The Nature of Daylight

Paul Henry
The Prayer Room

Your prayers could live in this room.
The clock would keep them in time.
It's late. There is lamplight
and moonlight, and two skylights.

Your eyes looked down on me
earlier. I could see the sea
when I tilted a pane and looked out.
Perhaps you heard me shout.
It is only three hundred miles.
I have heard men in gaols
call from cells to their wives
across busy roads, call to their loves.

If you came here now and prayed
and taught me to pray…
If you came here once
to hear the clock, the silence,
I might close my eyes on myself
and simply forget myself
in your voice.

Waves of prayers
break over me, my wasted years.
See how the tide takes me out
into darkness. But for this moonlight
I've disappeared. Who are we
but ghosts on the night's sea?

Your prayers could live inside me.
Say a prayer now, for company
and it may reach this lonely room.
I'll open a skylight in time
to let you in.



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And today the sky looked as dusty as the mantle piece, a grey wash of ash, a deathly image of winter in its throws! .... siteless

Opals and skulls littered across the sand, each lay as pale and full of ocean, forest and sky as the other.... siteless


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Translated:

Where is the sea
I don't why I was just looking for the sea
But the only thing I found was a desert
A desert around me....

The sun seemed to fold inside out, its inner jealous moons heat dissipated, spent and cool.


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mmhmm



Drew up plans and an insipid dipper from the well, each was a long shot, and he was near sighted... siteless

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Pomegranate still lingers at the back of my mouth hours after exploding those seeds with mango for textural contrast.. Life drawing gets going in Tuesdays during the holidays, it’s not so far away. I want to learn how to shade lips and breasts the lips of breasts and the folds around toes stained black where a ring often goes... I want to paint on black henna and red and orange across the page to the tips of fingers across a page well away from flesh.... siteless

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dire need, I know dire need,
its aching toes patting over a frosty deck toward the steps
where a shadow has drawn a perfect line between springs
fluidity and something better off in a stiff summertime drink.
Apple blossom turns up spayed open against the sun.... and for me?
The biggest contemplation of the day is whether or not to plant that daphne
in the planter at the door or go out and buy a cumquat and a box of chocolate. :siteless

Soothing, thanks, Siteless

thanks Celtic


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There is a romantic notion of billowing curtains inside/outside, midmorning-blue-skies-spring-air
blossoms filling the breeze as soft as the inside of forearms, the nape of neck.
Wilted water colours fall across cotton sheets smudged n smeared fresh with bluebells, daffodils, toast crumbs...
The sun catching your eyes. :siteless

How can I vanish
Before meeting someone
Like a water bubble
Ceaselessly flowing
On a stream of thoughts.

~Lady Ise
(877-940)


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When the pen catches at the paper like a snagged hook in the depths
I pray you don’t swim out only to find something sharp beneath your footing.
There is a swing over the water high high up there where the laughter never lets go of the air
There where diamonds float and swallows swim the ripples on the wing, never let go... :siteless

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others.

For beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness.

For poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.

~Audrey Hepburn


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Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

- 'The Swan', Mary Oliver, 1992



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I do not live happily or comfortably
with the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all about computers,
the news is all about bombs and blood.
This morning, in the fresh field,
I came upon a hidden nest.
It held four warm, speckled eggs.
I touched them.
Then went away softly,
having felt something more wonderful
than all the electricity of New York City.

-Mary Oliver, from pg. 40 of 'Evidence', published 2009

Stars come down to roost amidst the blushing oak
reddened at their warmth against the clear cool skies...


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Who would know?
Do things fly better
than feathered wings or prayers?
such as leaden minds crashing beautifully-
pristine, like a tragic, pagan rosary.


[link to www.youtube.com]

[link to www.youtube.com]


One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed. – from My Shadow


silly little thing

The Clod and the Pebble
by William Blake (1757-1827)

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only Self to please,

To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.


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Into the night the cattle cry out like ancients chanting while metal rattles like chains through the sweetest air filled with fog and green. Spring sales.

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
- Li-Young Lee


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[link to www.youtube.com]

Tremble the warmth of morning against the still frozen air,
the silent puffed wren awaiting a solid sky.
A peaceful groan of waking...
shivering...
limbs,
blinking like the iris in the stirring breeze .

