Englyns on Auroch Skulls

April 11, 2013June 9, 20147 Comments

Staring from the museum
eye pits glare beneath fierce horns,
haunted wells of atrophy,
gazes flee their blind prisons

back to Taurean eras
of thunder down the river,
reeking ride of reddish hides
steaming wild to the water,

skidding sudden to a halt,
thick bones trembling, muscles taut,
bullish courage killed by fear
of men’s spears and swift assault.

Seeing skies alive with darts
herd wheels, swings and departs.
Knees buckle and hocks collapse
at the agony of barbs.

Most escape, some are slaughtered,
five stagger, tidal water
rises as they struggle and sink.
Its cold brink claims their corpses.

Tides turn. Sediments heap.
Silt and till on layered peat
bury bones in sunken sands,
erred, abandoned for centuries

until wrested from repose
five bovine skulls are disclosed
by dockland’s excavation,
shivering blind and exposed.

Breezes trace visages bared.
Tongueless trophies taste the air.
Denied thunder impaled rage
hangs displayed, an endless stare.

Skull songs lie trapped in the eyes.
Visions burst where times collide.
Bones cry for wind-swept stampede,
aurochs released to the wild.

* This poem is based on a simplified variation of Englyn Cyrch, which I learnt from Robin Herne’s Bard Song.

Slow Spring

April 9, 2013July 8, 20141 Comment

The ground is parched, flowers sparse,
celandine’s only growing
near the stream. There is no grass
on the green but still they’re mowing
the same old tortured track ways.

Someone killed a daffodil
and spread it’s butchered limbs across
the valley. The trees might not fight
back but the winds will undo
our Baconian mechanics.

I was told by an ancient god
this world met it’s end in 2012.
When no-one noticed he only
laughed a little bit- whilst worlds
are always changing people don’t.

* This poem was inspired by a line shared by Coll on the Druid Network Members’ site: ‘Genius is but a robin’s song at the beginning of a slow spring.’ – Kahlil Gibran

Calling

March 9, 2013May 23, 2014Leave a comment

Before my calling I slept in a glass coffin.
No-one knew if I was live or dead until
I raised my head. And still they are pondering.

Whilst I slept I watched processions
of black clad men carrying coffins,
who march here still putting time
to death, brief as dragonflies.

Their echo beats loud. In woodlands
at March I search for a heartbeat, whilst
mad winds whirl the winter skies overhead.

Roads steal sound. Pylons warp every sense.
Yet when I look the past in the eye it looks back.
They need us now as much as we need them
and the people of the future need us again.

For live or dead there is no rest, no place
to hide nor coffins left, only time processing
through both worlds to a fathomless end.

Mist on the Holme

March 6, 2013May 23, 2014Leave a comment

Mist on the Holme-
the perfect phantom of a morning.
Bridges fade. The river finds her old routes.
Allotments and playing fields resume their archipelago.
Over thickening silt rough currents rush.
I am knee deep in mud, stumbling through rushes.
Gulls flit like ghouls with beaks of fog.
I hear the oar of a ferryman break the churning water
to claim my coin and take me home beyond the distant shore.

The Other Side

March 2, 2013May 7, 20141 Comment

‘Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide’
– Pink Floyd High Hopes

The world was ours, the moment all that mattered.
Our hopes were high in the mist of dawn.
We flung our friendship over the wildest horizons
riding rainbow lights and drums to distant haunts
that never satisfied the fire in our souls
nor the loneliness that lay its pall between us.
Strung out on stars, burning everything of value
we reached the ravaged borderlands and paused
so far gone even astronomers couldn’t find us.
Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us

they saw the stone circle and distant Tor,
the penumbra of a festival vanished to the night.
At last we staggered home lost and nearly blind,
dazzled by the sun we couldn’t find to tiny houses
with stiff front doors surrendering hope for certainty.
The return was hard, obeying the constant grind
of re-learning how to put one foot in front
of the other one. Re-mastering the system, unseeing
starry skies. Yet on the odd occasion reality elides
to a glimpse of how green it was on the other side.

I fought onward, eventually alone
as the division bell began to toll, making happy
families with freshly ironed clothes, polished homes
and forced smiles. From a dusty library I looked out
across the hills- a glimpse of green and beacon fire.
My feet trod through cotton grass to broken remains
of tribal ruins drawn by chants on the west wind.
The other side returned to life in the vestibules of trees.
I saw a river goddess wash her hair in the rain.
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again

the fragments stayed broken, my vision incomplete.
Stunned by the Tor redrawing itself on the backdrop
of my mind I relit the embers on the Ribble’s bank
and recalled the last hint of paradise before everything
went black and time took our dreams away. Guided
by the voice of an otherworldy king I reclaimed my pride
at the Tor’s white spring. Time performed its circle,
gave back my starlit dream. The world is mine again.
To the other side and spiralling back I ride
dragged by the force of some inner tide.

Porth Annwn

February 28, 2013December 25, 20136 Comments

‘Porth-Annwfyn. Some numinous, arcane agnomen, but which to my dream cognition was livid as moonshine and did plainly signify: Gate of Elysium.’
– David Jones The Dream of Private Clitus

I.
Where is the door?
The shadowy portal exists
In the thickness of the veil
In the heart of mist
Where life divides
And fateful cataracts meet.
There are as many doors
As you have eyes that open.

