A Book is like a Golden Circlet

A book is like a golden circlet . . . 

   round my head it lays its story firm

A protective halo, for awhile:

   it takes me deep away

Takes this mind it captivates 

   to an inner world, 

A sanctuary hid from pressing ills, 

   in outside forms of life; 

A surrogate life, till I rise up again, 

Take responsibilities reins,

   live life better for having left it awhile 

         

   

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 28

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like a Scented Garden

  

A book is like a scented garden 

A fragrant blossomed bower

An arbour rare, a secret meeting place

To curl up in, to dream and read

Its life, a theme in me that slowly opens out:

Grows the wisdom seeds within, it lightly sows;

Its pages set a wall around absorbing thought

A deeply planted garden, filled with flowers

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 24

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

A Book is like an Angel's Breath

A book is like an angel’s breath . . .

   it breathes a wisp of air

      a silent thing, as of life from death

The secret sigh of wings of purest breadth: 

   hidden width in lines of gifted sight;

Wisdom, as the in and out of air:

   breath-filled life, in the heart that joys

      to relinquish what it harbours

In lines of joy, in dreams of angel flight

   the spirit’s sojourn

As a selkie’s lift to tip me ever onwards

Prized open here to take in light

   and on toward new streams thought;

Hope so near in lighted understandings,

   in writing caught in airy comprehending:

As an angel’s breath, inside 
   the hidden inner heaven in me . . .

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 22

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

Scented Garden

Created my garden of an arrow river’s running

Sharpened trainings of a silenced soul its present life

As the movings of the rhyme-tree flow all her songs

Of all principled parts of understanding their making   

Scented my garden of a silk wind’s blowing

Latticed twinings of a rested heart its secret source

As the turnings of the time-plant grow all her stories

Of all apple-ed parts of receptivity their fragrance

Filled up my garden of an inner fire’s burning

Hallowed lines of a quiet spirit its sacred spices

As the yearnings of the rain-flower blaze all her signals

Of all unravelled parts of wisdom their fullness

In every fresh beginning a perfumed garden

Of every stinging thing turned replenished and filled 

Of the marvelled wisdom of Another my garden scented

And of every peppered bite and willowed thought painted

Willowed Stream

Not the sound of any hammer could be heard

Silent the truer work of the turning around

The stinging things being made a delight:

The scriptured cache of past mysteries made plain

The well-worn ancient Puzzlebook being deciphered
And unlocked . . .

The whirring of a fan winnowing the harvest

A threshing of knowledge-mountains, beating them small

Making of the hills of outsides – chaff

That only their sacred centers remain

The whirlwind scattering life’s proud knowledge-waves

Single blows, and the roar and rush of the liked part

Her pearls (the not-liked part) silent for they were as two

Yet the prudent few chose instead a hammering of truth

And what they thought was gold

For which they paid a high price and lost the prize

Single blows and our liked parts were all one-sided truth

All a cat’s purr, but grating as the sound of a saw

And the engine-buzz of a busy fly

All fool’s gold and an apple cradled in a broken glass

Only the severed parts of seven and so never the whole

Seeing what seemed to shine in knowledge’s outsides 

The un-golden apple they held to their breast; which

Not being made to hang onto, was as a broken glass

Not whole, not remade it would hold no new wine

If only parts it could hold, never perfect

Their lines they tangled; their slender unfed leaves

Went dangling down and winnowed fell breaking off

The slowings of life in every willowed stream

The clogged up muddles of thinking we knew

Clearing as the running light came sifting through

Would now they dig out their willowed stream

Let the light of life go rushing through them

A cloudburst’s flood to clear every path of inner mud:

Dead skinny leaves, one-sided knowledge bits  

Let it sweep away all their cloggings up

Of things too long held in overcrowded streams

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 ]