Gazing into the bright dome of the sky
Through veils and drifting continents of cloud
Suspended lost dimensions travel by
I hear the universe dreaming aloud.

Infinity reflected in a lake
Deep mirror to the heavens far above,
Where reeling kestrels fly for flying's sake
Where breezes sigh like whispered words of love

Love lead me to infinities of blue
With endless depths of cloudscapes on all sides
To ride with kestrels; oversee the view
Which hitherto I'd seen with earthbound eyes.

For always with us, high above the crowds,
They glide; shape-shifting monuments of clouds.

In the clear light of morning, an October morning, at the beginning of this properly autumn month, he had felt sad: that he’d broken a promise to himself the afternoon before. It was her voice on the phone, and then that text. He had promised he would no longer write intimately, about their intimacy, remembering what has passed between them, which had so marked him. All it took was this flavour of her voice, a slowness in her diction, and he could not help himself: such a rush of images, of moments, sensations. He knew it was unwise to linger over any of these things because he felt sure she did not. That was no longer her way, if it ever had been her way, and he imagined that, with her accustomed kindness and generosity, she had quietly put such things aside. So on this gentle morning, he was upset that he had once again visited that box of treasures in the white room that he kept for her in his imagination house. This was not the route to happiness. He would throw away the key.

He needed consolation. Once he had turned to her letters, to catch that flavour of her, those things that surrounded her, a kind of aura that held within it her secret self. Now, there was a print above his desk that he loved (Spurn marks: seaweed #4), her origami bird, the print of a painting of an African woman and child given to him on his birthday (when he had first kissed her, tentatively on her left cheek,) and her dear photograph, dear because he knew he looked at it more times in a day than he could possibly admit to.

It needed to be a book, a passage he could read to remind him there were so many other joys in life alongside the joy he felt at the thought of her, a joy he felt he might never consummate. He took Ronald Blythe’s Word from Wormingford off the shelf and turned to the essay for the beginning of October. Ronnie had been watching the late September clouds, those armadas sailing across the skies. In a moment he was somewhere else, in a life he recognised so acutely, those East Anglian places of his early manhood. In this present time, in North Yorkshire, he would sit and watched such clouds from a bench above Filey Bay, clouds that David Hockney celebrated in his paintings of the Wolds.

Yesterday afternoon there had been a break in the weather after a week of mist and rain. It had found him gazing at a drama in the skies above the trees in his park. He had walked to the Rose Garden with its redundant conservatory and paired Pelicans atop its gateposts, where once he’d sat with his infant children as they’d slept. There were roses still, a little tattered, but colourful. Like Ronnie he had spent time cloud watching, until the geese from the nearby lake erupted into flight. Always a marvel of movement !

Blythe’s essays were always so rich in the sheer breadth and content of their meditations. There was always some new knowledge to be had, things to Google or better still ‘go to the book.’ This was when he loved what few books now remained from his library. He had Luke Howard’s essay on The Modification of Clouds. A Quaker, Howard was admired by Goethe (they corresponded) and Shelley, John Constable and John Ruskin (who used Howard’s cloud classifications in his Modern Painters). He then went to find Shelley’s The Cloud (and in so doing uncovered several books that he’d forgotten he owned). He read the last verse that once he had learnt by heart . . .

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die --
For after the rain, when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of Air
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, live a ghost from the tomb,
I arise, and unbuild it again.

Hmm, he thought, such rhyme and rhythm. And, via Blythe recalling the Chinese, he then pictured the official from the emperor’s counting house bringing guests home after work to gaze at the cloudscapes over the Tai Mountains from his humble balcony. Nothing was to be said, an hour of silence was the convention. In a blink he remembered the autumn poem by Lai Bai where ‘floating clouds seem to have no end.’

I climb up high and look on the four seas,
Heaven and earth spreading out so far.
Frost blankets all the stuff of autumn,
The wind blows with the great desert's cold.
The eastward-flowing water is immense,
All the ten thousand things billow.
The white sun's passing brightness fades,
Floating clouds seem to have no end.
Swallows and sparrows nest in the wutong tree,
Yuan and luan birds perch among jujube thorns.
Now it's time to head on back again,
I flick my sword and sing Taking the Hard Road.

He had to take a deep breath not to think too deeply about The Clouds and Rain, that metaphor for the arts of the bedchamber. But Ronnie’s 500 words sent him back to Wormingford and the bedbound old lady he describes who spent her days watching the clouds.

