writing the bright moment: zen & poetry mini-retreat

The deep silence of no words. I allow myself to fall into the well of it, with these others, companions on the journey.

Outside, the deep silence is the tumultuous hum of the earth with its many inhabitants here in this tranquil woodland garden; the air with its congregations of bird-voice; the rushy songs of millpond and leat, their registers and octaves. Wind whips and snaps the prayer-flags strung across the terrace – they belly and billow like sails, on the verge of leaving.

the way the dusk light falls rosy

on the flanks of Meldon

the way I have eyes to see it

the way the world unselfs me

On top of Meldon, shouldering cloud, a single sheep, like an unpenned thought.

At supper tonight below on the moonstruck millpond a single wild goose called the deeps over and over until the water answered with another.

These days I offer purchase to ivy / allow ladybirds to nest / in the cracks of my bark. / The wren's song / is also home

across the valley

the green path is a greenpaint finger 

drawn across the russet hillside

now here

now there

it zigzags

all the way to the top

and then it keeps climbing

into pale dusk air

I am clad in the world / it lets me wear its technicolour selves / until we are all unselfed...