V. 2. / 174.) The Book

The book cast aside by the world

Was mine ---

In it, and out of it, I existed

Put into me it was

And taken out of it I am

And that not of my own self

No one can understand its pages

When they think they do

They don’t ---

Nor do they understand

What should come out of it

Human reason gets it back-to-front

Human thinking turns upon itself

And so finds there only what it has

What it hasn’t is what it needs

For what it has is not sufficient ---

Not by any measure --- nor can any

Human wisdom hold what cannot

Be held by any single human mind

And we will not surrender and so

We will never understand ourselves

                            *

V. 2. / 165.) When I Saw The Fluttering Dove

When I saw the fluttering dove

I thought that I should see heaven open

But not with my first eyes could I see

But with my second: then in the instant!

When I saw the olive tree split asunder

I thought that I should see the rent in me

But not with my first eyes could I see

But with my second: then in the instant!

It wasn’t the land which I could see

That bore any resemblance to the land

Which I cannot see but know is there:

The natural thing gave little indication

Of its invisible or spiritual ‘equivalent:’

Only in seeing the second time will I

Understand It: dead stones have no eyes

        *

The Place Marked

  

In a moment trapped in time

The vested image of the thing I read

The thought complete: the thought

Then put aside, I rest my knowing

Of my captured, capsule of ideas  

Until another bright peaceful

Opportune time . . .

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight; Part 2;

The Placemark Poems, # 4

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a hopeful Rainbow

A book is like a hopeful rainbow 

I take a turn and look around

And there a promise arc 

Of sudden colour:  . . .

Hope falling by me 

Through its gifted pages

Holding light for me 

As though through fire in rain

Its spirit streams are in 

Seven colours split

Its story, message, 

Its hope-filled teachings

All prismed light 

Caught alive in me:  . . .

Since first I glimpsed 

Its intriguing cover 

Quickly guessed in me 

Its depth, of hidden promise  

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 23

© Judith M. Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a Starry Sky

A book is like a starry sky . . .

   a studded canvas 

   a secret blended heaven

To raise the mind 

   toward a distant treasure       

Displayed against a background 

  deep or black:

The unknown scenic content 

   of what lies beyond  

Opening to a diamond cluster 

   from its wide expanse

Pinpoint lighted vision 

   from lucid viewing points          

Light out of darkness 

   emerging in many forms

Leading the mind it challenges 

   to see beyond itself

Yet know its capacity 

   still unfathomable by these tiny fires 

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 20

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

Farlight Sightings

Where will I find it

From whence does it flow

When will the essence of it strike my soul?

Wasted my months not in pursuit of its fold  

Then was I drab-caught buried in busyness

Called out and dragged in, in pathways of systems

Parsley and thyme all ribbings of salt ice

My poached life seasoned with deathly coldness

The call of the silver sea brought my heart out to find it

When flickers of beacon fires raise my horizon

I see and I know, and I am where it is found

Following from nothingness where simplicity’s crowned

Innovation's Needed Magic

There are many paths that lead to Everland

(Though I might say there was only one)

The simplest were what happy profundity found

Hid of the heart’s own conundrum belted amidst the ruse

Which holds the float and hangs the line about

And takes the parted thing and with it wreathes 

A wrap around its folded outer sound

To harbour all, in all the edging parts of hope

For where the standing places wrest illusion’s sacred part

It forces rinds in saltings in comings through their skins

And flowing upwards and in the favoured lengthy hasp

Ever folding onwards, called of love’s own working

Then were all of Everland’s homeward myths, a pardon

Which coming flooding in, in waves of marvelled wonderings

Take life by the hand

Helping those who wait, to lose their fear

To stagnate not

Nor fade in knowledge through too much of it

And so to lead life always on

Through innovation’s awesome magic

Advancing every branch of art

Reviving sight in losing it

Until, so familiar with life’s illusive key –

The letting go to find it 

Lamb's wouldn't stumble

Not even on the hardest paths of light’s encoding

Finding there of joyous faith and trust  

A more excellent way of loving  

A Yellow Leaf

A yellow leaf in a muddy brown burn

It skims and circles as the eddies turn it

Through placid pools and rushing cascades

In ceaseless journey laid till it reach the sea

A timid heart in an earthy mixed-up life 

I free flow and a greater purpose carries me

Through trials pale and yet fiercely sweet      

In ceaseless journey laid till I reach the Sea

A white feather in a warm cloudless sky

It flies and twirls as the currents turn it

Through falls and flights it lands and rises

Till it reach its quiet end and there unburdens  

A cowardly soul in a clear loving embrace

But I rise and soar in the will of love   

Through pain and joy I enter by the door

Till I reach his quiet end and there unburden

                               *

It mattered not where I was in the stream

Enough that I was in it and travelling

Predetermined certain of my destination

And I could let loose my hold and, be . . . 

