psycho-bubble

The green cathedral - collected poems #1

In a shop there was a photograph - 

a picture called ‘the green cathedral’.

I want you to imagine this wave;

and to do this, you must see the picture as I did,

hanging there, colours on the edge of breaking.

You will understand then that like me,

the photographer (the man who owns the shop)

has waited for this wave for decades.

 

So in the holy curl of its prayer we worship

and wait to click or paddle; the timing is everything,

even God cannot help us with this one.

So now imagine the moment when you

might whisper to the wave. Beckon it,

coax it into being, ride through Its shining halls,

capture its image and its memory.

Then hang it on your wall and go back for another one. 

 

The Green Cathedral was written for Gary Roberts - the man who owned the shop - and for his photograph of the same name. He’s not a surfer (Gary would be the first to admit that he’s a bit past it now), but he saw instantly that there was a surfer’s prayer in that wave; a waiting and a hanging and a whispering moment of time that could carry you to glory, or trash you on the rocks in careless indifference. 

 

From the Original poem - The Green Cathedral - from Pembrokehsire Poems box set, 2007 available HERE.

psycho-bubble: Collected poems

Blue morning

Inside I am still and collected. The sky was clean blue. The ocean too.

Swell bouncing off stones and the day is an oasis.

My inertia is catching; I must swim right through and out the other side.

Where the blue wave is waiting. 

Grey morning

A fortunate, grey morning and, in the fullness, the light tumbled.

People never stay. Their leaving takes place in layers of time.

You leave, then she leaves, then they leave, then I leave;

all that is left is the tumbling light and the clouds that we live within.

Colour dissipates and is gone till springtime dances in,

and the music chugs to a crescendo and the dancers return.

Sun and stone

Sun and stone reawakens. A new year takes a pause and blows again into the shore. Sand and silver sea; the glister of tides. A fishing boat nestles close into the harbour wall, waiting - waiting for a new opportunity. Water slaps against the hull and seals squeal into shelter. Rock and hewn face tumbles. Winter responds to our questions with a stone promise. Salt cakes my face. I hide from the early light, and watch the year flicker early into life; wake and grow. Welcome to your new world.

The winter butterfly

Around me the cloud of winter butterflies are rising. There is ice crackling in their wings, and the wind blows them from the hills to the sea.

It is a dreaming; a stream of static consciousness unfolding and coordinating like a murmuration of white starlings settling on the trees outside my door.

In the real world the relentless wind pours around this house. It is well crafted, warm, comfortable. Outside the wind and the rain soak into the brick and stonework, whilst inside the quiet white envelope, silence is held.

There is an echo of home, that will take some time to settle and seep into the walls’ memory. Her laughter is still tinkling; her indignant baby shouts reverberate. This house - born again this winter - will now always remember her when she returns.

I have always loved the word: chrysalis. It has the comfort of resting and the promise of growing. The winter butterfly has left today, but she will come back soon. 

Home

For the past part of the last two years we’ve been renovating an old granary in west Wales. And we moved in this weekend and I’m sitting here typing this in a new house masquerading inside old walls. It is a mix of gloriously, simple contemporary design and rural, weather-beaten, mud-surrounded reality. It is chic and authentic, and I look down its long lines and feel instantly at home.

I feel a little disloyal to the lovely, little stone barn that has been my home for the past eighteen months, and my inspiration for much longer. When I was there today it felt cold and a little neglected (even though we were living there until last Friday!).  I lit the fires and it regained its flickering charms, but as I left I felt sad. I remind myself that I will work there and it will gain a new purpose.

Home is not only where the heart is, but where you move on to. My heart is in two places: this battered old granary raised from the ruins, and the old coach house that heals and inspires. I am a lucky boy. I have love and know where I belong. And I give thanks.

A human responds

Frankly there were not many of us listening to your apology, so I doubt very much that the mess will be cleared in the very near future. By which time - well, who knows what species will have disappeared and how many of us will be desperately clamouring for you to send us a saviour?

For myself, I never believed in you anyway, which is ironic, since I seem to be one of the few that has heard your voice. 

Anyway. Apology accepted, assuming that the whole point of the gift is that it is given generously and freely (although perhaps you feel guilty because there were was some grandiosity in your gesture - in which case it would be unforgivable). 

So if I assume the best in your intentions, then you cannot take responsibility for the shit we made of your world with the intelligence you gave us. The worst I could say would be that I wish you’d perfected the ‘empathy’ bit a little more. That might have saved us all a whole lot of trouble.  

If you still feel responsible, however, then you could try helping clear up - you must have the odd divine spark left up there somewhere in that great vacuum cleaner in the sky.

For the first part of this dialogue see: http://psycho-bubble.tumblr.com/post/37120662069/a-deity-apologises

A deity apologises

I had no idea of where it would lead to, and that was the problem: a failure of foresight.

There was a spark. I sent it shimmering down from the heavens and it alighted - gently like a snow flake - onto the dry grass of your potential, and it took hold until it raged out of control like a bush fire, burning all before it. 

That was then. Now I cast my eyes over the desolation and wish it were not too late. I wish I had sent you something other than intelligence - bigger eyes or stronger hind legs, sharper teeth or an inherent sense of serenity, for example, something that would have been helpful in the general evolution of things.

I am sorry. I was wrong. I am anything but infallible. Don’t, whatever you do, believe in me or pin your hopes on my so-called great wisdom. I have forfeited the right to your faith. 

Now, if it is not too late, do you mind clearing up the mess you have made?

the preacher

As things gradually declined he became prone to preaching from the top of the steeple. He felt that this was an appropriate place to speak from, even though nothing at all uplifting ever went on inside. If he wasn’t closer to God, then he was closer to the birds, and closer to their ragged nests and hideaways, stuck to the side of the church roof. Sometimes it wasn’t even worth him coming down, and so on warm days in what used to be called Autumn, he would sit in the cleft between the pointed peaks, and no-one could see him from that far below. 

In the early days, the crowds would shuffle around and there would be the odd scuffle that he observed from above, staying still and safe as the gargoyles that shared his perch. Again, early on, he would descend to the cupboard beneath the ceiling of the main building where he had stored a stash of food and clothes. Yet as time went on, and the food pile declined, he would climb up and stand there for days, and the hunger would make him flushed and ecstatic. It was on these hungry days that he would preach for hours to the crows and the few people remaining who shuffled below, and then he would retreat inside and sleep.

In the month approximating to March the following year, his food ran out.

A micro-fiction, 2012