The Tree & the Lake of Colour

‘And the light shined out of darkness

And the darkness comprehended it not’

Truth out of the unknown

The earthly mind would not understand it    

Out of fear the light and joy the terror

And all the territory of the weak

The gentle strong

           

A vast level lake of brimming light is there

All silver-shine grey in translucid movings

As still as still yet hovering

On the surface

A single tree stands amid centre

The translucent enigma translating

Braving the homeward colours

Hidden in its appled isle

Of veiled Avalon

Out of that inner lake the vision the door open

Out of apple seed black the un-blinding light

All harvest moon white the gift unveiled

In story filled hues the quest’s end

All wrapped in these shiny tight seeings

           

Deeply helped, deeply freed, deeply filled to the brim

The colours the telling-things the gold of the seeker

Speaking in the peace light giving in its filling

Life filled hues hidden within this lake of colour

Books of grey, but prism turned and understood

A lake of given words the heart of Avalon

Ever present the seasoned light savours the message

While the underlying spirit waters the inner palate

And the tree above speaks out her own fearsome light

Out of spilt-blood red her fiery flame of Orange

Out of rich gold-yellow her harmless apple green                   

From dead-of-night indigo, horizon’s shimmer blue

And all her velvet purple pansies turning vermilion red 

           

Making of the tipped out space, flowerings of the rainlight

Forming from her emptied midst ecstatic bravings of the terror

           

The dreams will fit

Buried hopes beneath the lake of colour rise

All the brave of the King of Kings are here     

As Love’s arm pierces through her shining opal lake

Offering a new sword of twoedges made and true

A flaming sword of light cutting both ways at once

Truth’s discerner ever within my hidden parts 

Dividing me first to win of Love her endless life

Jacob's Ladder and the Dead Tree

I went walking in the twilight

Where all was full and free

Where half the light was edged in sun

The other half in moon

The tide was flowing in and out

And on it, brought a tree 

Stark naked dead and bare, floating 

Its branches stuck up in the air

Wherever I turned to look

There a small dead tree

I saw dead trees – everywhere

And all along the harbour path

Four times I saw the barren thing

Beside the water’s edge

And four times I deeply wondered

What had become of me?

So strange to see a similar thing

Wherever I chanced to look

But I knew the heart of Love

Was speaking in me

Of all ascending and descending:

My spirit’s ‘spinal cord’

Jacob’s ladder there

As my own thoughts step up and down

My way first easy then is hard

But once I am perplexed

Then all easy once again

For where I didn’t know, I knew

Ever my own deceiver

My first name is in easy ways

Not liking hard I fall and rise

According to what I will of me, give up  

Only my understanding taken 

Can be brought to me anew

At the point I am split in twain:

Two-edged renewed

 

QUOD PETIS HIC EST:

What you seek is hard

That for which I ask:

The hardest thing of all!

To go against my lust for knowing

To set myself at nought

And to stay there

All in joy!

To step back from the easy way

To do nothing but believe

Oh, what I seek is hard

Hard!

To bear the affront

Of having my knowledge

Annulled 

And not to be sad!

To have only what I cannot see or touch

That in my dying live!

To gain the prize of life never won of self

What I seek is hard!

QUOD PETIS EST FACILE:

What you seek is easy

That for which I ask

It is the easiest thing of all!

To do nothing

That I might understand what I can’t

To do nothing but float in joy

Where I was nought!

To stand still in the hard way

To only believe it easy

What I seek is easy

Easy!

To delight in the sting

Of finding my knowledge squashed

To be happy in having the reality

Of only the seeming nebulous

To live in my dying

And of love receive a new name

What I seek is

Easy!

THE DEAD TREE SAILS ON . . .

Amethyst Poetry / Writing Saga # 4 / Finding Stories in the Air . . .

     In the innermost place, where the swan flies high over Everland, where love’s living waters run I find stories in the air. Out of darkness the light shines. There, the tumbling threads of stories, alive in the air where I live, all waiting to be woven into cryptic ‘kennings.’* They are each one, ciphered portraits of universal truth; lines ready and waiting to pour into the books and poems I am given to write. Tales of tingling things and tastings in the tinglewoods; jewelled runnings with golden castings, trickling through the fair fairways of the path of our return to God in utter surrender. All happy uncurlings of a liquid summer’s morning, warm, wholesome, full and free! Thoughts twisting and turning in the dappled light, like the little silver-steel pipes of a wind chime, dangling from the verandah roof, where I imagine I sit and write, listening to their sweet tinkling, and dreaming on in my swinging chair in the sounding breeze. 

     It really is, as if I catch transparent wisps of writing, floating in the air. Faint prism-ed streamers, ribbons and banners all passing by me as I begin to write. I have seen, and with astonishing certainty, that they did not originate from me, but are given. It is as though I live and move and have my being in the air; and that air where they are, the place of all living words in the holy of holies! 

     Sometimes these semi-silken ribbons seem to dance. It is like they are playing, and I am permitted to play, too.  Joining in their swirling and running in that unconscious delight that only little children know. 

     It is my one of my heart’s deepest yearnings that these ragged writings of Amethyst Poetry find their place of understanding in many loving hearts all over the world. That there might be people ‘out there,’ in countries everywhere who could understand these ragged writings and poems is my hope and dream.

[* 'a kenning’ – n. the Icelandic word for: a symbolic image in a short phrase; a metaphorical word puzzle; encoded writing. (Some Iceland examples: a "sea bull" is a ship; a "serpent of blood" is a sword; and "she-wolf of the gown" is a greedy woman.)]

These are the titles of the next five ragged writings:

Stories in the Air

Uncurlings

Jewelled Runnings

A Summer’s Morning

Tastings in the Tinglewoods

The Saga of Amethyst Poetry / Part Five: Wisdom of the Amaranth

         How easily and unconsciously creative expression becomes enmeshed in conventional practice, and current trends put up walls. To live outside the box is always a challenge! All around us are living pictures of ourselves, which give insight into this universal truth; as it is in the world of Nature, so in all things. The living ‘flowers,’ of a single ‘plant,’ come to ‘bloom’ for awhile, then die for new ones to flourish. In their continuously necessary, cycle of life and death, continuous renewal: the way of LIFE, for all things. But we are not so wise as the flowers! We hang on to ‘the stem,’ refuse to fall, and so, miss out on what’s next . . . the wisdom of the amaranth . . . the never-fading flower of truth.

  

   [I have written extensively of the above – Nature’s universal truth – in my memoir:  ‘THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL: A Twelve Month Story-Journal: Portrait of a Lost Star.’ (Creative non-fiction.)  This section of my unpublished book is available in pdf format in Microsoft Word Document 2007 from the author. Email: judithdeverell@hotmail.com ]