This is what the river knows and that we keep forgetting: it does not choose which stones to touch. It simply moves with an open hand and evermore is changed. #vss365

an act of defiance

Oak and ivy grow so intertwined That storm nor frost can cleave their union part, So nature’s roots bind fast your soul to mine, and love blooms wild and green evermore, one heart. #vss365

1 I have left myself in thin places, in the blue between dark and dawn, where the earth holds her dead like a mother holds a secret; evermore. 2 The salmon carries the river inside its silver body, above, the hazel drops wisdom into dark water and something ancient opens its eye beneath. #vss365

Let the trauma that floods the body leave forever, like rivers, falling through the oldest stone, carrying their sorrow to the sea to open into something wide and salt and finally home. #vss365

melancholy of distance

I have been seeing since before I was born, through muddy stones and root-dreams, and the eyes of the animals and plants. Ravens speak in the oak’s dark tongue, the mist whispers its memory of falling water, and I hear it all. Because I am a green thing too, living gently in sacred soil. #vss365

After Some Very Hard Days 1 The raven doesn’t ask the storm for mercy, it folds its dark wings and becomes the wind, riding what would ruin it, finding in fury the thermal that lifts the things storm has thinned. #vss365

My Brain Hurts ~~~~~~~~~~~ So, I have made a covenant with peace, Have whispered to the hour not yet come, When life will finally hush and cease And grant this burning heart-mind some Soft mercy, when this transparent world has gone, And I sleep into the primitive dawn. #vss365

The Sea takes back what is hers ~~~~~~~~~~ What rift of wave laid gold upon my feet Was but a loan, secured by love and light. She spreads her gift to make the taking sweet, Then draws the tide to steal my gift from sight. #vss365

No man shall judge, the sea alone shall weigh his soul, where rift divides his depth from sky; At the last day, the sea shall have its say, and he, its debtor, will know how to die. #vss365

If love could throw a silver thread across this deep crevasse, I’d speak my presence into thee as tides through moonlight pass. #vss365

O let my soul, tide-loosed, cross that grey, unspeaking foam, where sea and sky are one dim glass, and find that island home.

the river knows it is the sea this whole time

and what i need lingers out of reach the butterfly leaves into the thinning veil the hazel drops its wisdom to the stream and beauty is the wound that will not heal the eyes behind the smile behind the dream and what i need lingers out of reach

~~~~~~~~~ Come to me ~~~~~~~~~ #vss365

I have written a metaphysical meditation about Ireland using today's #vss365. … 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘢 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘨𝘰𝘭𝘥 … I hope you enjoy it, and maybe you'll be persuaded to come and visit sometime.

Buffeted by grief, do not break, but bend, lashed by rejection, sorrow, thorn and rain; for you are tethered where all endings end, the Artist’s thread drawn through your ache and pain. You are not lost, though night has crossed your face; His brush still paints you into light and grace. #vss365

A silken tether loops through amber dusk, through fields of lavender bowed heavy with rain, through the young calf’s slow crossing, through the cedar musk, threading your breath back into my lungs again, a ribbon that we both know, we are the same, luminous, unbroken, burning as a flame. #vss365

The valleys darkened softly, And swallows stitched the evening into blue.

Intent as starlight crossing wave and tree, My soul keeps travelling, softly, unto thee. #vss365

1 You, when I was a wreck of rain and ember, you came like moonlight kneeling on the sea; you cupped the storm-bird trembling in my ribcage and taught its broken wing again to be.

Some wounds linger the way salt lingers in driftwood long ashore; the sea already gone, its memory still white on the grain. #vss365

The moon lays down her intent each night upon the frost-bleached meadow, pressing white into the soil as memory presses thee, thy porcelain skin, soft eyes, illumining me. #vss365

﹡ the universe said nothing   > but kept gathering you slowly <   > ash, breath, starlight, love < intent on becoming conscious   through you ﹡ #vss365

Feral Boy ~~~~~~~ How long have I stood under this enclosure? This ploughed and planted and correcting ground, This place of such well-ordered, sweet composure, Where little feral, little fierce is found? #vss365 Read the whole poem here:

They said, “Be still. Be useful. Do not roam”. They said the wilderness was not my home.

For what is heaven, if not the open plain Where the first wilderness comes back again?

The pain is not that they did wrong in loving; The pain is that they loved me into less, That every act of shaping and improving Was a surgery upon my wilderness.

Perhaps closure is not a door but a forest floor, leaves falling without farewell, becoming the soil of something else.

The thrush does not know sorrow the way I know it, interior and slow, yet she sings from the bone of the branch as if the whole cold morning asks a question and she, only, knows the answer.

So let my aimless wandering be the moss that finds a crevice. Let me be the small persistent light that bends traveling the long way down until it reaches earth, until it warms one small stone, and rests there.

What is the heart, if not this, this reaching, this fern-unfurling, this green and inexplicable breath that rises through the ruin of the frost?

I have gone feral in the forest of my mind, run low to the ground through the wet bracken, tasted rain on the underside of leaves, pressed my ear to the dark pulse of the root and heard the beat of the earth. #vss365

My feral heart is proof of you as shadows prove the sun. #vss365

Lord, was it you who lit this restless burning? This heart that leaps before the mind can speak? ... Then let my wildness be a form of praising, my ruins be the ground where something grows; for you do work most in the fields past saving, and loveliest of all ... the feral know. #vss365

The world grows coarse without you, your luminous hands. #vss365

Every luminous thing points past itself like a generous stranger who says “here, take this”, and hands you the whole inexhaustible world. #vss365

the life i thought barren was holding its breath #vss365

There is a water moving under stone. I do not hear it, yet my hands are wet. The barren season is a gift alone, to empty me of what I would forget; the noise I wore as clothing, and the pride that kept me loud, and kept me cold outside. #vss365

The wind unroots old griefs, yet still they cling to me, Like ivy gripping hard to fading memory. > But time, won’t dissolve what’s relevant, while the rest drifts off. < Thus pain becomes the seed of what I must become, And I am carried on, as rivers are, by storms.

God’s Masterpiece ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You are the orchard’s white ascent, the bee’s gold pilgrimage, the dew that makes a blade of grass a bright, unwritten page, the river’s silver vow, the salmon’s leaping prayer, the stream that turns a common stone to something very rare,

The dandelion, undone by light, Lets go its little crown; No pain can keep its silver flight, No hand can hold it down. So forgiveness lifts from hurt’s dark root, And takes the wind for wings; The heart, unburdened, follows suit … And God receives both things. #vss365

Astral you breathe through all things

LOVE ~~~~ Love is not a grand arrival, it is diligence, the slow turning of the self towards everything, the rotting leaf, the undertow, the stranger’s face half lit by winter, the word that lands to leave a bruise, the moth who spends her only evening beside a light she cannot choose. 1/2 #vss365

Everything is beautiful in its time, The blossom goes, yet leaves the fruit behind.

What hour decays? It only changes dress: The rose is brief, yet briefs the thorn with grace; At evenfall, light dies to make stars less a loss than lamps newly lit in space. So love each form, then loose it without pain: God spends one beauty, and begins again. #vss365

Lord, let me love the rose while it is rose, Nor bid its fleeting sweetness longer stay; Thy hand, which gives the morning, also knows The holy art of taking it away. #vss365

At evenfall, when fields grow still, I set myself against the hill; let seasons thin, let rivers part, I keep your name beneath my heart. And when the last light forms the dew, my soul will turn and choose just you :) #vss365