spheres milky and rose, crystal and gold, clanged one against the other in the darkness,

for they were as blind as they were bright.

the sphere of heaven ground slowly through the windy pitch, and crushed against

the benevolent silver of the sphere of the moon.

all along its rose-coloured meridians, the orb of heaven cracked, and splintered, and shivered.

lines of gold like fire appeared in its great face; glass formed and bubbled in long rivers, and in the beginning of everything it cried out as the sphere of the moon passed into the sphere of heaven.

where the moon had entered, so the sun followed, and mercury lined with quicksilver, jupiter hot and moist, and all of the planetary spheres and elemental spheres, one after the other like one of ikram's poor dolls.

the crystalline heaven swelled with all it contained, and lost all its rosy colour, becoming instead the colour of black glass. thus when we look upward in the evening, we see the very furthest rim of heaven that can be seen from where we stand, on the last and smallest and best of the spheres,

the habitation of the blessed, our own dear earth."

excerpted from "the habitation of the blessed; a dirge for prester john volume one"

by catherynne m. valente

all knowing

an inkblot fanfare

played

against

a grey blotter of a sky

fingers and arms

splayed

every which way

revealing

her own

rootbound

mirror image

the big journey

louis aston knight view of a chateau

i have often dreamed of a life

in which i

am borne from place to place

inside the soft body of a river

~

passing through the waving velvet fingers

of silt-borne grasses

the current-whorled

pale-green wool of the river

knits itself around me until

emerging into the silken transparency

of a slow-falling lilac dusk

i draw in my first sweet breath

and watch

a nightingale's song spread gold and silver threads

across the violet expanse

*

this must be the floweriest place

that earth allows; the queenly face

of the proud mansion borrows grace for grace

italicized words excerpted from edmund blunden's "vlamertinghe passing the chateau"

light wings

henri rousseau a carnival evening

i walk the length and breadth

of the landscape of myself

carrying a lantern

fueled by the wishes and memories

of long dead stars

i tell the stories of their wishes

with love

because each star

so needs to be remembered

that when i open my eyes

to this world

i can feel their wistful flowerings

passing through the soft mouth of my being

i speak the words

of their stories

with care

full with the knowledge

that each breath that passes my lips

and forms into sound

has not only passed through every living thing

before me

but was birthed in the body of a star

i write the words

of their stories

knowing

that each word that passes through my fingers

has been written once before

in the turbulent calligraphy

of solar winds blowing

across the far reaches

of this universe

and somehow

knowing

that wishes bloom best

in the soil of timelessness

their roots have reached deeply

into my own desires

strength and stillness

each an expression

of the knowing of my purpose

to tell the story

in fullness

of the colour and scent

of each star

as it blooms

once again

in the landscape of myself

the music i'd like to share alongside or despite these words

is by david sylvian and robert fripp.

the piece is entitled "wave"

so much of the work i took on as a thirty three year old man began with my learning about similar work these men had taken on through their direct and indirect connection to j.g. bennett ... and then so much else.

this poem previously appeared in an almost similar form on my friend terresa's blog

"the chocolate chip waffle"

come and gone like a dream

it's really no surprise

that today

i biked

through the feathered tickle

of gently falling snow

i felt each flake kissing my skin

much like the beginning

of a long goodbye

snow over town (unidentified artist)

blending with the wind,

snow falls;

blending with the snow,

the wind blows.

by the hearth

i stretch out my legs,

idling my time away

confined in this hut.

counting the days,

i find that february, too,

has come and gone

like a dream.

ryokan

another crystal world

just a few days back i rode to school through an ice fog. hovering in the air as thick as porridge, the fog shut down visibility to about twenty metres until it slowly lifted away, leaving behind a wonderworld of crystalline beauty. the little structures were about half an inch to three quarters of an inch long (for my canadian readers - 1 to 1.5 cm.) and grew on anything that stayed still long enough.

the trees were stunning in their fragile robes.

down closer to the ground, the fenceline on the edge of the schoolyard was truly pretty and i stopped as many of the kids as i could to show them the free magic that had appeared overnight.

and then i left

on the day of my leaving cuba, the skies were wistful and threadbare

closer to the earth the very tiny joy that is a flower

held me close

and then i left

palm (ii)

palm leaves have so much presence

their colours and textures change according to which portion is used or exposed