STANDING MID-PHOTO

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Scythes sing through the corn;

the sheaves are bound and stooked (reservation of tiny wigwams).

One old clydesdale snorting, trudges through clouds;

pitchforks hoist and glitter in the sun.

I stand mid-photo holding Jack’s bridle, a townie romantic,

never wanting the day to end  -  but it has ended!

The bothy is empty, horsemen gone, with their secret words, their squeeze-boxes and ballads.

No more, the tinkling bells of harness, or sparks lighting the dawn mornings, as jack stamped the cobbled yard, impatient to be away, to drag a plough and a hundred gulls behind him the day long.

The millstone leans a weary shoulder against the old cottage, the plough, gone to rust, stands red amongst the roses gone to briar.

I return the sepia photograph to its rusty nail on the stable wall…and go!

the earth

rising in great waves

gulls’ screaming

OASIS OF PEACE

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Trudging through dripping pines, and knee high ferns, we arrive:

an old gamekeeper’s hut  -   here the  gralloched deer hung and bled

(a groove cut in the floor letting the blood run back into the earth);

now  a nine foot by five foot crucifix takes up all floor space; the life- size Christ resting on the timbers, head lolling  -  as once the great stag, his blood drained from him, stared out from under the thorns of his tines.

We gather round the cross, the old man holding one nailed hand, and we enter that

silent and timeless space: prayer;

whilst beams of light criss-cross through the slatted windows,

fixing  an eternal hologram.

treading on a chestnut

the shell breaks

...little crown of thorns

THE BUILDING

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The building broods.

.

Windows scowl.

Every stone sits uneasily on its mortar,

willing itself away  -  to be  crushed to dust, then blown by the winds out to sea; there to sink back into the ocean, to forget that they were ever a part of the evolutionary road that led to such beasts!

out from his grave

horrendous thistles:

grave of the torturer

IN THE DARK WOOD

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Old miner.

I remember the day you took me below ground for the first time,

hurtling down and down in a rusty cage, then walking the dripping wet tunnels

for a mile, to meet up with your gang working at the face.

It was at this point, you turned our head lamps off, so that I might experience true darkness: everything but consciousness disappearing  -   a moment in eternity (sadly none of the others were aware of it)  - awareness freed from the World; from this identity I'd taken to be me; from everything; only IT remaining, aware of itself (the great journey completed)  -  the Zen Master’s
'only ever this!'

Guru, I salute you, on this, the day of your funeral;

going underground again  -  but there’ll  be no ‘lowsin time’.

touching his coffin  -

in the dark wood

loving eyes

                                                                      Note:  ‘lowsin time’ – finishing time.

THE SHELL BOY

They swim now, face to face in the calm waters of a glazed frame:

two seahorses.

I remember the day - a beach in Portugal, a little boy sidling up to me, asking, if for a few coins, I would like to buy:  holding out in his hands, these two delightful creatures, gentleness shining out from them.

I’d see him every day after that, wandering the beach, searching for the unusual to sell to the tourists  -  tiny breadwinner.

He will be a man now, and I often wonder, whilst looking at the seahorses, if he himself finally found calm waters, and if that gentleness still shines out from his eyes.

in the city

still hearing the sea

in grandmother’s shell

WRAPPED IN THE WEST WIND

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The dark rocks of Donegal:  

not unlike my own country, although perhaps not so mountainous

(this is the land of my wife’s people).

a flinty lot we Celts; maybe this is why: looking out on this hard rock for most of our lives.

Back here for a few days, and overwhelmed immediately by the perfume of peat smoke (or turf as they call it here) lazily rising from every early morning chimney:

that sweet smell of forest and vegetation perhaps thousands of years old!   -

the mason building his dolmen; the scribe etching his letters as the priest dictates;

the warrior-farmers, sharpening sword and ploughshare, all peer out from these mesmerising plumes.

Back for the festival: bars bursting with banjo. bodhran, fiddle and flute:

9/8 time slip-jigging out from every door. The balladeers; the story tellers, with their druidic tales of princess and unicorn, battles and magic  -  the childrens’ eyes big as saucers (a few adult tears).

The Celtic family gathered again around the hearth, re-tapping the root, connecting

to a past that is always present for us  -

when we leave, we leave only in the sense that the river running through the village races away, yet remains the river running through the village.

the moon tonight

fit a fingerboard

what a banjo!

(after Sokan)

A BRONZED HEMINGWAY

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Cuba:

this land of happy people, of dancing people:

everywhere the quivering rhythm; the seduction of bongos;

and everywhere they stop me to ask if I’m related to ‘Papa’  -  Hemingway that is  - it seems I have a look of this most honoured of men here in Cuba.

Later, in El Floridita, sure enough I find a bronzed Hemingway (literally) in his usual pose, leaning on the bar, patiently waiting for another daiquiri (I believe sixteen at one sitting was his record). After the mandatory photographs with him, I enjoy a mojito, and reflect on the many fine stories he wrote; the sad ending to it all, and the stories that might have been.

Later as we leave, we meet an old beggar lady in the street: calloused hands that lived through a revolution, reaching out to us, imploring  -  we suspect for money  -  but not so, she is asking, it seems, if we have a pen or pencil for her  – sadly we don’t:

but I leave, wondering what stories have been lost, for want of a pencil!

bongos beneath the moon  -

a bright peso

in a dark calloused palm