II.
And who is the porter?
It is never who you thought it would be.
It is always who secretly you knew
From the world’s beginning.

III.
There are many doors
And I can speak of but a few.

Trees keep doors.
They are not in the front or back
But in the spiralling melt
Into arboreal existence.
This is the forest path.

Look into a river
To find yourself on the mirror side.
Remember to be returned
With the turning of the tide.

To reach the summer stars
Seek out a silver space ship.
Beware for Elysium’s bliss
Is more deadly than Annwn’s darkness.

Beside the door of death
A spectral hound sits.
He’s black or white-
Depends on the way
You’re looking.
He swallows whole souls.
The lucky ones hit the ground running.

The Black One of the Seas

January 10, 2013February 23, 20141 Comment

The green hill on the water drifts
Anchorless on high tide.
Wraiths of fog fight the primal mist.
Hoof beats fall from behind.

The splash of marsh brings rounded feet;
Miracle he doesn’t sink,
Approaches like an isle-bound fleet,
The Black One of the Seas.

His mane is waves, his arching crest
Vaunts higher than a mountain.
His tail, a tiller switches, twists,
His nostrils foam black fountains.

His heaving chest rumbles and roars,
Rolls like the tides of the seas.
His long legs, a volley of oars
Beat like a heart possessed.

A troupe of seven rides his back,
The Northern King Elidyr,
Advisors, servants, child behind,
A cook upon his crupper.

Weary party, a doomed portent,
Endlessly blown ferry
Voyages black and breaking straits
From Clyde to Anglesey.

Rhythms of life they drive and smash
Like waves wrecking a jetty.
Then sink back to the ocean’s death
With the Black One of the Seas.

* This poem is based on ‘The Three Horse Burdens’ from The Triads of the Island of Britain, which can be found here: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/texts/llyfr_coch/typ_eng.html

Maponus Chant

December 21, 2012November 15, 20146 Comments

From a night of long sleep
In the dark of the womb
Maponus Maponus
Awaken the dawn

With a beam of bright youth
From a wild shy horse
Maponus Maponus
Illumine the morn

In a smiling ascent
To a shining throne
Maponus Maponus
Rise high at noon

Emblazoning clouds
And falling through leaves
Maponus Maponus
Colour the eve

With a sinking yawn
To the arms of trust
Maponus Maponus
Descend at dusk

Winter Ride

December 19, 2012May 23, 20142 Comments

Fay bells chime. You ride a pale horse tonight.
My white mare pines for infinite horizons.

From this false security’s plastic peace
I breathe a prayer for ecstatic release.

Wrenched like tendons, reality is severed.
You open a snow storm, marvel and terror,

suburb stripped bare, hung trees and glittering ice,
a spectral host bathed in sweeping starlight.

Some people don’t see them. The rest run scared.
With my reckless steed I join the nightmare.

Our heart beats quicken to Annwn’s dread trance.
Street lamps flicker. Roofs slip into the distance.

Fairy lights and festive chants spread the county
from Blackpool Tower to Winter Hill, bright fountains

dissolve to torch parades. The present falters
revealing a past of village and bonfire,

chill chapped hands, hungry gatherings at cauldrons,
a labyrinth of padways mazed across Pilling

buried by snow fall, entombed beneath glaciers.
A cold unbearable sets in to kill.

And I fear I’m trapped in the Age of Ice
on the day of doom at the end of time

I cannot move my frozen mind. I scream
“Why? Winter King, bear me to these extremes?”

Your look commands; survey this fragile land,
ice crafting the mythos you toil to grasp,

reshaping the hills, renaming the towns,
creating the isle you know as Britain.

Wild laughter rings from the hollow landscape.
The fate of worlds tilts on a teetering brink.

I see your task, unruly guardian
of streaming vast ancestral tradition.

History rushes back and my course is clear,
My return to Penwortham swiftly steered,

shaking off snow, flexing my cold fingers,
I whisper thanks for your winter visions.

Much Hoole Moss

December 11, 2012May 11, 20141 Comment

Glacial retreat leaves a wet land weeping
Life breeds teeming in reeds in hollow pools.
Fallen rushes in the deep rot to peat
Sphagnum, master of decay rules all.

Rosemary curves pink, explosive sun dew winks,
Cranberry thrives on hidden stalks, delish gleam.
Cotton grass streaks, eye spotted large heath fleets
Over multi-coloured moss the curlew soars.

Anoxic, unbreathing, hold all beneath;
Primeval plant, box of oak, bone and spear.
Living museum of ten thousand years
Stores the past of the people of Much Hoole.

Dug for peat, drained and fertilised for wheat,
Dropping, drying, sinking precariously.
Much Hoole Moss sole preclusion of mercy
Sways tentative twixt field and fern and man.

If the drainage was stayed, water retained,
Sphagnum regained, the moss could be redeemed.
Natural history, just outside our doors,
An ancient site of wonderment and awe.

Surrendering the land for fun and games;
Thunder of guns and thud of running feet
With erosive shudders the moss land sinks
Lost are its mysteries and future dreams.