As he closed the book he felt a little better, ready to face the day, and more important ready to place his thoughts in a right place, a comfortable and secure place, quiet and respectful, however much he might seek to possess each night her Lotus pond and make those flowers of fire blossom within

It’s curious this looking business, looking at something you almost recognize as being what it says on the small white card next to the exhibit. Sand Marks. And these marks hang on linen-lengths two metres long by 40 cm wide. You don’t look at sand face-forward standing up with light pouring through the surface on which the marks are made. That feels unusual. The five linen-lengths are keeping each other company. A set of sand marks, marks in the sand. No. Marks from and of the sand. And why, She thought? What is this supposed to be about? Is this what art is? Grabbing images from under the feet. Their  making engineered, conditions in place to shape and colour, fold and crease, to hold and position rightly. Hmm, She reflected, and thought of her daughter as a child, sitting on the sand of some annual Scottish beach. She would watch her soon to be two-year-old moving beach sand and stones around with her hands, seeing tiny dunes and valleys and routes appear, and making marks. Yes, that would be it. All that watching, that as she grew up became observing and collecting and storing away as images caught in a moment and placed in the mind’s diary, then often lingered over later (as only children can) defining her personal curation of things natural.

Here she is now, her mother thought, all these years on collecting and revealing such sand marks onto ordered frozen surfaces. Would these collectively be an installation she wondered? How She quietly distrusted that word. It was part of a vocabulary She felt She might do without. When She looked at these ecru linen cloths printed and manipulated variously She saw her daughter’s beautiful (always beautiful) hands entering sand, making marks in the fabric of the beach – as a child – now as an adult. There seemed no difference. Just this summer She had watched her daughter mesmerized at the sea’s edge, seeing the sand marks wander, bend and twist below shallow water, just as these hanging cloths seemed to do in her gaze. There was movement in stillness. Her daughter would wait with her camera to capture just the moment when light and ripple came together in a previously imagined moment: a perfect moment she longed to seize. Then later, up on the computer’s flat, backlit screen, it would be shown like a moth caught in a net and pinned behind glass.

In this light-filled gallery, a gallery filled with the reflected light of the sea just a minute’s walk away, this often sombre contemplative work became light of weight and texture, lost its sombre colours, those non-colour shades of grey and canvas, earth and mud, and seemed to float, bathed in light, the colours washed and fresh, alive. It was a revelation that it should be so, and She knew She would carry this view of her daughter’s linen pieces ever after – changing her view of what she’d seen as a steady stream of similar often sombre images representing ‘a body of work’ – another term She disliked and felt was not part of her world of seeing. She thought, ‘I garden, but I don’t do ‘work’ in the garden. What grows under my care and attention somehow has to be and flows through and past me. I don’t own my work in any way. It’s not for sale as something of me. It has no price tag. Work is cleaning the house or dealing with minutes of a meeting.’

There were in this light-filled gallery other pieces to look at. Her artists’ books in a glass cabinet were quietly covered in lichen green board, some closed, others opened to reveal more captured marks, stains and prints. Open to touch and view She warmed to a pair of her daughter’s sketchbooks, delighting in turning their pages carefully, so carefully as not to shake up the often delicate flowing marks on the paper. She imagined – as She herself had drawn once - her daughter’s intense concentration drawing these wider scenes – across the sea to the horizon where a turmoil of weather took place in the changing incessant cloudscapes.

There was other ‘work’ too, other artists’ efforts taking inspiration from landscape. Strange too, to call these pieces ‘work’. Such a term seemed to give their collective creative industry authority and stature She wasn’t always sure they necessarily had. Much of it seemed more play than work. It was so often playful.

Her daughter, meanwhile, was deep in conversation with the gallery’s exhibition officer. Whereas She dipped in and out of this conversation, her thoughts revolved, grass hopping. She remembered hearing her husband speak of his concern about their daughter’s management of this still-fledgling career. A right concern about how family and career would be handled as recognition and opportunity developed. She shared this concern, but seeing her daughter glow at being in the very swim of this art making and showing did not for a moment want that glow to disappear. She knew she would manage, she had always managed and been resourceful, careful, and, She had to admit this, brave. Her condition of being a single-parent She, as her mother, had almost grown accustomed to; She felt She knew a thing or two about finding happiness and the warmth of companionship.

