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Poem 2008 Velicky Stit in Tatra Mountains (my painting)
A Larch in the Tatra Her rust rosettes were veiled in pure, soft snow and in the mist and silence, she whispered, “Write for me!” And because I loved her and she was alone and with no voice, I wrote: “I am waiting in the dark forest of pine and spruce till spring to give…
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Shiitaki 椎茸
Two, no three years ago I inoculated a pile of logs with Shiitaki spawn. Almost every day in passing that log pile I half remembered Frost’s poem, ‘The Log Pile’, where in later time a passing stranger might wonder who left those rotten logs. “….It was a cord of maple, cut and splitAnd piled—and measured,…
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Imagination Breaks Open
To arrive at my shelteryou should follow the coast and keep the mountain on your right. You are lost and each rise opens a fresh fractal of brackenor heather covered broken rocks. Bogs, lochs and cliffs redirect a difficult way. Suddenly, you might enter another world! The rocks burst openrevealing a tiny inlet of the…
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Nymphatic
Be nymphatic with your sunbeam net. Catch them on the wing, but peek through the holes. The whole poem opens from the glimpse of a nymph.
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Flute Notes
One note on my flute awakens another. Gulls call from City roofs and village piers. Cockerels awaken the country. And from my bed I hear the temple’s sonorous bell. Awake you legion gods and demon To strange sweet melody and dance.
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Sycamore
Yesterday, I put you to the saw, sawed you limb from limb and cut your trunk to six inch slices. Today, I axed those slices, soft as cheese, splitting them along the clean fine grain. Alien, they call you but you grow fast and well with aphids for the wrens and pollen for the bees.…
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Autumn Prayers
Above me, beneath me, and falling to earth, Autumn prayers
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Bothy in Scotland Part 2
Children’s Song by R. S. Thomas We live in our own world, A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge. And though you probe and pry With analytic eye, And eavesdrop all our talk With an amused look, You cannot find the centre…