WONDER
As time-lapse on a camera
the night sky swirls around the bluff
though what we see is relative
our shutter-speed is quite enough,
enough to know the moment is
when all the world seems far behind,
that leonid inside my head
has fed the wonder of my mind,
but what evokes that crowded space
to parallel the space in me-
the art in that kaleidoscope
what subtlety, what poetry?
That glint from Jupiter is still
and steady for the naked eye,
the plough is out above the house,
the crescent moon has said goodbye.
----------
RAME HEAD
( I am, that is all )
I feel an uplift at the edge
on wings that glide the scaur
as grasses slant away with me
to sails that list off shore,
I feel the poles of east and west
as the seer and the seen
as we the knower and the known
are married in between ;
I am this cliff, this point of view
the oblivious sky,
I see the curve, the rolling globe
resolve into my eye ;
my unreal self - that lifeless moon
that shimmers on the sound.
is man the last deciphered rune
the ground, the very ground ?
For all the good and bad we do
is it the spirit breaking through?
----------
TAO
( The great stream of life )
I contemplate the ocean here
where water meets the rocks
their stillness overshadowing
my stillness in the flux,
much older than these ammonites
in sediments of lime
I coil up like a galaxy
beyond all solar time,
though what I name is not the Tao
the writing on the wall
man is the whole continuum
that rolled into a ball
and life arising out of time
is in each moment now
with nothing here to gainsay
the all pervading Tao.
----------
SOMETHING INNATE
(Nomadic Soul)
Would not stay put with tether cut
would leave it's corrugated hut
to feed on berries and the nut,
all mackintosh with string waist
split boot from the open road
worn leather from the tarmac's goad
lover of the aimless fork
and the wayward milestone,
born on by life, surpassing
as the sky - line constantly recedes
supine in a fungal dell
high on cloudless night
receiving there through venal wires
tomorrow's bearing from the stars.
----------
SOMETHING INNATE
(Revisited)
Suddenly a moment's pause
remembered smoke upon the breeze
enchantment rising from it's cause
a hermit in a vale of trees,
I wondered how my world would be
in keeping with his solar arc
his caravanserai and poke
at one with the surrounding oak
his song birds singing there 'til dark,
A spirit with it's tether cut
his body as a make-shift hut,
I cannot live the way he did
my home is plotted on a grid!
----------
OTHER SIDE
I am alive the other side
and wait to watch the fever break,
love dampens down the flesh and bone
to shed the light for heaven's sake,
when all becomes a phantom blur
with rhythms of a beating drum
I find my cloister in a trance
bereft of what I overcome,
though time is ticking in my ear
and blood is running through my vein
I need not take a potion here-
the world is nothing but the brain ;
I am the centre of all form
that gathers force to be unfurled
and like the eye inside the storm
I am the stillness of the world.
----------
MAN
Tongue-tied to relate
how thoughts are the children of silence
for man's essential nature is void,
that capacity of emptiness-
striking the first flint
lighting that first fire in the dark,
constructing this imaginary world;
all enacted by man and all that ensued
was built by thought upon thought
but with no thinker thereof ;
nothing defines man as wrought
save emptiness,silence and thought
and if this be his eternal essence
is not something like nothing
more like a God?
----------
YUGEN
Rays at sunrise like a chord
fills the mountain - air with song
all vibrations to a word
reminiscent of a gong
grandeur is the rolling earth
turning to a morning sky
that eagle answering my question
said the dawn implies the eye
and how that sheepdog with the sheep
runs those foothills from the scar
how solid ripples in the rock
are fluid echoes of a star
that clutch of eggs the hue of sky
as if the sky had learned to fly
to fill the mountain air with song
so reminiscent of a gong.
----------
WOODLAND REFLECTION
(Cuckoo)
Tempted by the blackberry
in a wild, tangled rift,
treading lightly to avoid
the thorn's reminder of a gift :
How timely is that visitor
who turns another page,
mellow and plaintive there
measuring my ticking age,
years concertina and in the round
sums up a life-time with a sound;
what draws me here, beckons me to stay
as down into a pool I point away,
the sun's arc,reflecting what I said
has made my world with neurons in my head,
my image,broken by a fallen cone-
I have a centre that ripples on
and all my seasons begin and end
and ring around this tree, my friend;
the Cuckoo gets much closer now
around this sun-lit glade,
and as the new has filled my mind
it dopplers there to fade....
