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Woken to the waning moon outside my window,

 Woken to the waning moon outside my window,

To my unspectacled eye,  

like a twinkling star, flashing a message

from a silvery sphere of naked branches.

Through veiling clouds moving

like the beam of a long forgotten Maine lighthouse

still searching

calling me

to that first cherry blossom….

AFTER IMAGE

 AFTER IMAGE

I watched the village of Auchtermuchtie filling with snow. It is a lovely village. So quiet. We walked to the church for the Christmas service and met only one person on the way. It was the most bizarre service. The ‘minister’ rung the bells and the congregation of about 15 appeared. The service was choreographed by a very funny and peculiar ex Salvation Army husband and wife team. Good stand up comedy. All were included in the jokes. My wife said I laughed loudest. “Ho, Ho, Ho!”

A beautiful church inside and out. My intense vision was the changing afterimage of a stained glass window becoming the heavily bleeding head of Christ.

I forgot that image, though it had filled my vision and was as gorgeous and hypnogogic as ever a vision could be. It was a Miracle, my rich and colourful miracle. Everyday life is full of other, usually unnoticed, everyday miracles. 

Another Day is dawning.

What is left of the Christmas wrappings?

https://youtu.be/8XG1B_7r4y8

Here is a detail from the forest at the base of the tombstone. 

I feel I want to enter this forest and walk though into the mountains.

“1045–1105 In the jade hall I sit across from a painting by Guo Xi 

that  makes me feel I have come to the verge of the greenwood. Guo Xi was an official painter but [his spirit] was distant and remote.

In colors he concealed his ink and in ink concealed the water.”

https://asia.si.edu/publications/

Aerial Acrobats

The evening sky burst
heavenly blue
and fantastically
a couple of Martins flew.

They soared, they dived,
and stalled,
acrobats on high
catching insects
in the sky.

Autumn Prayers

Above me,

beneath me,

falling to earth,

Autumn prayers.

Kokoro

Kokoro

You will gain little from these words set adrift from my emotional ebb and flow.

This afternoon a crack of lighting woke me from a dream. Out of the darkness a blinding flash lit stone slabs and mountain peaks. I'd found the stone tablets on a mountain. They were 21 century copies but I was impressed as the writing sizzled in the rain but it wasn't the tablets that were important. It was the illumination by lightning.

I had been reading, 'Kokora' by Soseki and its fatal pessimism clung to me. Empathising with the characters had the effect of recalling in exquisite detail the lives of tragic characters in my own life. It was as if a spotlight, out of my control, illuminating them, all unhappy and insane, one sadly dead.

A spotlight can light up many things. I once worked a carbon arc spotlight at The American Ice Show in Istanbul. I was so ill with dysentery that walking to the show and following the skaters round with my arc light was all my conscious life. The hissing arc light would sometimes even wander off randomly and illuminate someone in the audience until an American voice on the headphone woke me.

That arc light has given me hope, a vision beyond human kind. We can choose what we shine our light on, what we focus on and what we see. Our whole vision can be transformed. In Van Gogh's case an 'ordinary' young girl was significant.

Bothy in Scotland Part1

We arrived at the bothy and I looked in the window to a dark interior. On my mind was "The Hill Farmer Speaks" by R. S. Thomas. I saw my reflection with the mountains behind, 'reflections of the way life used to be', farm buildings in ruins and this last house, long deserted.

"I am the farmer, stripped of love
And thought and grace by the land's hardness;
But what I am saying over the fields'
Desolate acres, rough with dew,
Is Listen, listen, I am a man like you....."

http://youtu.be/H8v-uc-DI7g

"Umeniko" Cherry Poem

Snow flurry
melts on "Umeniko"
or
Snow flakes melt
on cherry blossom.

I am honoured with this translation into Japanese by Hitomi Sato. Thank you!

我が庭の　愛し桜の　花びらに　積もりし雪の　解けししづくよ

waga-niwa-no itoshi-sakura-no hanabira-ni tsumorishi-yuki-no tokeshi-sizuku-yo

About a year ago I enjoyed visiting the hills and gardens around Kyoto and Yoshino. I already had some Japanese cherry trees and have planted more, including three Yoshino. This photo is of my new "Umeniko" just blooming for the first time and next day there was a little snow and I took this picture after the snow flakes had melted to drops.

My wife says the flowers look like ballet dancers.

"Sleeping under the trees on Yoshino mountain
The spring breeze wearing Cherry blossom petals"

Saigyo

木のもとに　旅寝をすれば　吉野山　花の衾を　着する春風
西行法師

ki-no-mo-to-ni tabi-ne-wo-sureba Yoshino-yama hana-no-fusuma-ni kisuru-harukaze

 Saigyo-hoshi

"the breeze is fresh,
the moon is bright;
come, we shall dance till dawn,
and say farewell to age"

e wa kiyoshi                              
tsuki wa sayakeshi                          
iza tomoni                              
odori akasan      
oi no nagori ni                        

Jakuran (1139?-1202)

Woodcock - poem

Walking through my one wood

often at the edges I surprise a snipe or woodcock,

whose jagged path

 defies my ageing eyes.

Every day this happens

but today it's fatal path 

flew towards the house 

where striking the window

instantly it died.

Beautiful plumage,

and most prized game.

Three days it hangs.

I pluck it.

Roast it.

Carve the breast.

And in that flight,

of vulnerability and surrender

we share

the Kingdom of the Air.