Was it a total eclipse, or just a partial eclipse, that sky the likes of which I will never see again?
I do not want to see, let alone experience, the mushroom cloud that descends from the skies, then swells up again to embrace them, leaving my ashen body, a bleak, black shadow on a brick wall.
Meanwhile, back in my kitchen, in the lull before the storm, I wait and wonder if my world and all within it will be eclipsed.
Circles within circles and wheels within wheels, the restless gears always churning, we both know how it feels.
Some call it a gift, some call it a calling, but we who follow the creative way rarely know the how and why of who pushes whom with what, nor when, nor where, yet still we try to scale that ladder, to reach that sky, and always will, until we shrivel, give up the creative ghost, and die.
Even the water tower frowns when I write ‘die’. Yet death will take us all. Tombs and tombstones will crumble and fall. Monuments, their words carved in stone, will fall sideways, perish, and die, their words erased by the sandpaper polish of wind, snow, hailstones, sun, and time.
Mayday, Mayday, S O S, this is a plea for help, I guess.
Dit-dit-dit- dat-dat-dat, the world lies dying and that’s a fact.
Add another dit-dit-dit and that’s morse code for we’re in deep shit. What can we do to get out of it?
Very little, as I see it, if the world can’t be bothered to see it.
Another half country of forest gone, right whales diminishing, they won’t last long. Rivers flooding, forests on fire, what have we done to earn Gaia’s ire?
Human beings long-forgotten, but profits are up, maybe that’s what’s rotten. We’re near rock bottom I would guess. Mayday, Mayday, SOS,
We’ll soon be gone our works forgotten. No more humans, the world in a mess: Mayday, Mayday, SOS.
Comment: Well that’s how I see it some days and this is just one of those mournings. Say it in paint, say it in rhyme. Nobody’s listening most of the time.
“I met a traveler from an antique land who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.” [Percy Bysshe Shelley]
Comment: Not my poem – I only wish it was – but certainly it expresses some of my sentiments at the current time. What on earth is happening? Who do we think we are? What do we think we’re doing? Where do we think we are going? ‘Vanity of vanities – all is vanity.’
On being Welsh in a land ruled by the English Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus
I am the all-seeing eyes at the tip of Worm’s Head. I am the teeth of the rocks at Rhossili. I am the blackness in Pwll Ddu pool when the sea-swells suck the stranger in and out, sanding his bones.
Song pulled taut from a dark Welsh lung, I am the memories of Silure and beast mingled in a Gower Cave.
Tamer of aurox, hunter of deer, caretaker of coracle, fisher of salmon on the Abertawe tide, I am the weaver of rhinoceros wool.
I am the minority, persecuted for my faith, for my language, for my sex, for the coal-dark of my thoughts.
I am the bard whose harp, strung like a bow, will sing your death with music of arrows unleashed from the wet Welsh woods.
I am the barb that sticks in your throat from the dark worded ambush of my song.
Paintings: doors you can walk through, windows that open onto visions of another, more beautiful life. Deeper than the paint, the thoughts and words that formed them, brushed them into life, an ephemeral life, so brief that butterflies seem to last longer and flowers live for all eternity.
Transience and insubstantiality. Change is all around us, we are surrounded by change. But the deepest changes, the ones that affect us most are internal, set deep within us, death’s eggs hatching slowly since the day we were born.
Life is indeed short, and art endures. Carved five thousand years ago, in stone, this magnificent henge, first Wood-henge, then Stonehenge, majestic at the dawn of time, with its sarsen stones, pillars, post-holes, and labyrinths, circling within circles, a frail spider-web of sunlit brilliance.
Lost now, the message, as my own message is lost, covered by paint, though words emerge in the strangest places, allowing us to peer in through windows as long-lost words and worlds whirl out through carved and painted windows and everlasting doors.
Doors First version
Paintings are doors you can walk through, windows that open onto visions of another, sometimes better, life. Deeper than the paint are the thoughts and words that formed them, brushed them into life, an ephemeral life, so brief that butterflies last longer and flowers live for all eternity, or so it seems.
Transience and insubstantiality. Change is all around us, we are surrounded by change. But the deepest changes, the ones that affect us most are internal, set deep within us, death’s eggs hatching slowly since the day we were born.
Life is indeed short, and art endures. Carved five thousand years ago, in stone, this Towie ball with its labyrinths and circles. Lost now, the message, as my own message is lost, covered by paint, though words emerge in the strangest places, allowing us to peer in through windows as long lost words and worlds walk out through carved and painted doors.
Last Year’s Snow Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan? Villon.
Meditations on Messiaen Inner Migrants
4
Last Year’s Snow
Last year’s snow: where did it go? The snow-blower blew it around while my daughter made snow angels, but that snow melted, so long ago. We made a snowman.
I remember rolling snowballs around the yard. They grew so big we could hardly lift them, one large lump onto another, and then we planted stick-arms, a hat, a nose.
Our dog visited him. Sniffed. Drilled yellow holes into his feet. Crows sat on his arms, cawed and cawed, totally unafraid, no scarecrow this, this fake man made entirely of snow.
The crows saw worse in the roadside snowbanks. Dead deer, snow plowed into the banks and abandoned at roadside, their bodies waiting for spring sun to resurrect them.
Our annual question: where did the snowman go? And its sequels: last year’s snow, the birds that nested in last year’s nests, what happened? Where did they go?
I have searched near and far, but I haven’t found them, not a trace, not a song, not a feather floating down. Where did they go?
No hay pajaros en los nidos de antano. Miguel de Cervantes.
She surveys her empire from a tall tree, then steps into space, plunging her body’s weight downwards, diving into fragile air.
A feathered arrow, she makes contact, feet first, and pins the unsuspecting robin to the ground. His shrill shriek emerges from a beak that shreds failing life.
The hawk’s claws clench. Her victim weakens. His eyes glaze over. One final spasm, a last quick twitch, the robin is gone.
One wing drags, flaps weakly, borne skywards in the hawk’s triumphant claws.