Knowing I was being taken, where I could see 

Made of Nothing

A tangent higher than high left her the Earth behind

Lower than low made of nothing

Of the wrestle’s favour swiftlight formed and framed her

But the image fell, hit a chair and lost its head

Not out of intelligence or any particle of ability

Only of a fire’s flame a child caught up and betrothed

One of no account, too deep by eons and below all man’s sutured sight

The far fetched light the stuff of little babes cast out  

The life they breathe there it is very thin   

Intensely saying though it seem as nothing

Out of Zion’s gates she’d fled no more hampered by chain or fetter

No favoured letter there nothing fair would cling

All her former goodly things as rags, they could not fester there 

Torn and stripped away, her things were now of nothing made

All see-throughish as a breath of air, where they touch there the core of fire

Only real working wonders really meet our deepest needs 

And fuse the broken wire

New Clothes

Levers lifting all our ruined battlements

Prizing open long hammered thinking

Cracks’ appearing light was seeping through a bit

And dividing unto life

Gifted openers losing aged thought for new

The emperor wearing real clothes at last

His state of gross undress long held unrecognized

He was weaned of his affected attire

Fish bowls cracked as bird cages fell open free

The emperor’s prey escaped

Old clothes vanished for the appearing of their actual cloth

Fancy’s intrigue could no more clothe

Now all forms of former things were left and lost

Latent running only could see a recurring

From levelled plains the new array was of mystery’s undoing. 

And all soothed our fallen battlements were real fabric 

Slowly Opens the Rose

Only slowly opens the Rose

Its petals unfold all imperceptibly 

Only by a steady keeping on

Does the invisible beauty work its wounding

Undoing all my shallows and more and more

As I press on and yield not to the littler press             

But exercise that gift which is within me

 

Only forcefully springs the shoot

Yet its substance pierces through all soothed       

Only by a persistent surrendering

Does the gentle upsurging work within me

Calming all my troubled points over and over

That they come through kind and unscathed

In the daily rising that I can not see rising

Only unthinkingly babbles the baby

Yet her voice emerges all of a strong desire 

Only by a doing I didn’t think in

Did life’s simplest gift work within me

Turning my unknowings into knowing

Transforming all my edged lines into sense

Till Another’s intelligence appeared 

Only bravely fledge the birds

Yet their feathers develop, all of a course

Only by faith that time will bring forth life

Does time’s own bravery work within me

Making of all my flights of fancy, messages:

And my firstling airy things, surpassed

Till lit at last, my former complex threads decode 

Only . . . Only . . . and the absolutes of paradox

Through Veiled Realms of Swiftlight

Out of the things which were first, the greater part of purple palaces

Inner castles graced with ivory towers and the amaranth within

The amethyst flowerets mystic pale with milky light 

All fused with royal red and blue

Casting from the windows of my sight

The firstling things I have within

To speak instead in silent gems of the veiled realms of swiftlight

Of the breaking parts of truth that slowly fill with love and unravel here

Out of the things which were second, the amaranthine tumbling spires

From which my inner-writing banners flew

Out from my highest tower my hooded tercel tossed skyward

Flung from a seamless gloved hand

Set free to gather its beloved prey and return to me the longed for news 

That from afar they would hear and in that oneness promised

Draw near and I would know that from today

I was not alone

Deep Pools

Deep pools of sacred possessions

Un-cautioned cascades of revelation

Chasing braved bounties in love’s tellings

And a bright-made woven holder

For all my heart’s own wrested rovings

Daft pieces of fast ravings

Un-careful shavings of sharp arrows

Colliding particles in plenty’s pouring 

And a soft-filled safety folder

For all my heart’s own suffered bleedings

Dusted scribblings of dashed truth

Un-captured portions of chaliced lives

Coiling burned embers in my seven sides

And a silver-made chaste casket

For all my heart’s own secret sorrows

                         *

Un-counted the silver of silent stars

Standing without end or known number

Like my ribs

All broken in love’s reachings

Like my bruised heel and wounded head

The Trees of the Field

Howling the wind whirls wild today

Battering the brave upstanding trees

Captives bent of this unpolished field

Confusings in the tides of men

Making chaos of the light

But still flows the music 

Wherever they have not been

The dust of a million stars still survives

Patient in simplicity’s keeping

Burned of all the brave trees of the field

In their nothingness a shining

No wind strong enough to dull them

Could ever find them

Safe behind their enclosing walls

Hidden in the lap of another land

But how the wind howls seeking its revenge

The shining trees had escaped!

Released from every proud clutching

They just clapped their hands

And never did a stray blast

Un-nerve their sacred trust in love

Delight through all their fearless being!

Lost in light love’s wine creamed through them

Everland lit overflowing with milk and honey

Bright rich wine, white with stardust ashes 

Their former first life surpassed of a second

And all the trees, full fed, follow on to know