9.) Out Of Sequence Light Dabbles In Daydreams

Out of sequence light dabbles in daydreams

Taking random memories sparked by parallels

Giving new substance to them

Forming further inner doors of insight

Out from of its own ceaseless ability

To roam every nook and cranny of my existence...

Past... present... and future

In no order that I can see light revels in discovery

At any time or place appearing before my mirror...

A bouquet of thought-blossom in a basketful of days

All growing things memories from below memory

And a scrapbook of ‘happening-life’... happening

One stray strand of fleeting light could make a book

One memory resurfacing could weave a labyrinth

Of current things captured... even a counting-fall

And a flow of thoughts swimming in gold

Sweeping through the tunnels of my mind

Held where heavenly things merge with earthly

In a seamless happenstance... if I looked deeper

Light makes me, ‘me,’ out of a myriad cast of dreams

Playing the best... the fiercest shinings of selfless love

Fallen from a collection of memories... treasure-caught

And a deeper insight finding, in their further parallels

A mirrored wisdom-light shading things in beauty

                                              *

8.) Bewildered I stood In A Subterranean World

Bewildered I stood in a subterranean world

Watching colourless people with expressionless faces

Passing by me in shoals all headed the same way

And I was swimming again

Over coral heads in shallow glass seas

Where shoals of rainbow coloured fish went by me

All moving and turning as a single body.

Oh, how I yearned to tell these masses passing by me

Of the lovely colours they really were

Beneath their bland exteriors, but they would think

I was mad...

But so great to me the contrast between the

London Underground and the pale blue Caribbean Sea

That I could only wish to whisk them away

And take them there where I had once been.

But soon at the surface again at last I could breathe

And walk the airy streets of London

On a busy sunlit day on Monday...

                                               *

(Extracted from my autobiography, DAWNING...  page 22)

7.) Flooding, The Stream Beside My Crooked Willow

Flooding, the stream beside my crooked willow

It had, in cadence, overflowed its crooked banks

But it took me with it the required distance

Out from the common crowded journey into the light

And I laughed!

What was in me – an unmeasured world of wonder

Had grown so vast, I was in it on the outside, too

And the seeping through, a pouring out, and then a torrent

Flowing, in sparkling rapid vision, upon a crystal page

And I, nothing but the witless hand, that held

The spellbound pen – one crazy goosegirl

And I laughed!

Flooding, the stream beside my crooked willow

It had, in cadence, overflowed its crooked banks

But it took me with it the required distance

Out from the common crowded journey into the light

And I laughed!

                                           *

6.) Heads Spin Once Through The Door

Heads spin once through the door

And face the other way...

Things in pictures seen...changing shape for

Things which are not, bringing to nought things that are

That I could not find you, by myself alone.

Again, the seeping through, the influence as water

Forging within, making things that touch

Things which only my spirit could taste, see, and hear

Things which spoke to me of the lost light tree

And embodied it... appearing wondrous to me

But which now, turned around, and looking back, I see

Were only my half-desperate efforts

To make sense of what I could not yet understand;

I was comforted, in an outer sort of way

But, oh, there was, more... yes, there was so much more

And further and deeper and beyond...

                                      *

(Extracts of things from my book, The Light Tree Journal, page 19)

5.) Of The Split, The Crevice In My Centre

Of the split, the crevice in my centre

And the turning pivot in my midst

I did not say it, all: I did not think of it, then

The bright-light – it would come when it would

It did not often stop to make room for me

The catching of it was all through the letting go

Not the grasping... 

And it could wait... it was in me... timeless

It was to do with the light tree, the crevice,

And my vision of it...

Which would fade when I forgot it as ‘a tree’

As, a certain form...

But, so vivid was its formless presence

That it could not help but seep out, somewhere,

And in other forms and in other realms;

It’s influence as water, which, seeping out

Through even the tiniest split in me

And evaporating into thin air

Could somehow quench my thirsting thought

For meaning...

While ever enthusing my inner being

To search for more...

The pivotal thing it was already there

The crack in my centre already through the door

                                               *  

(Extracted from my book, The Light Tree Journal, page 19)

4.) Did I Say Ecstasy?

Did I say ecstasy?

That drawing near, you fill me with ecstasy?

And that no one hears your step, but me?

Yes... it is true... all true; and it is fire

But the telling of it comes only later

Forty lines, later,

As in the hour of struggle the birth of a butterfly

That came first... like the fire...

Then you walked in, you stepped inside me:

You had known me.

I look for those who hear you, as I do

I long for them I yearn for them, to hug them

But there are none, just as you told me

And they hate me... though they’d never own it

Wanting the rapture, too, but without the dying.

Shunning offence they each one miss the ecstatic stigma.

                                          *

3.) They Say That From A Fire The Phoenix Rises...

They say that from a fire the phoenix rises

Out from a cataclysm the new-patterned diadem

And a bright new world for the loss of a dim one.

And the life-seed of that, full-swollen

Bursting forth in further glory;

And, like the bird reborn,

No longer only a presentiment of life

But a full explosion of it!

Yet a silent one, going all unheard, and unseen

Just as the ready dandelion, waiting its thief

And the expulsion of its feathered seed

Rejoices in its coming nakedness;

In its cycle full-come dying for its children,

And the expansion of itself

In being taken from itself;

And all the gift of the wind, and the spirit of life.

So, take me all, steal me all away

And from my fire let my thrice-purged words rise

And scatter as winged seed...

And, finding quiet home

As the commonest of all yellow flowers

Lightly gild the gentle hearts they softly fall for;

In dream my heart’s fruit, born of its suffering

And life’s own children who welcome the seed.

                                          *

2.) The Life-Seed, Swells, The Heart Becomes A Globe...

The life-seed, swells, the heart becomes a globe

And the split, the crevice in my sphere

Runs right through, from centre, to the edge . . .

Both ways . . . a polar axis . . . a pivoting life-line

Once warped, now strait as a die

But in each part the semblance of one bend

Which took offence as though it were a prize

And so straitened it

And the light, perfect, which now shone inside it

Was as a road, broken through to my surface world

Nor more to wind round things I’d rather not face

But through the very middle of them 

Mining their treasures . . .  

Taking pain by making of it comfort

Annulling thorns by finding only gifts

And now real life for only a former glimmer of it.

                                         *