Every first Friday of March, as told by the tide, we gather, united by bond and fire, and we celebrate the return of the sun.
#smuha 2017, from Cunningsburgh, with burning at Mail Beach.
Monthly Archives: March 2017
world tales
On Top of the World
After the rain,
three herring gulls on
chimney pots;
now
sun’s blazing
Anderson’s slates.
In
between
two rounds of
showers,
blackbird voices,
raw
arc-en-ciel.
—
young maa
out of wharf, ripples & ruffle,
it comes to dip among
brown kelp;
bobs
up
&
down
water surface
and finds solace amid
islands,
where clouds
harness silver edge
tides… Where wings wrangle
herring gull pride.
Where they
come to
feed
at
present.
—
The Edge
Look at the edge of your own world.
Free your heart & feet from tarmac,
where gutters offer
no relief.
Untie your boat, grab your
own oars.
Hear the call of the
waterline,
everlasting song of rollers
melts in white
sand –
some call it a desert
island,
but to my heart,
it is music.
Either side of the shining
edge,
we find our prints tied around kelp:
on the dry side of the mirror,
men have wandered among knives and
white broken
shells spewed offerings;
so few can listen to the wind,
the song of seasons inside wings
of a kingdom made of
lush Land,
where the sun rests
after crimson.
I hear you
say,
“you’re a dreamer” –
“time is money to all of us.”
I say “throw your coins to a sea, paper to oblivious
limpets..
The world you live feeds from
despair, liars and lice;
they gave you dreams as
tasty bait.
Tied to a tree inside concrete,
sea rockets smell so alien…
We imagine resolutions
and yet
shackles
locked around feet,
with their keys kept inside
boardrooms, between
the
hands of
their makers –
make no mistake,
they will not give them easily;
magpies like anything
shiny.
This world I love has its
pure gems.
© Nat Hall 2017
belle (#wearewoman #1)
We are woman, we are beautiful.
How I love the way she paints those flowers, poppies, coquelicots, as she knows them in Provence.
In first #wearewoman post, I am celebrating lifelong friend I met in 1990, in transit between two life chapters, en route north, beyond the horizon…
Her name is Isabelle Garnier Foriat.
Isabelle Foriat
Every visit weighs all its gold. We reconvene at spring by the shores of River Durance. Our friendship flows by Les Moulins.
I recall a poem I dedicated to the artist. Initially written in French back in 2003 and available online at Poésie Française.
Pour toi, Isa la Belle, en attendant de te rerouver dans ta constellation.
Regards de peintre
A Isa, avec tendresse.
Cézanne, écoute :
Le Lubéron s’est éveillé –
Maître Foriat,
Isa la belle
A fait jaillir
De ses palettes
Un pic épeiche,
Un âne bleu –
Dans la chaleur du vent,
Ses pinceaux sont encrés ;
Dans un panier de pêches
Tout son génie est né.
Coquelicots,
Cyclamen,
Iris ou fleurs d’amandiers,
Entre Haute-Loire
Et Durance,
Mont Mezenc
Et Sainte Victoire
Se sont comptés fleurette…
Pommes d’amour
Ou coloquintes,
Ses mains de peintre
Ont enfanté
La magie des couleur,
Tout un plaisir
Des yeux,
Bleutés par l’huile,
Ou l’aquarelle –
Dans ses regards
De peintre,
Crue luminosité.
© Nat Hall 2003
silence
In a world full of noise,
Time out.
Silence
Rotation, collision.
Sample the joy of
outer
space.
Not
a trickle,
breath from the breeze,
hanging raindrop off
growing leaves;
not
a
single
roar after dawn;
not
a
single
cry from
wild dogs, hyena, cheetah,
hunter’s own –
not
a
morning
sound from the land,
high pitch crossing legs from
hoppers clung to
the meaning of
grassland…
Now
try harder.
Not
a
sound wave, echo from your
device to
mine;
golden
smiley gone
after nine,
as am explained the rule of
Pi in
a
lesson doused by
north sun;
where
gas & dust glide and
gather,
give
birth to new stars in
cradles, in the
most
natural motion,
cosmic and bright in a
circle.
© Nat Hall 2017
nordicblackbird 