Posts from — October 2008

Red Robin

you live for just a year

then flutter into dreams

in storm brought clouds

and great drops of rain

you call the song of impermanence

there your red breast

flashes

the beauty of the passing

when mind and matter

flitter in the undergrowth

the unseen silver lining

of life

red robin

dances

but for a year

and day of remembering

stand strong

stand strong

stand strong

when the world is caught in chaos

look to the vast eternity

within

look to the ageless beauty of

who you were, are

and shall be again

when others act like king canute

or like king lear in the chang’d seasons

stand strong

and know the

endless

beauty

of the

still

point

on which all life swings

and balances

stand strong

and know the inner one

The times in which we live

we have lived before

the ‘we’ is the impulse

of all who came before

from the casting of Caliburn

to the whisperings of Nimue

to the running of the  starlit hooves of the last unicorn

the insights of dragons

all these functions of imagination

hang in the sunrise

waiting to be made into sunsets

are you an imagineer

an engineer of the imagination

one who can by judicious imagination

reform and know

the fibre and cycle of things?

are you an imagineer?

When the sea rushes down Fifth Avenue

and Alberta becomes a coastal province of Canada

When India starts to import water

when Las Vegas switches off the lights

because the last gambler can’t pay his bill

when the River Thames dries up and becomes a muddy brook

when the Ohio river rushes back on itself in a huge tidal wave

and Barack Obama looks down at his feet

and weeps for all that has passed

when he and other world leaders were

powerless to stop

‘it’

when the silence overwhelms the world

when the madness comes

the credit crunch will be a warm recollection

the false memory syndrome of collective safety

is running out of time

the global economy is a phantom fifth season

when we see through people and back to ourselves

when the time comes

that we have run out of time

when humanity,

that is each individual

must face up to themselves

and as a mass

ask

what do we do to stop all this madness?

The answer will not be found in learned institutions,

in pundits, gurus of any type, the yellow pages

or by calling information

radio psychologists and chat show hosts

will be hiding underneath their wallpaper

what will the answer be ?

where will it come from?

It will come from those

who have read the small inscription that is etched in all the four chambers of their hearts

‘Stop! ..Trust.. Be.. Yourself’..’

If all Humanity learnt to Stop.. then the world will breathe

If all Humanity learnt how to Trust, then humanity would regenerate

If all Humanity learnt how to Be..the Earth would regenerate

If each member of humanity learnt to know the gift of ‘Yourself’

then all the problems that beset humanity would be answered

in sequential revelation through the expansion of talented minds

People forget that they are part of humanity

that they are not other other people

that we are totally responsible

each for the other

The world clamours

for confirmation

of its actions

in the silence

beneath

everything

there

dwells

the

affirmation

that clamour

is

addicted glamour with noise

addicted to the anxiety

that builds much of the social structure

that we call

civilisation

prosperity

it is not so much a credit crunch

but an exposure

of the anxiety

behind

the systems of

the world

which were buried

under the rosy and thin glare

of modernity

the elegy is to be found in the musing before thought

the wind is still before the storm

the tide withdraws before the wave

the heart closes before it stops

the inward breath is held in the belief that it is breathing

in the mists of the future

a child singing with a woman’s voice

tells the story of what was

how a lament

clears a path for

a birth

the elegy is knocking

this child

a midwife

for the new world

the prowling beasts of control and restriction

smell their prey

a hundred years hence

in the rain

a quiet guitar

plays

each string plucking mist

into making

if you look into the music

you can hear your name

listen to the rising wind

observe the incoming tide

watch the land change

look beneath your feet

and claim the earth

the elegy looks for a mouth

democracy is in need of life saving surgey

magic is in the cedars

and the deceivers

in the saintly

and the forgotten

magic is in the music

of the making

in the vibrating

of our nervous system

people seek a new garden of eden

a return to paradise

but they forget

eden was a walled garden

a gated community

a rule bound theocracy

a middle class experiment

of heaven on earth

only when kicked out for bad behaviour

did they learn to love the world

the elegy brings us life

Each season has its emotion and its sense of being

every thought we have affects the weather

and the world

the anger of the times

the financial problems

come from previous thoughts

each thought is an action and a season too

All things

take their own time

and time

in its most essential  form

moves

slowly

it is the stuff of friction and lubrication

that is pressed between matter and consciousness