Category: Omni

Lockdown

Day 1 (official)

Green. Walking the familiar track. Just me and flirting wrens, the hum of a massive, exploratory bee the only motor. The green. A tyre mark in dried mud an eye-catching ghost of force and speed, obsolete as single use plastic. I feel a lifetime’s unnoticed tension drop out of me at the sense of cessation.

No more violence towards the wild, subtle, dextrous, complex, exquisite green. What a dream. But on this quiet day I can suddenly hear that other world breathing. A woman in barefoot boots and a wool coat like a cloak smiles down in passing from the top road, a ranger from ancient tales. We’re in this together and the tears flow, from a pool that feels fathomless. Later I’m shy to step out of the road when a van comes up behind, but he’s grinning anyway.

And after that release here’s my heart. In green. I feel more than I ever have in the trunks and hedges, can see the little paths and homes and signs. This huge horse chestnut says hello. I hear more than I ever have. I imagine a next life as one single pennywort leaf in the colony on the branch over the path and it pleases me as much as friend’s loving squeeze does, coming in on the phone. Soft tears. Nettle soup waits at home.

Acid Wood

I am taking you into the forest.

Horsed men hunted here before I did

I’ll show you these pony paths

Where the dry-bone beechnut earth

Leads our feet, crackling,

Not dank dark spinneys but

Sun sparkled genteel rooms.

We’ll waltz in the court of the Deer King

And lean in against soft barkless wood

Where he’s rubbed.

Sinuous trunks temple dance

For lightning scarred oaks

Let’s lose time between bracken screens

Make a bed on the heather

Lie in amongst acid greens

2016

Fingers weave

My fingers weave a rug for my ancestors;
The ones who stole scraps from factory floors
In clock-faced brick mills in treeless towns.
Who heard meadow grasses whispering in golden snippets
Snatched up the blue-green lilt of bracken tracks in dusken hills
And, feeling the warmth of old stone in ochre swatches,
Wove them all in, so the children warmed their feet
And remembered that once they ran free.
 
My fingers weave a rug for my sisters;
Women who sing with buzzards and drum to the North.
Who travel out on dog sleds to ice floes where worlds end
To gather songs of snow and blood and bone, and
Carry them back, and gather us in, and sing them for us
By a hearth so warm and bright that the ice starts to thaw
And wilder melodies flow back in amidst the
Meltwater; the tears of homecoming.
                                                                    
My fingers weave a rug for my sisters and brothers;
Those who step into the flames, and use the
Kindling of their guilt to spark the flame of their innocence.
Who torch their shame on a bonfire of wild abandon
So fierce, that the inferno of expansion burns
All their fear away, so only love remains.
I weave them Waves of Bliss to remind them,
Reflecting their infinite waves.
 
My fingers shred the shirts my brothers wore
Through their night sweats, and slice up the
Cheap cotton of dying lakes and exhausted soils.
Untangle acid wools from mountain deserts,
And weave them all into a rug so strong,
And so soft, that it holds newly birthing worlds
While my voice and tender heart sing along
To all of our freedom songs.
 
September 2017

Love in a New Time

Who’s driving this pen then?
That light behind the light,
Through the leaves,
Beyond the trees?
Cells that lost a certain weight
Are dancing. Laughing like the brushes
Watching us roll in the paint instead.

Who’s dissolving these fruits then?
Flesh fermenting; ultra sweet
Ecstasies of seed
Intoxicated wasp berserkers
Dance songs about these
Heroic deeds. In circular time;
Story and dream.

Fish silver wave tops
Make love to flow with form.
An orgone shake-shake!
Black eyes deep with space
Only ever reflect. Layers in
Before you can finally see
That the ocean is smiling.

2015

Another Path

There’s another path:
Behind the towpath,
Beyond the hedgerow,
It shimmers with elderflowers
Like snow.

Who’s using that?
Not the joggers,
Clagged feet and clogged memory.
Amongst the hemlock;
A slower amble.


You slip and follow.
Inspiration; a tang of cicely
For your songs.
Sneak into the wet spots,
Track deer into the pool.

A still trap of
Easy-green pondweed.
This isn’t solid ground;
There’s no hard standing.
Kingfisher flash:

Dart with it into the gloom
Between falling walls
And rotting fences.
Is this a path? Or a desire;
To slide away into the rushes.

2015

Dark Wing

So what do you plan to do with this wild and precious life?

I plan to keep listening to the whispering 

Of the midnight bird’s fluidly pulsing wings

Undulating form, dark and velvet

I long to surge through that texture

On my stomach, softening into the miracle.

With a swoosh, almost imperceptible, a sound like

Blue moon rising at the edge of the world

Is anything more wonderful to imagine

Beyond grasping earth-bound senses,

Than your flight: shape-shifting sheen?

Thicker than water, loved by air’s gusts and streams

A lover’s dance conceived your infrastructure

Bone and sinew and feather, muscular tribute 

The story repeating in every moving moment

Watch your words, for they become worlds! 

This diversity of beauty 

Cannot but be birthed from true love

Coupling beings playing across dimensions 

Like songbirds serenading buds into blossom. 

I dance your sweep, your cacophony, your mischief

Your laughter, your freedom soar. 

I felt the smudge of your wing once

In a journey beyond space-time

Cutting through fantasy and self-deception

Like plumed razors.

2015