Blood, disappearance

My world was green,
and bleak like the mountains;
you brought the blood back
Your dress was white,
your heart a-throbbing;
I brought the light in.
I wanted to love you,
there in the morning
you wanted the sun rise.
You wanted August,
with ripe fruit and long days;
I owned only winter.
Had August engulfed us,
I feared for my harbour,
I feared for the stars we pretended I pocketed.
And fears can hold substance, as subsequence illustrates;
my boat now holds water, and rocks, loose in the ebbing day.
Let me say just this,
in cold ones and zeros
to your stained face, your long artful fingers:
I'd shower you now,
with red juice, and white heat;
I'd bathe you in paradigms, so young and trembling,
and embrace all the goodness I know in your deepnesses:
I'd hold my face skywards, and make like an aeroplane,
and hold those warm fingers in a grip so fucking palpable.
If I thought I was up to it, if I thought I could hold you,
if I thought I could give you the good things you wanted;
If I thought we could milk the sweet milk of the evening,
or bandage your wounds with appropriate medicine.
I cut you, I know it,
I only say 'never',
and ever remorse will be my fresh harbour,
will welcome me home like some alien lover,
whose arms are half frozen and blind like material.
I know that you found me and I had my back to you.
I know that I wanted to meet in the garden,
and that I dragged you to unholy places,
and left you like carrion for some feasting predator.
I ask you this, nothing, but please let me give to you
The stars that I pocketed, the fruits of the morning
Hold out your hand and feel the arrival
of honours and flowers of such awful majesty.
Let it be known that this disappearance
is cancelled, it's over, the night is now ending,
and silence floods out through the speaking of bleeding;
and now I would call you as this night comes colder.

xxx

The curve in the question mark

Sure I miss smiling with you,
the way your lips make the shape your soul adapts when it flies;
yes, I miss your kiss, that secret of flight where for a moment we might find ourselves, together above some day clouds;
of course I miss our conversations, where the ground would hold us up as statues or as great buildings, where we were the capital city, the workings of the heart, the ancients;
and yes I miss the love, the tender and playful adventures in the snow, finding underground temples, sitting naked round a circle of coals and the great endless exploration of landscapes.

I built a hut in the wilderness and these were our walls.
Walls crumble,
birds fly,
feathers fall.

And earth finds the Earth,
and water the Ocean,
and while one bird is flying by day,
another flying by night,
walls remain
and we are birds now.

We are that Earth and Ocean,
and whether we meet at dawn or dusk
or whether we inhabit great hemispheres known only to ourselves,

This is the balancing point;
the truth of the spheres;
what we mean when we say 'freedom'.
This is the end of the line,
and what comes after.
This is the flow of electrical charge;
magic, and contrary:
the curve of the question mark,
the dot,
the space between.
This is a sentence,
a list, a statement,
a declaration,
a manifesto.
This is the thin grey line that holds open the universe;
The star burning,
the centre;
The hydrogen atom.
This is magnitude,
gravity,
action and language,
being, doing;
This is both, and neither.

I will think of you at low tide

I will think of you at low tide,
when the land under the sea is laid bare to the sky.
I'll shout to the wind the quiet sound of your name,
and look to my back as aloneness descends,
in the hope to see your face, standing behind me, urging me on to great things,
whispering 'yes' with the movement of your limbs.

Like a great oak in a red Devon field, branches wide and low,
giving colour and shelter and acorns for winter,
giving strength and grace, lending the earth your structure
rooted and reaching, encompassing all vertical,
and owning your patch with a fresh air of majesty.

But from today I will turn, to see you standing, here on this mountain,
and there will be a space, a silence, a terrible void where your face was.
I will sit at the sea and ask if this happened,
survey the horizon with a feeling of emptiness.
In short I will miss you, I'll remember you fondly,
when the sun surfs, when the air's cold, when the light is all hopeful,
I will think of you when the tide is low.

Ancient post

I've just been watching my mum and aunt ring the bells in a small Devon church, on one hand impressed and stimulated by the historic, modal form of ringing changes, on the other deeply moved by the sense of place, community and radiating devotion inherent in the sound.

Bellringers have always been a mite removed from the main congregation, spinning their abstract formal web of permutations in sound like a blanket over the countryside. This hidden congregation come early, and leave as the service begins, shiftying down the outer edge of the pews, distracting but tolerated, occasionally even thanked for their service.

Each bell sounds a primary note whose many glittering harmonics do not correspond to a single fundamental, giving the sound an ethereal quality. Together the harmonics create a noise map of heaven - no doctrine but din, no concept, but raw experience.

This early mass medium represents the ecstatic secular English tradition, disguised; you feel it as a sense of drama unfolds, the wonder and adrenaline flow, and as the bells accelerate into each other, bliss ascends, leaving only silence, leaving peace.