V. 2. / 15.) Shall I Pave My Path With Pretty Lies?

Shall I pave my path with pretty lies?

Weave my way and line it with outer ease?

Take the wider way and with the world be deceived?

Well, outer-knowledge-shouting taking over

Would do so no more!

What was needed was come, the counting-fall

The difference, telling weeds – from flowers

Weeds – those knowledge-plants that multiplied  

Growing over everything and everywhere

From flowers – those gladly obeying their given borders

Giving up their lives their hearts true  
Their knowledge of a different kind...

That did not need to swarm and be seen

To show their beauty... but even of the truest plants

Older petals fade and fall in time for further

‘And the old order changeth giving place to new’ 

For time was and is that weeds from wheat be taken

And truth once despised be raised up, found needed                

Unless truth was real it would not stand the test

The building that stood was built on blood

The bruised heart the lit prism, telling real from false

                                           *

V. 2. / 14.) Gone The Former Illusions From My Clouds

Gone the former illusions from my clouds

Now is the white massed cloud, that’s after rain

Standing out, round with mountains, valleys,

Great gaps and depths – low on the horizon –  

Celebrating the whole of it...

They don’t anymore veil my dreams from me

Those clouds which come to drown me

Those laden with unlovely things of hardship

Grey, heavy steps in drops of merging dark

Come to threaten me with their blanketing deluge

Seeming to confuse – and blind me from my purpose –     

They may come as they will...

They can do nothing to me that was not needed

For my joy and growth – I saw it!

From the confusion my dreams rose all the brighter

Washed, dried – left shining – to draw me onward

And into that new-strengthened dream

Which was my destiny...

                                           *

V. 2. / 13.) Grasped The Work Of Life Its Challenge Pain

Grasped the work of life its challenge pain

Accepted by the lilies of a wider field

And understood by them

Life within was as a trophy to be won

And the challenge not for the fainthearted

For the work of it was extreme at the least

Few could know or understand it

For its work was rest the work surrender

Peace exposing pride love winning all

And the contrast in the un-work of life

The lilies toiling not, nor spinning

In their play of light and dark

Their changing...

Not knowing which was which...

Heaven with them...

Coming sweeping away all the wisdom

Of the Earth moving above and beyond it

Time was, time is; now time is come...

Coming both as predator and prey

The falcon and the lark, the lion and the lamb

Taking the turned one, and turned around

The pursued loving the pursuer

The offence dismissed

And the back-to-front of the counting-fall

The upside-down... now inside-out

                                              *

V. 2. / 12.) I Couldn't Say The Day The Leaves Came Out

I couldn’t say the day the leaves came out

When from winter’s death, spring came rushing up

Surging through the stem of me, waking me from sleep

Taking my part, taking me with it to use me again

From a time of barrenness to new flower and leaf

And soft painted pages of new sap wordlings

The timing of it never ours we cannot guess the day

Or know how much warmth and sunlight our spring needs

Or when inner rest has run its full course and won

And at last reaches up the stem to brave a new day

That our springtime will come again is certain

The world is round... never ceases to be so

I’m glad I don’t know the day my leaves come out

Glad my surprises come by surprise

                                            *

V. 2. / 11.) It Was All Because You Looked Into Me

It was all because you looked into me

And knew me, that the light was won.

You saw into me and seeing my self

I was afraid...

Light shining into the inner darkness that was me

I was darkness

No terror greater needed to break me open

To offer me the whole of you

Your way worked

It was all because you looked into me

That I knew you...

Breaking me open you gave me everything

The fall which made all the difference

If I could imagine a picture of what came

It might be in me a cave lined with crystals

A geode’s cache of amethyst walls

Jagged... growing hiddenly inside me...

From the seepings-through... 
Full of light... and refracting light

But the knowing... if I knew anything

Which I didn’t... I didn’t...

It was all in knowing you knowing me inside:

Then I had nothing... no knowledge of my own

Only of my given will to love you utterly

And that was everything... and enough

                                                   *

V. 2. / 10.) What If I Should Tear Up the Oxford Dictionary?

What if I should tear up the Oxford Dictionary?

Put all the pieces in a hat, mix them up

And reach for the sky, and there tip them out?

No more a beautiful book would I get

Than had I torn my heart out

And from my sequestered treasure there made

A flying scroll that through all heaven flew

And yet, it was true there was one there

And so perfect was it, in total loss of me

That even the severed pieces of my heart

Made a beautiful book there in spite of me

But a book none could read for it was death

In my pages of broken words which way shall I go?

Being dead I could travel in any one of four directions

In each were many things to tell, hardly told before:

Hidden turnings, tasting of crushed apple-pips and honey

The bitter with the sweet...the things we put aside for

They were like the bird, singing beyond our back verandah

“Bend your head, bend your head” ...we didn’t like them

But the torn book, the scroll made from my split mind

Bravely spinning in me that savage thread of utter-ness

It slides through the buckled folds of Love’s cloak

Tying for me there the kindness of the belt of truth

Keeping me all pieced together and certain safe

If I do the truth and truthful stay unafraid for my skin

                                       

                                                       *

V. 2. / 9.) Out of Sequence Light Dabbles in Daydreams

Out of sequence light dabbles in daydreams

Taking random memories sparked by parallels

Giving new substance to them

Forming further inner doors of insight

Out from of its own ceaseless ability

To roam every nook and cranny of my existence...

Past... present... and future

In no order that I can see light revels in discovery

At any time or place appearing before my mirror...

