Exploration :: Simple Form

I can hear the birdsong

This very morning I heard the dawn chorus

I do not know the names of many birds

Yesterday in the park, by the lake

Was it a Kingfisher?

Half hidden, chirping on the branch

Was it a Budgerigar in Richmond Park

I walk happily beside the trees

Talk of them being in and out of leaf

Although to tell the Silver Birch

From the Aspen don’t ask me

Nor to name all the species in the hedgerow

In the shoe shop; leather, bonded to the

diamond effect skin of a stingray

In the chemist's museum, a remnant from the

Great Barrier Reef, both explained after we

asked the simple question; what is it

We had a choice of twenty-seven beers

After no more than a few samples

We found one to our liking

Then passed on its name, to those friendly folk

From Ireland and Australia

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In Search of Depth :: Abstract Form

Found, yet lost

Doing what has to be done

All the while

Contemplating the escape

Borrowed spaces

Transitory objects for ritual

Some touch

Of someone to hold on to

Listen

The deeper waves call

Open up

The routes for change

Walk Jon’s walk

Step

By indeterminate steps

Being also, unassuming

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In Search of Depth :: Simple Form

I have tried meditation, although I would not claim to be proficient. I started in a small space, upstairs in a one bedroom, rented cottage, early in the morning, before work.

Do you know that’s not quite true

I now remember something about The Natural Law Party, and the benefits of Transcendental Meditation. I do believe I signed up.

I certainly bought Holosync CD’s from Centrepointe Research USA, and joined evenings led by Buddhists.

Since that time I have bought many books about Mindfulness; or the Zen of quiet journeys.

My favourite teacher presently is Jon Kabat-Zinn; I have found his approach to be both elegant and straight forwards, he is welcome and inspiring; yet I continue to relapse, same as it ever was.

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Water, Stone, Grass And Sky :: Abstract Form

Being there, looking even

Although mostly, not paying attention

Yet wanting to be immersed

As if one could be, of something

Half within, the rest without

A group of moments

Carriages on the railway

As if one could be, entirely

Never then the objection

In seeking universal acceptance

In this, so approachable, likeable

As if one could be, found by

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Water, Stone, Grass And Sky :: Simple Form

As a younger man I did not go to Oxford, or Cambridge; perhaps someone expected that I would have, or could have, but it was not me; also I think. Most unlikely was it my parents either.

For I was innocently and overwhelmingly happy at Birdsedge County Primary School yet I was incredibly sad, disturbed even, or worse still perhaps at Penistone Grammar School.

Why do I mention Oxford? Well you see I am reading a book Sea Room - An Island Life

I am impressed by the writing; it is of the sort I think I might have learnt, had I gone to Oxford.

I did though go, with my last lover, to the Outer Hebrides, in September 2011. I felt great empathy with the writer Adam Nicholson who was given the Shiant Islands.

Although he was gifted them by his father - an Oxford Man.

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