Poetry Diary: The Unheard Book . . .

Poetry Diary: / The Light Tree...

     It was only a dream, but it seemed so real. I turned a corner in a park. I passed another flower garden then came upon a large grassy place. It was early, a huge golden sun rising above an azure horizon, and my heart, in truth as open as this place, found before it a splendid gift. A widely spreading tree stood alone, and the sun was shining through it, through the very heart of it, and it seemed as if it were made entirely of light.   Its leaves, shaped like the leaves of a flame tree, were vivid green, shining like emeralds upon which were writings. The tree pulsated with light and life, every part of it, alive, energized, and complete! It was a picture of a glorious destiny, a promised end; and before the beginning of it had even begun! I do not know how I knew this.   As I looked, I was drawn nearer, and I saw it more clearly. A great golden ring of light circled through its branches and down through its roots. In the tree was a door, open; through which one could only yearn to enter, and live! Out of the door and from between the roots of the tree a river of living water was flowing.
   A wind came. Little by little some of the leaves were loosed from the tree. They went hovering around it, but staying close to the tree, not leaving its environs. Though these leaves were indeed severed from the tree, the light went all through them as though they were still joined. They were as broken pieces from the heart of the tree where the light shines through; where pierced by the truth and torn asunder, it had learned its secret lessons, found its hidden treasure.
   I could hardly breathe. It was as if I had never seen anything more beautiful. Everything within me yearned for the light of the living tree so great was the love which was in it and flowed from it; and it was imprinted within my own heart as living burning truth.
   I gasped. Suddenly the tree became so vast I could not comprehend it. The light so bright I shut my eyes. All in one split second, I had heard and seen all I could and turned my head away. Received of all it needed in the instant, and all of everything! But to know what I could not know, for fear of bursting at the seams, yet find it was all contained within me, and as though it were nothing, and of no consequence, words fail to describe so strange a thing it is beyond me.
   Through the years the remembrance of the light tree was a comfort. But sometimes when I was far away and in darkness the form of its impression as ‘a tree’ would fade and I forgot it as such. But then, so present was its formless substance of light and life within that it just had to break out somewhere, and in other forms, and in other dimensions. Its influence as water, which seeping out through even the tiniest crack in me, and evaporating into thin air, could somehow quench my thirsting thoughts for meaning in my life, while ever enthusing my inner being to search for more. And it did so, by my making things. Things which appeared beautiful to me; but which now, looking back I know were only my half-desperate efforts to make sense of what I could not yet understand! But, by making something beautiful, that I could see, and touch, and hear, which somehow spoke to me of the lost light tree and embodied it I found I was comforted, in an outer sort of way. But, oh, I knew there was so much more… further, and deeper, and beyond it.
   Beauty enchanted me. It drew me onwards. Because somehow I knew it connected with truth. Something beautiful and true was effectual. It transported the heart to a place where it could hear. Opened it so that it could see. To me beauty and truth had become inseparable. When I found one I had found the other. One was a path leading to the other. Where they met there was a simplicity which delighted. Where neither sought their own profit they could please, and in all things. Made one . . . there . . . there was love, true peace and freedom.
   The simple things I made were always out of broken pieces; and those things through which the sunlight could shine or reflect, and which the wind could sound in. It seemed appropriate to describe the light in terms of fragments and broken things. Why, I do not know. Perhaps, there could be several different reasons. Because as physical things mingle with heavenly things truth becomes layered in different levels of understanding as the foreshadowing of it gives way for its substance. But the simplest reason why is probably because the light is utterly vast, and I am not, and being broken in pieces myself I can only think of one part of a thing at a time! For just as the leaves of the living light tree, were many, and each one, expressing only the tiniest part of the whole, at any one time, so I!   I can only grasp one ‘story-leaf:’ one ‘living-letter:’ one chink of light, one portion of living truth from the tree of life, as and when I have need of it in my own life. And from it learning anew, as I give up something of my own selfish self, I am renewed in that vacated place! It becomes a ‘further’ truer part of me; and my eyes and ears, see and hear, where once they didn’t! Then I am set at liberty to describe what it is I see; picturing it, in part, either in the natural realm, by a physical work of art, or in the heavenly realm, by the ethereal written word. Both can bear the light: both do. Because the light is everywhere and pieces all things together! Making complete: a seamless whole! Even making ‘me’ whole: binding my every crack it seeped or shone through!   And so the fruit of my life: whether it was in artworks, or written ‘story-leaves’ and ‘letters,’ all were caught up, and loosely held aloft by a central thread of light, going turning about in the wind of the Spirit, as it was blowing gently upon them giving them life and light…to truly... see!