Those linen-length pieces hanging there seemed to intersect such thoughts. She found herself looking at her daughter’s partner who was carefully sketching the linen quintet. He had said to her once that he sketched (badly) to enable him to focus intently on an object, to learn from it. If you sketched something you gave it time, and came to know it as line-by-line, shade-by-shade, the image formed and your relationship to it. He was always careful in talking to her, and even when he began to tread across ground that She hadn’t travelled, he was so sensitive to her feelings. He liked to explain, to tell out his enthusiasm for books he’d read, for music he loved, for her daughter he so adored. She could see that plainly, his adoration, his wonder at her. He had wrapped this young woman round and round with his adoration, and this clearly gave him such joy.

It was getting on. Lunch beckoned. There was a signalling that this hour or so of viewing would gradually fall away. The exhibition officer said her goodbyes. Food was mentioned. She would give one last glance at the Sand Marks perhaps. The linen-lengths still hung there luminous in the vivid, brilliant, but cold light of this early April day. After lunch they would walk to the sea under the powder blue skies and feel that this too was part of such a glad day, a day She would take to her memory as full of the restful pleasure her daughter so often gave her. This dear girl – how often had She heard her partner use that word ‘dear’, knowing he addressed his letters to her with ‘dearest’. It was wonderful that it could be so, that her daughter was so loved. She wanted, suddenly, to throw her arms around them both, and let them know, without any words, that she loved them too.

phenomenal! vibrant light-helixes of vortexical sound
bivolving sorrow-joy cascades
into motional peace & silent selfhood surrounded.

Threads are coming together
              I celebrate the infinite beyond
              I know I do not know,
              and question-knowing I discern my choice
encompassed ---
      live and know the life inside
as what it is and can be;
to live and explore unknown chords
of heartsong cloudscapes; to be sound,
to be consciousness of light; to be
light itself and voidness all potential;
to be love and to love&be-loved;
in a timeless stillness forgotten in its thinking of;
to spiral quietly before an ever-emergent soundfulness--
to be deafened with a clarity of hearing! to drown
in colors blooming
in the dark; to feel the breath of things and taste contentment
pure as quartz in spring water, white sage and myrr.

grounded in a vastness spilling symmetry
this is witnessed by a newly discovered self
now swept away with verdant effulgence
---dispersing unity here,
bringing light to this Whole Now that is,
now... here, is an integral clarity,
a clear laying down of that union--
that metaspeech of truth-dwelling seen,
a resident teaching echoed in every breeze
healing into wholeness giving birth to itself forever:
just now noted.

for you, of you: you’ve been between my ears

close enough to being on my mind,
almost the same thing,
though that’s unfairly inequitable, we both agree,
for when in an ear one opines, too oft it escapes
out the other side, only a tree ring mark left,
someone was here, present

as for the Confucius confusion in

ok, who’s writing this poem to whom,

cause it’s never clear between us
who is
asking the questions,
since the answers come
demanded and undemanding,
fomenting newer questions and follow through,
before, as well as,
‘please sir, may I have some more?’

the mutualizing game tasking begin-began-begun,
for this, our lovely crazy teasing of our-thing, ago began,
don’t recall who or how intimated-initiated
this oil drilling exploration,
who is the annointer and who is the annointed,
who seeds the plants, picks the fruit, and who
gets paid with cloves of poems, by the bushel

you say I’ve been on your mind,
which we now have both pointed out
is somewhat extraordinary since,
the sight lines are drawn through
long distance cloudscapes that travel
through underground cables,
making everything said,
fallow and rich-ending, deeply frustrating,
impossible to see the outcome

clouds usually imaginary, (not like now),
making visibility normative poor,
unlike the real ones I’m flying at the moment through,
ensconced in front row seat 1F, heading northwest passage,
passing by so ridiculously close to where
you are minding the soil,
as I am
mining your soul’s soil, tilling it between the ears,
of you, by me, for us, and the excited sadness
makes me happy and yes, inequitably, again,
hopping-mad

because your breadcrumbs and dark Swiss chocolate bars are
scattered and defaced, bitten and chewed, lovingly licked melting,
we who cover our tracks too well;
but what I do have, makes me ravenous,
having read all your poems,
in random order and then one more time,
sequentially