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I Sing
by Emily Dickinson

I sing to use the waiting
My bonnet but to tie,
And close the door unto my house
No more to do have I

‘Till his best step approaching,
We journey to the day,
And tell each other how we sung
To keep the Dark away.

"When we live in darkness, our human life is a constant want.
When we live in Light, our divine life is a constant achievement.
Light in the physical is beauty.
Light in the vital is capacity.
Light in the mind is glory.
Light in the heart is victory."

Sri Chinmoy

pretty Nrg
thanks

Yours is like the rock that a river has carved
more enduring than the heart wood of cherry trees.
Once those hands outstretched with clever verse;
It was etched deep into your palms
and it would have crept like the sun
across anyone’s back they gently patted and held.
Happy are the children to whom there is no other but you.... siteless




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[link to www.youtube.com]

A Star in a Stoneboat by Robert Frost

Never tell me that not one star of all
That slip from heaven at night and softly fall
Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.

Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold,
And saving that its weight suggested gold
And tugged it from his first too certain hold,

He noticed nothing in it to remark.
He was not used to handling stars thrown dark
And lifeless from an interrupted arc.

He did not recognize in that smooth coal
The one thing palpable besides the soul
To penetrate the air in which we roll.

He did not see how like a flying thing
It brooded ant eggs, and bad one large wing,
One not so large for flying in a ring,

And a long Bird of Paradise's tail
(Though these when not in use to fly and trail
It drew back in its body like a snail);

Nor know that be might move it from the spot—
The harm was done: from having been star-shot
The very nature of the soil was hot

And burning to yield flowers instead of grain,
Flowers fanned and not put out by all the rain
Poured on them by his prayers prayed in vain.

He moved it roughly with an iron bar,
He loaded an old stoneboat with the star
And not, as you might think, a flying car,

Such as even poets would admit perforce
More practical than Pegasus the horse
If it could put a star back in its course.

He dragged it through the plowed ground at a pace
But faintly reminiscent of the race
Of jostling rock in interstellar space.

It went for building stone, and I, as though
Commanded in a dream, forever go
To right the wrong that this should have been so.

Yet ask where else it could have gone as well,
I do not know—I cannot stop to tell:
He might have left it lying where it fell.

From following walls I never lift my eye,
Except at night to places in the sky
Where showers of charted meteors let fly.

Some may know what they seek in school and church,
And why they seek it there; for what I search
I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch;

Sure that though not a star of death and birth,
So not to be compared, perhaps, in worth
To such resorts of life as Mars and Earth—

Though not, I say, a star of death and sin,
It yet has poles, and only needs a spin
To show its worldly nature and begin

To chafe and shuffle in my calloused palm
And run off in strange tangents with my arm,
As fish do with the line in first alarm.

Such as it is, it promises the prize
Of the one world complete in any size
That I am like to compass, fool or wise.



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inspired

Still those words come away feeling lost
For all the wandering over them... so little.
They seem rough, cobbled or cobbed
Intertwined and tangled with hair
Earthy worldly
Perhaps they are alright after all... siteless


[link to www.youtube.com]

[link to www.youtube.com]

Charles Bukowski - Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

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The covering of those bones in flesh or dirt
breaks the silence of tired thoughts,
lifts a mind skyward between the moon shadows
over the prison ground beneath the trees.

I’d like to climb the stars, burn pampas scrolls,
play the Sharman behind your eyes against thighs.

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Skin becomes a portal, partially exposed gems bead and the sun is transported.


.

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Sleeping in the Forest



I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.


from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver

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The Deserted Garden
:Alan Seeger

...And, parting tangled bushes as I passed
Down beechen alleys beautiful and dim,
Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last
My feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim,
And snowy callas' velvet cups are massed
Around the mossy, fern-encircled brim.
Here, then, that magic summoning would cease,
Or sound far off again among the orchard trees.

And here where the blanched lilies of the vale
And violets and yellow star-flowers teem,
And pink and purple hyacinths exhale
Their heavy fume, once more to drowse and dream
My head would sink, from many an olden tale
Drawing imagination's fervid theme,
Or haply peopling this enchanting spot
Only with fair creations of fantastic thought...


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