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Friday, 14 February 2020

I want to try and find a shelter

I want to try and find a shelter
In the ways of letting go
For I have been hanging on for way too long
Now to explore the minds and hearts to let go

It began with banging my fists on the floor
Alone in my office I cried out to ask why
In need of a shaman I found a guitarist
Who introduced me

To the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan
Then took me
From his mansion like living quarters
To a bar beside Newquay’s Fistral Beach

I was pulled back from that particular precipice
Though I could not prevent a reoccurrence
Following some esoteric guidance on closure
I tore up and burnt letters one by one

Taking the embers, and the ashes outside
To be blown carefree on the wind
Today I want to decorate my shelter
As a place for endlessly letting go

I have, it is true, hung about way too long
Now I wish to settle on the ambience
To create a mood
For the pleasures of letting go

I chanced upon Poetry Otherwise course
At Emerson College in  Forest Row, Sussex
Where a young woman
Who was about to join a closed order

She told me that I must be creative
And so I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote
And I cried
Then my one door room was my shelter

To be alone and lonely, lonely and alone
Yet daybreak brought the classes
Which created the need for further classes
Classes for shelter, closure for shelter



Thursday, 13 February 2020

Today my shelter will be of the past

Today my shelter will be of the past
That one euphoric period of my being
Which today’s memoir tells me
Did not go on forever

It was a time with an inauspicious beginning
Or at least a past emerging from a darker past
To kick things, at least so I was thinking
As I struggled to find my way in

Instead I break off, go outside
To tear myself away from despondency
With no expectations, or baggage
And there I see a fresh morning in its glory

After what seems like weeks of rain
There is an absolute brightness
To the day, to the outlook
Such that my spirits are all immediately lifted

My belief in myself that I can survive
Indeed prosper in this thing we call life
Yet it is a view which I see almost every day
Yes so so very often I open that particular door

To step outside into our own little world
An old refurbished structure, once a stables
Now a sort of adults playroom
For writers, meditators, painters and musicians

A place where in a couple of hours
There will be bacon sandwiches and coffee
A time for writers to chat, to write, to chat
As if the world needs someone to sort it out

But, leading up to all of that cacophony
Which to some may be a symphony
I have the cool air to breathe
I have the new day to see in




Wednesday, 12 February 2020

Today my shelter is the future

Today my shelter is the future
For tomorrow I go to Buckfast Abbey
To sleep monastic side
In the monk’s guest-bedrooms

All there will be silence
Silence as a shelter
Silence as a virtue
Silence as a way of carrying on

Yet nature will not gift me silence
Indeed quite the opposite
As I walk beside the gushing river
Listening to the undoubted mass of birdsong

My shelter will also be in the routine
The daily prescriptions of
Matins, Lauds, Conventual Mass
Before evenings of Vespers and Compline

For certain I will have the shelter of books
Books for reading, books for writing
I will often find my own word shelter
In the stained-glass Chapel also in the Abbey

And, because this is a trip to Devon
I will see my youngest son
There will be a smile
Along with amusing conversation

So not all of this shelter will be silence
Although in Dartington’s meditation garden
I hope to find peace, I hope to find calm
I hope to enjoy my own contemplations

My future shelter is also in my automobile
Six hours driving, in each direction
With lots of good music on the stereo
And maybe a shopping retreat along the way


Tuesday, 11 February 2020

The shelter is in the doing

The shelter is in the doing
Yesterday the shelter
Was to be found in the being
In the being which precedes the doing

The being who reblogged photographs
Who posted poetry with pictures
Towards all four corners of the world

The shelter is in the adsorption
Yes, this shelter is found by being absorbed
Fully absorbed in the doing

The doing which also includes meditation
After writing at the standing desk
Writing words for no one else’s consumption

The shelter is in taking the photograph
Of turning the photographs into a book
Or at least into a book cover

Achieved by rotating and cropping
By being in there with the decision making
This way or that, that way or this

The shelter is in the deep listening
Listening to the Drawn in Pale Light playlist
Music then

Along with the leaves and branches
Providing a canopy for the settled soul
Before bumping into something more esoteric

Which takes one to the jazz night
That night when the shelter was the jazz night
Jazz on a boat, on a boat on the river

Yet with a group of individuals
Who right now
I can hardly remember any of

So better perhaps to return
To return, return to the being
And the doing of that shelter



Monday, 10 February 2020

In this morning’s Meditation

In this morning’s Meditation
I thought of the waiter
In the outdoor bar in Florence

How did he get to that place
Why did he leave his home
Where did he live in Croatia

Whose national football team he loved
Whose people he was so proud of
Whose needs he could not yet satisfy

Where does he go to in Firenze
When his day shift is completed
Or does he work late into the night

Surely his shelter
Is not in a Medici palace
Or even a four-star five-star hotel

His spirit comes alive with conversation
He is sharp with a swift humorous retort
Which makes the four of us smile

Yet he doesn’t quite share
In the shelter of our covered table
From which soon we will get up and leave

Is this his vacation workplace
Does he have family, children perhaps
I hope he finds a shelter which suits him