I see your history, near escapes and resurrections,
in fine grained moody minutiae punctuated by huge gaps in between,
that we must cream fill with clouds of wondrous loving curiosity,
a torture so exquisite, only the gods could have invented it like
Sunday Night Football,
and crazy sayings,
like I love you too...

been on my mind and I imagine you
hot and sweaty,
bent over, aching tired, from
picking weeds (gotcha),
when sudden one of us stands up straight, back aching,
screaming out loud
this is crazy, and follows up with
a *** Darius type proclamation,
who’s writing this poem to whom
issued to the upwards-skywards,
but addressed to ourselves,
the poets

as we search clouds by the thousands,
is that you in that cloud, in that poem,
I look down thinking that, that must be,
the plot of green and dusted light brown ground
where she has gone into hidey-hole hiding,
disappearing for months at a time,
before arising for the sticking of me
in the sticking place,
wounding me fresh with brand new poems
scandalous and imaginous,
and our imaginations are both
too skilled

so here I close, overwritten, overridden, too long,
overshot my imaginary bounds, so one
pulls down the shade over the oval window
through which too many great stories have commenced,
and ended

the thick cumulus shouting
as we look up
as we look down,
saying “enough, you crazy people,
your poems tell too much,”

perhaps, find me in that
next bite of herbs buttered,
and then ask (of course)

who’s writing this poem to whom?

then breathe out, exhaling me a
breath-poem up above, to where I’m hiding
just as I, am sending one to you,
earth falling from thirty thousand feet,
coming to rest on your mind,
in between your ears,
friend

<>

8-6-19
somewhere in the sky, clueless, heading north by northwest

LOve
Ve
E
drips like sugar water into the once heavy womb of my heart space , the energetic debris from tsunami waves , the riptide pulling in layered insides revealing prayers materialized
dreams actualized, work finalized  , pieces fit together in the most miracles i've seen in so short a time

Living our reincarnate lives, within this one , the unraveling tendencies of parallel  realities that merger in the spiders fresh spun web of glittering pearls
just like the Buddha said , are we not all Buddhas too?

meat machines being driven by holy spirits no less ,
angels in plain clothes
third eyes expose the truth behind every face
a feathered friend sends messages and the constellations of cloudscapes aid in delivery , soft wind , hard wind ,
fire reduces all to ash ,
some flowers bloom only after a forest fire

Beauty is a priority not a luxury
no flower blooms for the ones with cash
no flower blooms for the profit made on each petal

no moon etched night sky wears a for sale sign
no azure blue sky gives change
apart from the fleeting expressions of cloudscapes

Foolish the one who sees the sea
And wants to jump into the sky
But maybe it's those who dare to fall
That aren't afraid to die

Standing on the shore, I'm staring
At reflections rippling by
And I think, if I just touch them
Maybe I could reach the sky

My fingers graze the surface
And my body follows through
Passing through a mirror of ocean
To a world of white and blue

And I grow wings like cloudscapes
Spreading fearless 'cross the skies
Drops of sunlight sparkle brilliantly
A sunset in my eyes

But suddenly my dream wings
Dissipate without a sound
As they disappear, I'm falling
Hurtling down to the ground

All the colors fade behind me
And I close my eyes in fear
All anxiety returned
That so recently disappeared

Growing closer to the earth
I brace myself for the impact
What a fool to be a dreamer!
Just to leave those wishes cracked

The wind stopped whirring suddenly
I opened up my eyes
I was standing on the shore again
And staring at the sky

Was I flying or just falling?
Was it daydream? Was it real?
I was left there with emotions
That I never thought I'd feel

I was the foolish dreamer
That hoped she could touch the sky
But although her wings were true
She was terrified to die

But a world like that exists there
And that I could not deny
It was a dream, but for a moment
I had learned to fly.

I have poor vision.
Whether that's an ironic twist of life, a coincidence, or a sick joke being played through the universe's morbid sense of humor,
It's a fact.
And in more senses than one.
I've been short sighted since the age of 12
(On my left anyway)

You know how they say other senses sharpen when one takes damage?
It happened.
Not to my hearing, or my good eye
But in more subtle ways.

