Sunday 7 November 2010

6. Al-Mu’min - Support

Suggest faithful, earth, growth, embodied action -- "Great things are done when men and mountains meet" William Blake


City and mountain

It's cold as moss
when I exit the station
- graffiti hits on every wall
(graffiti reaching carriage windows)
and desolate, slate-grey, the journey
out from the city, smoke hard as nails
until the ground rises and fields

heave in view and the river we follow
twinkles and sparkles, turns with our train,
and the mist in the valley
climbs to the hills with a first glimpse of snow
and the far distant mountains flume out a welcome,
tinkle my heartstrings in hopefulness,
amber and russet and black and then go.

Ebb
When I cross the Firth,
sometimes, a tide has come in;
sometimes it has not.

Howgill
If you came this way along
a climbing path you might sit
a while 
with all kinds of human notions until your mind eventually
slowed, senses awoke,
and you took in that mammoth mountain
in front – bathed into sunlight 

and darting with swifts. 

The wonder of it all
could make you kneel and pray,
overwhelmed and tearful,
until nothing arises
and fear itself flies
with a tremulous influx
of Love.

2 comments:

  1. Very good little poem. Like it.

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  2. I love traveling by train, going through sights of different landscapes, from gloomy to awesome ones.

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