A Book is like a Sacred Isle . . . A Rain of Booklight . . .

Where next? What then follows on?

Through the inner mist I wander onward

Through a maze of speckled cloud

Not knowing if I’m right or wrong

Or where I’m going –

Trusting blind to the inner gifted vision:

Alive to the lonely dream alone

What next? Where then shall I go?

That any hear what I am given to say

A rain of booklight is in me –

A pouring of oil but against the grain

In my centre, my way I find: not-knowing

A torrent through any subject flows:

Alive in light and life, I fit through all

                           *

Faltering Steps

Faltering the steps I take in festive forays

Through the Lantern Brights in books . . .  

To find in light the strength to pass through dark

To loose the oil I find there, beyond the spine

Amidst the unseen streets I walk through gold

Find there my sight that turns my heart to see

My goings helped, and known and sheltered

And entered there: simplicity, and new happiness!

In a World Books 

From a lighted centre a beam goes forth:

A line in amethyst shooting depths of sight –    

Through a world of books it travels

Finding stories in a river of life –

Thought open, the light beyond fills it

And a flow of angel’s tears are in me, pearled –  

Falling softly in streams of insight burning bright

The Lonely Poet

The breeze that lifts my autumn leaf

That bends this silent flower stem

Tears from my midst the finished page

That cannot see what it shall be

But joined with life’s own rifling wind

Will write within the heart it rends

                        

                          *

Story: 4. ) A String of Red Beads / added to A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight; A book about books

A String of Red Beads                                                                                                      

   A row of ancient books I saw upon a shelf. Of course, I had seen them there many times before, but this time I ‘saw’ them: drawn to them. So I took a few and stood them up on the bedside table, where the lamp was, and turned off the main light. The lamp’s golden glow lit up the books and seemed to give them life, shining on their gold leaf writing pressed hard into their poor spines; broken, or about to break. I loved them. Not because I was interested in their stories; I did not know what they were. They were too hard for me to understand; I had never read them. I just wanted to absorb their flavour, and write like they did, but without reading them. I think I had stepped outside all the boundaries that imprison the child and make of it an adult; and escaped, I could do as I pleased. So, very small, I slipped inside the books themselves; and with their pages all round me, their pretty ways of stringing words together became an oil, which poured itself into one of my many corners, and quickened me. Suddenly that which was impossible I could do, for I was a child. And from then on I wrote whatever popped into my head; and I was pleased. But it was not always easy.

   One day with inkpot and loosed feather I found it writing what seemed to me like a string of ripe-plucked cherries. The hard things I knew were their red hearts, and the oil, fleshing out their inward part in dreams and in visions the succulent part beneath their skins. Once ‘eaten’ there strung on a black ink thread of words was a string of ‘red beads.’ A living story-bracelet left of life preserved by death!                                                 

                                                               *                                                    

An extract from the book THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL, Portrait of a Lost Star. 

This book is listed in the right hand column of this blog site . . .

Writing Saga # 34 / A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight / Part 2: The Placemark Poems

       Though no doubt I could go on forever, I have come to the end of PART 1 of A RAIN OF BOOKLIGHT a sequence of 40 poems which begin ‘A Book is like… ’. 

    

      Beginning the first one A Book is like a River on 11 November, 2014, and ‘the last one’ today 27 November, 2014, I've just realized that that means I've written 40 short poems in 16 days, as well as other written work; and I didn’t write for 2 days during that period. I have enjoyed writing these poems very much and look forward to further sequences in the future.

    

        PART 2 of RAIN is titled The Placemark Poems; and I’ll begin writing those tomorrow.

     But, for a change, first I will post an earlier piece of writing, from my book THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL, Portrait of a Lost Star. The extract is called A String of Red Beads. 

      Then, hopefully, I will write another piece of my new work STORYCHASER, so that I have a break from working on the BOOK poems for the illustrated collection A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: “A Book about Books.”  I am probably crazy, but I am writing these 2 works, (one prose the other poetry,) at the same time.