Leaving Home

Wearing tawny colours
shining gold
Walking into the sun

Sharply turn
eye to eye with a sparrow
Deep in conversation with me

{Must brush up on my sparrow speak}

Coming home

Bleeding belly pulling me
down to earth

I troll up hill
bags of shopping
elongating my swaying arms

Growling into the golden sun setting
Dreaming of steaming sweetcorn and green avoocado

{Today is not such a bad day after all for this sometimes vegetarian troll}

silver fox

Song of the Watcher & The Star

Song of the Watcher

On a hilltop against the star
Are columns of granite, rudely hewn;
Set in a lofty ring,
Upholding architraves:
Stones of unequal size
Between which blaze the stars;
Orange, steel blue, and vivid green,
As beads of dew on sunlit grass.

On a hilltop against the stars
Alone on the altar stone,
I shake out my nets of song
To catch the stars therein.
The stars of midnight joyously
Blaze like the flame of midday
That kindled in my heart;
They leap and trail out wide arcs down the sky.

On a hilltop against the stars,
In the roofless sanctuary,
Wakens the sacrificial fire
From the blazing stars drawn down.
The stars that were caught and fallen
In my flung net of song,
Kindle upon the altar-stone
The sacred blaze, apart.

On a hilltop against the stars
I dreamless sleep on the smooth grey altar-stone;
And the songs in my heart are as winds that go through the world,
The fires of my life are as stars that sing round the walls;
Bright centuries keeping watch, they grow
drowsy, the stones of the temple look dim,
And the world will soon foret the song of the
watcher of the stars.
But I shall sleep, still shrouded, on the broad
grey altar-stone.
Till tow eternities meet together, the shadows
of life and of death.

***

The Star

There was a star which watched upon my
birth.
The great blue peaks were shrouded,
The sea was merged in haze, but, far apart,
There shone a single star.
And it burned steadily,
Watching through the night in silence;
It hung above the dusk
Whence I secretly came forth.

The peaks in the morning
Had thundered for creation;
The green sea had risen,
And swept clean the strand.
Now the wide earth was silent,
And silent the horizen;
When, between the ninth wave and the land,
I was brought forth.

There was a star which watched upon my coming,
I put forth my hand to seize it;
And, instantly the sky
Broke, and was ribbed with light;
Lightening ran down the peaks and smote the narrow valleys,
Wandering blue flames flickered about the
coastline,
The mountains danced in scarlet,
The earth roared with deep joy.

There is single star that burns to-night far in
the longely heavens;
The sea is hidden beneath it;
The mountains draw their capes of grey wool
closely about their shoulders;
There is no breath of wind.
Only the thought of one coming
Over the oceans in silence,
Wandering under a darker star
Than that which saw my birth.

***

John Gould Fletcher ~ The Black Rock ~ 1928

Lady into Fox

"Wonderful or supernatural events are not so uncommon, rather they are irregular in their incidence. Thus there may be not one marvel to speak of in a century, and then often enough comes a plentiful crop of them; monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets blaze in the sky, eclipses frighten nature, meteors fall in rain, while mermaids and sirens beguile, and sea-serpents engulf every passing ship, and terrible cataclysms beset humanity.

But the strange event which I shall here relate came alone, unsupported, without companions into a hostile world, and for that reason claimed little of the general attention of mankind. For the sudden changing of Mrs. Tebrick into a vixen is an established fact which we may attempt to account for as we will. Certainly it is in the explanation of the fact, and the reconciling of it with our general notions that we shall find most difficulty, and not in accepting for true a story which is so fully proved, and that not by one witness by a dozen, all respectable, and with no possibility of collusion between them.

But here I will confine myself to an exact narrative of the event and all that followed it. Yet I would not dissuade any of my readers from attempting an explanation of this seeming miracle because up till now none has been found which is entirely satisfactory. What adds to the difficulty to my mind is that the metamorphosis occurred when Mrs. Tebrick was a full-grown woman, and that it happended suddenly in so short space of time. The sprouting of a tail, the gradual extension of hear all over the body, the slow change of the whole anatomy by a process of growth...." Pages 1 ~ 2. First published 1922.