My sense of deduction blew through the roof.
My instincts when it came to social interaction became so sharp I could tell you what would happen to someone before it happened with 80% accuracy
I could tell people from smart apes almost instantly
I figured out how to use will to forge and shape my future

Then I met someone
Someone that was so amazing
So awe inspiring and raw and real
That I decided I wanted
No
Needed them in my future
And the game started

We started slow
Friends, smoke buddies, bar buddies
We shared secrets, problems, and great memories
And over time I started to fall for you

One day
While hanging out and smoking
And sharing stories and opinions
There was something in the air
I couldn't take my eyes off of you
Every word you spoke sounded like a songbirds call,
Beckoning my soul gently
Grabbing my attention with every word

That's when I realized I was falling for you.

Every time I saw you after that
Pushed me further down the land slide of surpessed romance
I hid my feelings under the heart on my sleeve

Then came the day we had our first kiss
I needed to know if there was anything there.
A spark
A bad feeling
Warmth
Anything.
So I asked if I could kiss you
A simple request to you
But a test of chemistry to me
And what I found was something so welcoming
So warm, and electric and natural
I needed it in my life for as long as I could have it
Then you told me you liked me
And I thought,
"Wow, I lucked out"

Now we're building a future together
Using an unbreakable bond and determination
And watching each other's backs

And now
We've reached a new peak
And as the sun rises and kisses your cheeks every morning,
And the sky reflects your brilliance and beauty with cloudscapes and sunsets
I'll take each day to appreciate how much you've improved my life
I'll take each snuggle session
Each passionate kiss
Each embrace and secret
Each warm night
And I'll cherish these memories until the day we can reminisce
And look back at the road we've traveled
And smile
And cry
And accept every blessing and tragedy
Every mistake and accomplishment
Every dodged bullet and heated discussion

Today I started working on my vows to you.
I'm sure they'll change a lot over the time it takes to present them
But so will we.
And I've never been more excited about change
Than I am when I think about the changes that will come to us,
With you by my side.

Together, we'll look back at our sweet past
Through rose tinted, candy speckled glasses.

O there was good fortune in the winds that wafted thru her hair that day, a cortege that graced her lovely cheeks and seemed to know the charm it did to we two lend. From the whispering meadows and the lofty heights, its gentle caresses were to no others more welcome; escaping from the torrents of the crowded streets wherefrom we yearned to be free, free as the breeze which comforted us at will. What den, we wondered, shall we take for our homesite? Which valley shall be our very own? Within which clear river stream shall we bathe each fine early morn? O the world was  not the world in those moments, but rather the earth, a garden paradise which did before us lie.With trembling hearts we ventured on without a clue as to our destination, with nothing more than cloudscapes as our lodestar. The heavy burdens of our former lives were no longer ours to carry, but rather ease and joyous delights were promised in prospect, each to each. Thus far, O Lord! did we make flowing forth that experience our souls in measured hymns: to the open vales we sang out our hearts clothed in not a thing, two separate shades, renovated umbrae we were in that time, such Utopia was ours! We came upon a shady place with ardent steps and sat beneath a laughing sycamore, settling into gentler merriment. 'Twas perpetually autumn, never an unclear day did we come to know during our stay; and yet many were our thoughts, until we gazed into each other's eyes for the first time since our arrival, and thus long did we desire one another with growing love until the sun nearly touched the horizon -and we awakened to the busy hum of the city.

In the clinical light
I believe you left me
The space you forsook
Screaming
Wanting the caress
Of ethereal cloudscapes
A change in the weather
But left
For estranged love

how confidently a retired businessman told me I was wrong
how my political views were uneducated, naive and off-base
strongly, then loudly, then in my face
I’m not one to spend my evenings this way, arguing-arguing
I don’t even argue with my wife or teenage sons
life is so short, energies must be spent elsewhere
but the businessman continued building his 95 theses against me
how he knew!
my skewed foundational beliefs, an ignoramus!
ever stronger and ever louder
and I did not respond, as I was not given an opportunity
and I stopped listening, as his face flushed with emotion
thinking how the businessman was lost
at some point, he may have
stopped setting his naked eye to the dark craters of the morning moon
forgotten the more humbling vantage points
that guide away from certainty’s comforts
sifting here and now and us and paint-smeared cloudscapes
un-comprehend
    unlearn
        and gain gratitude’s heart
wake with a smile from a secret source
embedded in predisposition
he has lost his kindness and wisdom
not because he is right or wrong
but because he has blinded himself, as many have
to the quickly found shallow world
so he put me in a category of folks he has encountered before
and I did the same to him
neither of us the wiser
until I stood up in front of him and walked away as he was still ranting
bending over to pet a very friendly dog