The Breakneck Walks

2009-06-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

From far higher than
aural trigonometry tells,
the ventriloquist lark
sings into space.

2009-05-28T03:22:00.000-07:00

Listen to the living things
interrupt the fling of wind
cut across flint ground.

Panta Rhei - Everything Streams

2009-05-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

The impossibility of repetition

Everything streams
yet everything seems infinitely divisible.
Sunshine beams outside
light scatters through trees and fallen leaves.

Step into the stream.
Particles teem in shoals, weave in flux and pass, until
in rain they fall again
where change leaves nothing the same.

Light scatters through trees and fallen leaves.
Sunshine beams outside.
Everything seems infinitely divisible;
yet everything streams.

2009-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Parallax.............
Every time I move
.............Parallax

2009-05-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

One thousand four hundred and fifty or so paces,
more or less. Walking with a Braille-reader’s feet.
Reading as the flex and dimple of rubber describes
the intimate relief of the land; feeling for the Earth
through thin shoe soles.

2009-05-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

Cross the lower meadow and where four fields meet at the rise of the mount, three mixed hedges have grown tall and hollow around the fences. Mount the stile, feeling the rub of its smooth hand-oiled post as you step over, off and up to a higher bank; ducking into the hollow thicket of the bower. The thorny passage, leading up several rough-cut dirt steps contains a tangled history: fragments of weathered oak posts and split rails pinned with short twists of old and broken, rust-brown barbed wire; threaded and stapled with new. Pause to hide in the airy cage then feel a compression of intensity as you stoop under the last slim branches and out to face open skies that rise above the far crest of the upper meadow.

2009-05-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

Oxygen enough
to fuel sixteen steps per breath;
one inhalation.

2009-05-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

I look to the right,
a continuous view north;
to my left coming back

2009-05-16T14:05:00.002-07:00

Every day
I see it all; so
differently

2009-05-16T14:05:00.001-07:00

Too much information
or information enough
for a whole lifetime?

2009-05-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

They have gone now but cattle have grazed the upper meadow: young bullocks and heifers that nosed their way into every verge and thicket; shorn everything back to expose hedge and tree to their roots. The whole place seems clear and ready to die-back. Along the paths hawthorn berries are already trodden; red skins and ochre flesh pulped against their tanned leaves and pressed into mud. The wind is wet and always - out of the sun - a chill catches hot skin, moist with perspiration. The two lone clusters of fir trees are cleared of tall grass, never usually mown there, and in bas-relief each tree’s bark is rubbed smooth: a spoor to show that they were here.

2009-05-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

Just Sitting
and at the centre point of my full field of view,
wedge necked and head down:
Cow;
Just Eating Grass

Approaching,
scent-seeking and horny as hell,
fully charged to discharge a dumb duty:
Bull;
Just Coming.

2009-05-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Two fir cones
fallen from one
or both of the
two fir trees.

One fallen;
picked up on
impulse from
under the trees.

One blown;
noticed at
a distance
and gathered in.

One new.
One weathered.
Both dry and open.
Both I kept.