                                                        *

Poetry / Volume 1. ) In the Light of Innocence . . . We Were So Nearly There

from THE RAGGED WRITINGS OF EVERLAND: Volume One

We were so nearly there

For further fly all our cherished aspirations 

Than we could ever imagine

Our bright hopes

Though they be only thought and so briefly seen

Have breath and life

What we once conceived of virtue and true living

Of beauty beyond all our fondest dreams

That which came so close, and was so real awhile  

Went softly streaming by

Veiled in silken clouds and airy wine

Oh, but we were so nearly there 

We felt the flicker of life’s wings

Living things brushed past

But reaching out to touch

We lost

Oh, had we only known then

How to enter in  

But before we knew it

The vision had slipped on by and fled us

What had seemed so possible was now only a dream

And, oh, the emptier we felt for having seen

But no bright purpose was ever lost that once has been…

Truth’s star’s still there

As deep inside as it is above 

Where night’s endless light is                                           

Our mansion’s kept, our heart’s voice mapped

Upon Love’s palm our place

And the everlasting vision etched

Out held, kind, ever offering

Love’s hand is always there… 

‘We always may be what we might have been.’

                                      *

IN THE LIGHT of innocence

Things can be that aren’t

Babes can outwit the weighty

And where their foolish or

Imprudent things confound

Can there quite suddenly

Surprise the wise!

In the light of innocence

Things can turn inside out

And upside down

And there whole glories can

Be seen as flowers

Which before,

The wrong way round,

Had been considered only weeds!

In the light of innocence

Improbable things can steal by

Real as butterfly wings

And there these strange

Fortuitous sightings

Appearing all impossible

Find all the more a certain appeal!

Oh, for eyes of innocence

And a simpler heart

To go against the flow

Of the ugly and predictive

The usual, the norm, and what

We’re used to---

And choose instead life’s inner-gold

And the courage to be different!

Story. ) A Point of View . . .

(from book manuscript: A Circle of Swift Songs: A Circlet of Inner-Life Stories)




                                  A Point of View

   THE MORE I LISTENED the more I understood; and the more I saw that I was one thing and God was another, altogether other! I could see in some ways, but God could see in all ways. And as I learned, and from six year-old Anna, years ago: people, they have a point of view, but God has points to view; and that makes all the difference!

   Oh, I had points of view, ad infinitum. But I saw them like I was seeing only one; for I stood upon my point, and I looked at ‘it.’ I looked at it for ages. I looked at it for so long, that the space around it grew smaller and smaller. It went in and in. I went in and in on it. And, more and more, till in the end, it got so pinned down, that all I saw was only a fraction of what I began with; and I got lost inside; and got stuck.

   I came to see that I needed to draw a picture of this, to better understand what it was that I was actually learning. So I fetched a page of cartridge paper and the stub of a pencil; and I drew.

   I drew a large square, on my nice piece of white paper, and then I wrote, and near the bottom of the page: ‘This is my ‘first-thought-square.’ It is the beginning of my point of view. It is a lovely big shape. It is a broad view.’ I looked at it awhile, and considered.

   Then, taking up my pencil again, I drew another square, of the same shape, but inside the first one, a bit smaller. I kept going drawing shape after shape inside the one before it; until I couldn’t fit in any more, inside my original shape.

   Now I had a picture of my way of viewing things.

   I added to what I had written: ‘Now I can see my view if I keep staring at it. I can see what happens to it. It gets smaller and smaller; narrower and narrower; and so un-broad, in fact, that I lose my way in it.  I get trapped: forever, lost, looking inside it!’

   I stood back from my drawing. And again, considered it for a time. Of course. It was yet another picture of life. Of the way things are. And how and why it happened that people became shrunk.

   It was like a child’s ‘first-thought’ of: “GOD.” The child starts with one big thought of him. It is big. It is very big. It is huge! But then eventually the child discovers for himself, (or, as is more usually the case, somebody kindly discovers for him, to ‘help’ him,) A Point of View. The child’s freedom immediately shrinks, his picture zooms in and in; and he gets stuck in it . . . and, sometimes, for a very long time.