A bouquet of thought-blossom in a basketful of days

All growing things memories from below memory

And a scrapbook of ‘happening-life’... happening

One stray strand of fleeting light could make a book

One memory resurfacing could weave a labyrinth

Of current things captured... even a counting-fall

And a flow of thoughts swimming in gold

Sweeping through the tunnels of my mind

Held where heavenly things merge with earthly

In a seamless happenstance... if I looked deeper

Light makes me, ‘me,’ out of a myriad cast of dreams

Playing the best... the fiercest shinings of selfless love

Fallen from a collection of memories... treasure-caught

And a deeper insight finding in their further parallels

A mirrored wisdom-light shading things in beauty

                                              *

Vol. 2. / 8.) Bewildered I Stood in a Subterranean World

Bewildered I stood in a subterranean world

Watching colourless people with expressionless faces

Passing by me in shoals all headed the same way

And I was swimming again

Over coral heads in shallow glass seas

Where shoals of rainbow coloured fish went by me

All moving and turning as a single body.

Oh, how I yearned to tell these masses passing by me

Of the lovely colours they really were

Beneath their bland exteriors, but they would think

I was mad...

But so great to me the contrast between the

London Underground and the pale blue Caribbean Sea

That I could only wish to whisk them away

And take them there where I had once been.

But soon at the surface again at last I could breathe

And walk the airy streets of London

On a busy sunlit day on Monday...

                                               *

(Extracted from my autobiography, DAWNING...  page 22)

V. 2. / 7.) Flooding, the Stream Beside my Crooked Willow

Flooding, the stream beside my crooked willow

It had overflowed its captive banks

But it took me with it the required distance

Out from the common crowded journey into the light

And I laughed

What was in me... an unmeasured world inside

Had grown so vast I was in it on the outside, too

And the seeping through a pouring out... and a torrent

Flowing in the sparkling rapid vision... through a crystal page

And I, the witless hand that held the spellbound pen...

One crazy goosegirl... and I laughed

Flooding, the stream beside my crooked willow

It had overflowed its captive banks

But it took me with it the required distance

Out from the common crowded journey into the light

And I laughed

                                        *

V. 2. / 6.) Heads Spin Once Through the Door

Heads spin once through the door

And face the other way...

Things in pictures seen...changing shape for

Things which are not, bringing to nought things that are

That I could not find you, by myself alone.

Again, the seeping through, the influence as water

Forging within, making things that touch

Things which only my spirit could taste, see, and hear

Things which spoke to me of the lost light tree

And embodied it... appearing wondrous to me

But which now, turned around, and looking back, I see

Were only my half-desperate efforts

To make sense of what I could not yet understand;

I was comforted, in an outer sort of way

But, oh, there was, more... yes, there was so much more

And further and deeper and beyond...

                                      *

V. 2. / 5.) Of the Split, the Crevice in my Sphere

Of the split, the crevice in my sphere

And the turning pivot in my midst

I did not say it, all: I did not think of it, then

The bright-light – it would come when it would

It did not often stop to make room for me

The catching of it was all through the letting go

Not the grasping... 

And it could wait... it was in me... timeless

It was to do with the light tree, the crevice,

And my vision of it...

Which would fade when I forgot it as ‘a tree’...

As... a certain form...

But, so vivid was its formless presence

That it could not help but seep out, somewhere,

And in other forms and in other realms;

It’s influence as water, which, seeping out

Through even the tiniest split in me

And evaporating into thin air

Could somehow quench my thirsting thought

For meaning...

While ever enthusing my inner being

To search for more...

The pivotal thing it was already there

The crack in my centre already through the door

                                               *

           

(Extracted from my book, The Light Tree Journal, page 19)

V. 2. / 4.) Did I Say Ecstasy?

Did I say ecstasy?

That drawing near, you fill me with ecstasy?

And that no one hears your step, but me?

Yes... it is true... all true; and it is fire

But the telling of it comes only later

Forty lines, later,

As in the hour of struggle the birth of a butterfly

That came first... like the fire...

Then you walked in, you stepped inside me:

You had known me.

I look for those who hear you, as I do

I long for them I yearn for them, to hug them

But there are none, just as you told me

And they hate me... though they’d never own it

Wanting the rapture, too, but without the dying.

Shunning offence they each one miss the ecstatic stigma.

                                          *

V. 2. / 3.) They Say That From A Fire

They say that from a fire the phoenix rises

Out from a cataclysm the new-patterned diadem

And a bright new world for the loss of a dim one.

And the life-seed of that, full-swollen

Bursting forth in further glory.

And, like the bird reborn

No longer only a presentiment of life

But a full explosion of it!

Yet a silent one, going all unheard, and unseen

Just as the ready dandelion, waiting its thief

And the expulsion of its feathered seed

Rejoices in its coming nakedness:

In its cycle full-come dying for its children

And the expansion of itself

In being taken from itself;

And all the gift of the wind, and the spirit of life.

So, take me all, steal me all away

And from my fire let my thrice-purged words rise

And scatter as winged seed...

And finding quiet home

As the commonest of all yellow flowers

Lightly gild the gentle hearts they softly fall for;

In dream my heart’s fruit, born of its suffering

And life’s own children who welcome the seed.

                                          *

Vol. 2. / 2.) The Life-Seed Swells

The life-seed swells the heart becomes a globe

And the crack, the crevice in my sphere runs

Right through from the centre to the edge . . .

Both ways . . . a polar axis, a pivoting life-line

Once warped it was, now strait as a die

Aligning in each part the semblance of one bend

But which took offence as though it were a prize

And so straitened it

And the light perfect, which now shone inside it

Was as a road broken through my surface world

Nor more to wind round things I’d rather not face

But through the very middle of them –

Mining their treasures –

Taking pain by making of it comfort

Annulling thorns by finding only gifts

And now real life for only a former glimmer of it.

                                      *