Unfortunately this book is out of print ~ shows how gems like these can be lost. I did find it on

http://antiqbook.com/books/asearch.phtml?author=Garnett,%20David

It was awarded prizes and much praise. I rediscovered it after doing a late summer clean of my books. The etchings are delightful.

Big Green Gathering Cancelled

The Big Green Gathering has been going for 15 years. A Peacefully held and sustainable run event accessable to all including those on low income and families. However this year under the so called threat of Public Safety and Crime + Disorder ~ the event was forced into being cancelled. Why after 15 years is there this now apparent threat? Threat of what to what?
I fear that this will set a precedent. This is a drip drip drip of an extremist fear ridden run state. I have to include myself in tuning out the sound and sensation of this slow rising alarm. It is an ocean that would cry and rage. It can also be an ocean of joy and song.
I think how timely is Jez Butterworth's Jersusalem ~ at the end Jonny pounded on the drum ~ calling on the heart ~ calling on the ancestors who hold memory in the blood and earth. We are left with this sound growing louder and louder until darkness falls.

I wish for courage and creative solutions. To drink in this ocean. Be carried by it's depths.
I am drawn to quote from Shambhala - The Sacred Path of the Warrior ~ by Chogyam Trungpa ~

"The ideal of warriorship is that the warrior should be sad and tender, and because of that, the warrior can be very brave as well. Without heartfelt sadness, bravery is brittle like a china cup. If you drop it, it will break or chip. But the bravery of the warrior is like a lacquer cup, which has a wooden base covered with layers of lacquer. If the cup drops, it will bounce rather than break. It is soft and hard at the same time" P50.

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Here is an article from http://thegreenvillage.co.uk/

"The Big Green Gathering 2009 Cancelled after Council Injuction Threat Flagship green event, The Big Green Gathering was threatened with High Court injunction proceedings if they were unable to satisfy a number of concerns that Mendip District Council had. In a statement released today, Directors of The Big Green Gathering have been forced to cancel the 2009 festival, surrendering their license for the event.
The much loved and well attended family friendly green festival, which attracts around 20,000 visitors, caters for most tastes and covers many aspects of sustainability and environmental concerns. Activities on site would have included arts and crafts fields, a healing area where people can try alternative therapies and treatments, a children’s area and campaigns fields, as well as providing a range of eating and entertainment experiences for those attending, including music presented in tents powered by renewable energy.
Mendip District Council threatened the injunction, supported by the police, on grounds of concerns about security, requesting that The Big Green Gathering employed a security firm to satisfy their concern. Further concerns such as dissatisfaction that adequate signage directing visitors to the location of the festival and sufficient risk assessments, fire, policing and ambulance services were in place or could be put in place by the start of the festival on Wednesday added fuel to the council’s argument and left the directors of The Big Green Gathering with no alternative than to cancel the event.
Councillor Tom Killon said the council had tried to work closely with the organisers of the green festival to ensure smooth running of the event, and although the license for the event was granted on 30th June with the organisers being under the impression that any problems had been resolved, Killon said that the emergency services and council had remaining unconvinced that enough had been done to enable safe running of the event. He said,
“When there is a risk to public safety and the potential for crime and disorder then we have no other option but to ensure that the event does not take place.
“Although I accept that this will come as a disappointment to some, we have a duty to protect the public.”
The director’s statement echoes communications from Avon and Somerset Police, and urges people who were planning to attend the event not to make the journey as police would likely turn them away. They are keen to discourage confrontation and public disorder despite being fully aware of the unhappiness the decision to cancel the event will cause."

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"The Darker the Jewel the Brighter the Light" Victor Anderson

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Tree of Life

"The man has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" {Genesis, 3:22-24}

"Man loses no worthiness for possessing a mortal part, but very much on the contrary, mortality augments his possibility and his power. His double functions are possible for him precisely because of his double nature: because he is constituted that it is possible for him to embrace both the divine and the terrestial at the same time" Corpus Hermeticum, 9, 4.