----------
CIPHER
When the full moon, lifeless is full of light
it seems to hypnotise and hold the night,
my open mind, to give it mood,
the mood to see a moon–lit wood,
silhouhette an owl that blinks to my startle,
one open lid on yellow eye
to echo the sun's light in the dark.
And what my friend of this
to poise like a star on the voids abyss
or hoot as now, to perch on a bough,
that haunting,tremulous call
the most lunar song of all
or fly unhurried on it's way
though seldom by the light of day,
from shade to shade pure spirit
as if the turning world knew it.
----------
CEMETARY
(' Let the dead bury the dead ' said Christ.)
Why do we cling to these names so
in such maudlin contemplation?
Have we no faith at all now
in creative, transformation ?
Look for meaning on headstones
scan for something profound,
not reminders from old bones-
while daffodils trumpet new suns;
those that are carved here in stone
have willows to sweep their ground
they lived life and moved on
as green shoots from dying brown,
and this old, hopeful church
has left my spirit in the lurch
up there with the gargoyles,
with only bird-song for a choir
to point me upward, with the spire.
----------
COMPLETE
Following the droning bee
to the open wings of the red admiral,
and the seasonal buddleia
waiting as a perfect host :
Uniting the two
beautiful and complete, -
the cause of this, I know
is even more so.
Somehow ghostly, light as lace
sensing no before and after,
peace - that password into heaven
far away from time and space
us just a breath away, from Eden.
----------
YOU ARE THE WORLD
(J D Krishnamurti)
The causal spirit
imbues the seed,
that roots to feed
and send the sap
up to the blossom,
so tarry there a while
in summer light,
don't pass on by
but let the dog - rose
fill your eye;
and if in spirit
you hear that inner voice
that speaks to you as beauty,
you might rejoice -
that inner voice is you !
----------
As time-lapse on a camera
the night sky swirls around the bluff
though what we see is relative
our shutter-speed is quite enough,
enough to know the moment is
when all the world seems far behind,
that leonid inside my head
has fed the wonder of my mind,
but what evokes that crowded space
to parallel the space in me-
the art in that kaleidoscope
what subtlety, what poetry?
That glint from Jupiter is still
and steady for the naked eye,
the plough is out above the house,
the crescent moon has said goodbye.
----------
RAME HEAD
( I am, that is all )
I feel an uplift at the edge
on wings that glide the scaur
as grasses slant away with me
to sails that list off shore,
I feel the poles of east and west
as the seer and the seen
as we the knower and the known
are married in between ;
I am this cliff, this point of view
the oblivious sky,
I see the curve, the rolling globe
resolve into my eye ;
my unreal self - that lifeless moon
that shimmers on the sound.
is man the last deciphered rune
the ground, the very ground ?
For all the good and bad we do
is it the spirit breaking through?
----------
TAO
( The great stream of life )
I contemplate the ocean here
where water meets the rocks
their stillness overshadowing
my stillness in the flux,
much older than these ammonites
in sediments of lime
I coil up like a galaxy
beyond all solar time,
though what I name is not the Tao
the writing on the wall
man is the whole continuum
that rolled into a ball
and life arising out of time
is in each moment now
with nothing here to gainsay
the all pervading Tao.
----------
SOMETHING INNATE
(Nomadic Soul)
Would not stay put with tether cut
would leave it's corrugated hut
to feed on berries and the nut,
all mackintosh with string waist
split boot from the open road
worn leather from the tarmac's goad
lover of the aimless fork
and the wayward milestone,
born on by life, surpassing
as the sky - line constantly recedes
supine in a fungal dell
high on cloudless night
receiving there through venal wires
tomorrow's bearing from the stars.
----------
SOMETHING INNATE
(Revisited)
Suddenly a moment's pause
remembered smoke upon the breeze
enchantment rising from it's cause
a hermit in a vale of trees,
I wondered how my world would be
in keeping with his solar arc
his caravanserai and poke
at one with the surrounding oak
his song birds singing there 'til dark,
A spirit with it's tether cut
his body as a make-shift hut,
I cannot live the way he did
my home is plotted on a grid!
