SPRING STARS

SPRING STARS

September, 2010 Georgica NSW

September dusk drifts over fields,

green valleys, forests and long hills

and lays, like mist, upon the scene

a dreaming tenebrosity.

The sheen that was slips back to last

west-fading blue of skyward sight

and coolness and the call of dark

speak with the syllables of night.

Though land is losing all of light,

upon the southwest, paling sky

new crescent rides as lunar smile

with Venus high: white-gleaming eye.

While from fast darkening, near this,

as stars both Mars and Saturn shine-

all jewels lit with radiance

reflected from a vanished sun.

From world beneath, still shadowing,

wild drumming of cicadas crowds

the air to drown my ears with sound-

last chorus veiled from hunting wings.

In vagueness, from my seeing’s verge,

a sudden flash sparks, low then high,

around dark trees and weeds and bushes,

long grass and dim-white crofton flowers…

and there another, and there- and there-

all through the gloom of cooling air,

I see the drifting stars go by-

the green-gold gleam of fireflies.

Like shifting constellations through

the ever-growing dark they pass-

light signs to breed in spring’s increase

that rising life may never cease.

So weary from my winter time

I view enchanting shimmering

and feel again this magic rhyme

that sings to me from stars of spring.

AS LIFE AWAKENS

AS LIFE AWAKENS

As life awakens,

With opening of its many-beinged eyes,

From glowing edges of thousands of skies

Many million-seen suns arise

And, through the dawning visions of the earth,

One light

Flames forth day's birth.

SEEING

SEEING

Seeing is a touching.

To look towards blue, to glance

with eyes' intelligence

along a sun-etched cloud

is to fly

where light birds wander,

freed upon unbounded sky.

Vision is a travelling. To gaze

towards growing dusk, roving

to the rim of sight,

where earth shape meets sky space,

is to glide

across the curved earthface,

journeying with the fall of darkness.

Perception is connection. To see our star,

reddened and descending

behind the silhouettes of trees

that shiver with the day's last breeze,

is to ride

a fragment of the spiral of all time,

companioned by this wandering world;

is to see

Earth following its sun

through illimitable

regions of reality.

WANG WEI IN WINTERSCAPE

WANG WEI IN WINTERSCAPE

Drizzle from this winter sky

Mutes the greens and browns of pastures.

Clouds conceal far mountain tops.

Mist slides down the sides of hills.

Far the filtered light of day

Brushes sight with textures like

Scrolls of ancient, ink-washed silk.

I'm reminded of Wang Wei

Longing for some further, finer

Life and living, seeing some

Image of its image in

Distant kingdoms of white cloud-

Writing poems like painting silk,

Brushing silk like poetry.

OCTOBER NIGHT

OCTOBER NIGHT

Now Scorpio is slowly slithering down

the western vastness.

And Alpha Centauri sparkles, winking through

the skyline leaves.

Above my head

the moon is one half bright.

Fields and hills

seem to shimmer, insubstantial,

pale in its pale light.

The eucalypts are dark against

the lunar sky.

There are no streetlights here

and now no sounds of man,

but crickets and small frogs

hold concert round the dam.

There is no distant drone of cars.

And suddenly I hear

a wood duck's wings.

Feet first it breaks the water

and sends out rings.

And ripples stars.  

SIRIUS

               SIRIUS

I turn the white tube of the telescope

upon that brightest, white, white star 

and see far in the far

a blaze of light, its brilliance finer

than any jewel or precious stone

that shines by stolen glow alone.

Bright Sothis, Sirius, you are

all the sky’s most splendid star.

The old sky-lining of

Hellenic legend drew you as

the dog star, the hound’s eye of

the greater, faithful creature following

Orion, the hunter through

 the turning of the night.

And in ancient Egypt's lore

you were seen as sacred star,

one whose rising in the palest wash

of the hushed, dawn-hinting sky

beckoned coming flooding of the Nile.

You are still to sight

greatest star in all the night,

brightest far sun in the darkness.

Our cultures, civilisations, go and come,

yet you shine on, oh, distant sun,

across the paths of harbouring vastness,

across time's endless transformations.

I gaze in awe and dimly feel

affinity to being, boundless and

beyond these thoughts.

Yellow Moon

YELLOW MOON

 Half-lidded eye of slumber,
Far-spying on the dream,
Late, silence-rising world,
The yellow-rising moon
Now silhouettes a single,
Broad, distant skyline tree.

 From misty, midnight east,
It ventures on the vastness,
Where stars in hazy number
Are summer-patterned on the sky.

 What beauty's stolen by the eye:
What artistry of wide creation
Our casual vision takes for free.

 What brush could brave
This scene's perfection?
This subtle luminosity?

 Mysterious and deep is sleep...
But ah! What miracle it is

To see.