   Yes. Once we all had one opinion. Now we had squillions of them. But I know that God is different to us: he is the other way around; he has squillions of Points to View: an infinite number of points to view from. So, having every viewing point that there could possibly be to view everything from, he is everywhere, and sees everything!

   From a squillion standing places God looks out. Not in.

   He doesn’t judge things he doesn’t have a point of view.

   He has points he can view from. So, he, the light, can show us everything; and all the time; and with no condemnation; because he isn’t anywhere standing on a point, but everywhere standing on them all! And that makes all the difference!

   As he sees things he reveals them: he opens them out, and shows them; he shows them not in opinions nor in judgments, but in truth, truth to view. (…It is we who get him wrong and make him ‘back-to-front:’ in our own image.)

   A Point of View has edges to it; it is become, a certain thing, so it has a certain, form, shape: edges. But Viewing Points have no comprehension of edges; for they are places to look out from.

   My view locks me in. God’s view lets me out.

   There is no judging from ‘points-to-view-from,’ no condemning: for all seen all known; and all known all understood; and all understood all forgiven; and all forgiven all loved; and all the World! And everyone in it!

   We see from the outside and look in.

   God sees from the inside and looks out.

   I picked up my bit of pencil and the piece of paper again, and beneath the first drawing of my life – of shapes going in and in – I drew a new one, of the opposite, of all the shapes going out; outside, and beyond, the one before.

   God looks out and out; and out. And his vision expands wider and wider; and wider. So his view has no end. And in having no end it had no edges. And his edge-less way is how I would see, now, too. I am inside of him. And with him see from his seeing places. And light, it keeps growing and opening . . . and exploding! Shooting out, and beyond, through everything . . . and everywhere!  ‘Viewing Places’ . . . it made all the difference!

  

                                                           *

   

____________________ 

 ‘The diffrense from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside.’ -  Mister God, This is Anna;  by Fynn.       

                

from The Light Tree Journal . . . Songs of September...

                            A path of pearl-shell glory the fruit of September;

                            And destiny’s pure prize at the end of the inner conqueror’s

                            Battle to overcome; and from the edge of the world.

                            Then exposed the lie of all fearfully shaped appearances,

                            Which were hiding their golden contents within;

                            And so onward to a pouring out of the old, for the new;

                            And of life coming spiraling up, upon another plane of it,

                            And ever there - ever in my Everland!

                                                                      *

Story. ) The Well of Eternal Youth... Part Three... Small as a Pea...

                                Small as a pea under 20 mattresses.
                                That is why it will be a pearl.                         

    I leapt out of bed, and landed in a heap. It was five in the morning.  But that didn’t matter. This had to be written down. And a picture drawn. I should have done it ages ago. But I kept putting it off, in case I really was crazy! But I had seen ‘a telling-picture’ in that last instant upon awakening. It must have been three weeks ago that it had happened.

   I scrambled up, threw on some clothes, and sat back down on the bed; now with a spiral-bound notepad on my lap and a pen, I scribbled down some of the things I had seen . . . the World . . . and me . . . as a circle.

   In that fleeting vision I’d had, I was standing in a wide place and with my arms stretched out . . . one arm pointing West . . . the other pointing East . . . then extending out from my two splayed hands were two lines. One line was going to the right around the World and the other was going to the left around it. Where the two met they had got to the end of the World. Because they couldn’t go any further, of course! So there, in their ending, they met and ‘married;’ there they were made one: being as they were face to face with no gap in between . . . and having got there only by being opposite!

   After a little while of mutual glee I saw they carried on past each other. Now the right line was left; and the left line, right! West was now East; and the East, West! Then they met again . . . back at the beginning of the World, of course; because that was where they had begun from.

   And this is why I had to draw the picture . . . because at first it was all a bit confusing.

   What did it mean?

   And why did it fill me with such delight?

   Two lines going in opposite directions, and meeting! And meeting directly opposite from the place where they had begun from; because the World was round!  East met West, it really did!

   And the correlation? People are round. Oh! So East ones could meet West ones; if, that is, they truly travelled in opposite directions! One way of thinking and living, could meet its opposite way of thinking and living, and find itself saying the same thing, where they met!