----------
OTHER SIDE
I am alive the other side
and wait to watch the fever break,
love dampens down the flesh and bone
to shed the light for heaven's sake,
when all becomes a phantom blur
with rhythms of a beating drum
I find my cloister in a trance
bereft of what I overcome,
though time is ticking in my ear
and blood is running through my vein
I need not take a potion here-
the world is nothing but the brain ;
I am the centre of all form
that gathers force to be unfurled
and like the eye inside the storm
I am the stillness of the world.
----------
MAN
Tongue-tied to relate
how thoughts are the children of silence
for man's essential nature is void,
that capacity of emptiness-
striking the first flint
lighting that first fire in the dark,
constructing this imaginary world;
all enacted by man and all that ensued
was built by thought upon thought
but with no thinker thereof ;
nothing defines man as wrought
save emptiness,silence and thought
and if this be his eternal essence
is not something like nothing
more like a God?
----------
YUGEN
Rays at sunrise like a chord
fills the mountain - air with song
all vibrations to a word
reminiscent of a gong
grandeur is the rolling earth
turning to a morning sky
that eagle answering my question
said the dawn implies the eye
and how that sheepdog with the sheep
runs those foothills from the scar
how solid ripples in the rock
are fluid echoes of a star
that clutch of eggs the hue of sky
as if the sky had learned to fly
to fill the mountain air with song
so reminiscent of a gong.
----------
WOODLAND REFLECTION
(Cuckoo)
Tempted by the blackberry
in a wild, tangled rift,
treading lightly to avoid
the thorn's reminder of a gift :
How timely is that visitor
who turns another page,
mellow and plaintive there
measuring my ticking age,
years concertina and in the round
sums up a life-time with a sound;
what draws me here, beckons me to stay
as down into a pool I point away,
the sun's arc,reflecting what I said
has made my world with neurons in my head,
my image,broken by a fallen cone-
I have a centre that ripples on
and all my seasons begin and end
and ring around this tree, my friend;
the Cuckoo gets much closer now
around this sun-lit glade,
and as the new has filled my mind
it dopplers there to fade....
----------
CIPHER
When the full moon, lifeless is full of light
it seems to hypnotise and hold the night,
my open mind, to give it mood,
the mood to see a moon–lit wood,
silhouhette an owl that blinks to my startle,
one open lid on yellow eye
to echo the sun's light in the dark.
And what my friend of this
to poise like a star on the voids abyss
or hoot as now, to perch on a bough,
that haunting,tremulous call
the most lunar song of all
or fly unhurried on it's way
though seldom by the light of day,
from shade to shade pure spirit
as if the turning world knew it.
----------
CEMETARY
(' Let the dead bury the dead ' said Christ.)
Why do we cling to these names so
in such maudlin contemplation?
Have we no faith at all now
in creative, transformation ?
Look for meaning on headstones
scan for something profound,
not reminders from old bones-
while daffodils trumpet new suns;
those that are carved here in stone
have willows to sweep their ground
they lived life and moved on
as green shoots from dying brown,
and this old, hopeful church
has left my spirit in the lurch
up there with the gargoyles,
with only bird-song for a choir
to point me upward, with the spire.
----------
COMPLETE
Following the droning bee
to the open wings of the red admiral,
and the seasonal buddleia
waiting as a perfect host :
Uniting the two
beautiful and complete, -
the cause of this, I know
is even more so.
Somehow ghostly, light as lace
sensing no before and after,
peace - that password into heaven
far away from time and space
us just a breath away, from Eden.
----------
YOU ARE THE WORLD
(J D Krishnamurti)
The causal spirit
imbues the seed,
that roots to feed
and send the sap
up to the blossom,
so tarry there a while
in summer light,
don't pass on by
but let the dog - rose
fill your eye;
and if in spirit
you hear that inner voice
that speaks to you as beauty,
you might rejoice -
that inner voice is you !
----------
All poetry and text copyright © Roy K. Austin
No photographs or other material to be reproduced elsewhere without permission.
Please ask.. 2013. All rights reserved