   Like a pearl is round! ‘A pearl of truth’ is round! So, true inner truth would meet me opposite to ‘me.’ Inner truth would be found on the opposite side to ‘me:’ having the opposite thinking to my egotistical thinking: selfless thinking… if, that is, I went both ways around the pearl, at the same time! Which I did. Being split asunder. Knowing the difference between my true self, and my false self. Knowing my right hand, from my left hand. (And then I remembered Jonah, in Nineveh; and I wondered if he had understood?)

   Suddenly, my crazy drawing upon the page in front of me became ‘a-picture-answer:’ to the way of Life . . . or at least, to the way of my own inner life; it confirmed it, sort of. This was all about emptying and filling, and about two different things happening at the same time, which were same; and about standing upon the sharp end of a pin, without falling off on either side!

   Increase came only through decrease; and Life was in growing smaller to become larger; it was the only way of entry into the realm of eternal youth, and the kingdom of heaven, forever!

   Going westward or going right: I was surrendering and losing; while going eastward, or going left: I was filling up and gaining. That was the answer that did it! Two opposite directions ending up at the same place: which made you complete. …Complete! …My destiny!

   It was the faintest thing that did it. That set one upon the path of completeness. Small as pea that was felt, though it was under 20 mattresses. All the time making me ‘black and blue’ all over, from all the bruises that came in me, for feeling it. Feeling all my small points of need, where I was in need of the light of the pin-point stab to divide me asunder, to separate my wheat from my chaff, to sort out my right from my left, and in perfect balance set me gloriously free, circling the Earth, and me, in a split second!

   It was the lost pearl that did it; the missing truth which made complete... which was the entrance. The door was a pearl.

   Light was showing through the curtains. I closed the notebook, threaded the pen through the spiral, and left it on the bed while I climbed back under the bedclothes again; and with a smile on my insides, to bookmark the place I fell asleep and woke up very late.

                                                          * 

Story. ) The Well of Eternal Youth... Part Two... A Silk Purse & a Sow's Ear...

from new manuscript of short stories: A Circle of Swift Songs: A Circlet of Inner-Life Stories



      A Silk Purse & a Sow's Ear

                                               That men may not be grieved by it

                                               They leave the truth aside

                                               And move to other things

                                               More obtuse . . .

  

 I HAD BEEN STANDING looking at it. Just looking at it. The beautiful antique map on my wall. And it had struck me, that out of my surface ‘anything’ I could make a lively ‘something’ beneath it, which could show me what it is, I really wanted to know: the things that would change me, to bring me more and more into the light; which things, though, are naturally uncomfortable; change challenges my own status quo to alter my orbit. But I am not afraid.

   I had remembered this: It is not those things we want to know that help us the most and reveal what we’re after, but those we don’t want to know and turn from; the real treasure it was where we hadn’t looked for it before.

   This old map on my wall was made of inert paper; thick paper. ‘Thick,’ like me! But out of that, I could make a living-thing of inner joy which could teach me and change me. Out of all the ordinary things I saw around me, I could make something extraordinary; because I was silly enough to see inside me, and crazy enough, not to be too fearful to go there. I realized with delight that I had discovered the opposite of that old saying: ‘…You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

   (I had looked this proverb up in a concordance of the Bible; but I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. Apparently, it was a phrase coined by Stephen Gosson in the sixteenth century. In 1579, to be exact. And it is in the book, Ephemerides of Phialo: Deuided Into Three Bookes; p62v.)

   I had a feeling that I had so crossed a divide that now everything I looked at from inside of me had its mirror image of my inner life. It had in it, a helpful picture of the truth that went seemingly ‘against’ me, which unlovely insight could aid me in the journey of my life, and become my true and lasting treasure. Though, this reflection, of course, I could only receive, if I was happy enough with my being ‘crossed out.’

   But I could take a tough thing and make of it a delicate currency with which to ‘buy’ life . . . ‘gold tried in the fire.’ And then, an earful of un-connecting chatter from the muddied world could become a purse full of connecting gentility closeted securely beneath the usual conversation of the world.

    You see, I had become so terribly free . . . that I was glad, glad, glad that I was thick, and dumb, and stupid; and that all my treasures were only those the world discarded; those of a prodigal swineherd and a foolish son; for so was there ever accorded me an entrance into the kingdom of God; and a fatted calf. 

      

                                                                           *

  

_________________________

The quotes above are from my book, IN THE PATHS OF MYRDDIN WYLLT: Yn y Llwybrau Myrddin Wyllt; A Welsh Legend of Merlin.