WOODLAND HAIKU
This lone shape
emerging from under-wood:
Who am I?
Contemplative Inquiry
This blog is about contemplative inquiry
Tag: Nature poetry
November 13, 2019
SACRED SOUNDSCAPES
“Concepts of animism can take many forms. … The idea of the land being capable of speaking to humans was probably widespread in ancient sensibility. Sacred soundscapes were simply a natural corollary.
“The basic notion of the land having speech, or being read like a text, was lodged deeply in some schools of Japanese Buddhism – in early medieval Shingon Esoteric Buddhism, founded by Kukei, for instance. He likened the natural landscape around the Chuzenji temple and the lake at the foot of Mount Nantai, near Nikko, to descriptions in the Buddhist scriptures of the Pure Land, the habitation of the buddhas. Kukei considered that the landscape not only symbolised but was of the same essence as the mind of the Buddha. Like the Buddha mind, the landscape spoke in a natural language, offering supernatural discourse: ‘Thus, waves, pebble, winds, and birds were the elementary and unconscious performers of the cosmic speech of buddhas and bodhisattvas,’ explains Allan Grapard (1994).
” …. ….
“Throat singers in Tuvan, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation, developed their vocal art originally as a means of communicating with their natural environment, not for entertainment. Throat singing involves the production of resonant sounds, overtones and whistles within the throat, nasal cavities, mouth and lips, and was used to provoke echoes or imitate natural sounds like waterfalls or wind. The master throat singers can select precise locations inside caves where the resonances are exactly right to maximise the reverberations of their songs. They even wait until atmospheric conditions are perfect for the greatest effect. It is in essence a technology of echoes. At one locale, where a singer called Kaigal-ool performed in front of a cliff face, ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin reported that ‘the cliff and surrounding features sing back to the musician in what Kaigal-ool calls a kind of meditation, a conversation I have with nature‘ (Levin & Suzukei, 2006).
“It is only in our modern culture that we have stopped listening to the land within a spiritual context. If we could fashion a modern, suitably culturally-ingrained animistic model, we would treat the environment with much more respect.”
Paul Devereux, in his Foreword to Greening the Paranormal: Exploring the Ecology of Extraordinary Experience August Night Press, 2019. Edited by Jack Hunter. See: http://www.augustnightpress.com
October 9, 2019
POEM: WALKING
Poem by seventeenth century Anglican mystic Thomas Traherne, whose life will be celebrated tomorrow, 10 October.
To walk abroad, is not with Eys
But Thoughts, the Fields to see and prize;
Els may the silent Feet,
Like Logs of Wood,
Mov up and down and see no Good,
Nor Joy nor Glory meet.
Ev’n Carts and Wheels their place do change,
But cannot see, tho very strange
The Glory that is by;
Dead Puppets may
Move in the bright and glorious Day,
Yet not behold the Sky.
And are not Men than they more blind,
Who having Eys yet never find
The Bliss in which they mov;
Like statues dead
They up and down are carried,
Yet neither see nor lov.
To walk is by a Thought to go;
To mov in Spirit to and fro;
To mind the Good we see;
To taste the Sweet;
Observing all the things we meet
How choice and rich they be.
To note the Beauty of the Day,
And golden Fields of Corn survey;
Admire the pretty Flow’rs
With their sweet Smell;
To prais their Maker, and to tell
The Marks of His Great Pow’rs.
To fly abroad like active Bees,
Among the Hedges and the Trees,
To cull the Dew that lies
On evry Blade,
From evry Blossom; till we lade
Our Minds, as they their Thighs.
Observ those rich and glorious things,
The Rivers, Meadows, Woods and Springs,
The fructifying Sun;
To note from far
The Rising of each Twinkling Star
For us his Race to run.
A little Child these well perceivs,
Who, tumbling among Grass and Leaves,
May Rich as Kings be thought.
But there’s a Sight
Which perfect Manhood may delight,
To which we shall be brought.
While in those pleasant Paths we talk
‘Tis that tow’rds which at last we walk;
But we may by degrees
Wisely proceed
Pleasures of Lov and Prais to heed,
From viewing Herbs and trees.
Denise Inge (ed.) Happiness and Holiness: Thomas Traherne and His Writings Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2008 (Canterbury Studies in Spiritual Theology)
July 5, 2019
WHEN I WAS A CREEK
When I was
a tree,
I sang and danced
with the wind
and offered
food and refuge
to all who came.
When I was
a cloud,
I floated freely,
bringing
shade and rain
wherever they
were needed.
When I was
a creek,
I flowed effortlessly
around stones
and nourished life
everywhere
I went.
When I was
a seed,
I held
the story
of what
I would become
inside me
until the sun
and rain
let me know
it was time
to share it.
When I was
a flower,
I opened up
to reveal
my beauty
and invited the bees
to share
the sweetness.
Now I am
human
and can do so many things,
yet I am
full of questions
about who I am
and why I’m here.
Kai Siedenburg Poems of Earth and Spirit: 70 Poems and 40 Practices to Deepen your Connection with Nature Our Nature Connection, 2017
CONTEMPLATION
I like this poem for its economy and simplicity, and for its gentle, shape-shifting animism – for the ease with which it moves between identities in nature. For me, there is power and beauty in this, all the better for a relative lack of ornament.
As a human, I do feel a bit set up. Whereas the rest of nature is awarded an innocence and generosity not always evident in the apparent world, we humans are implicitly stigmatised for our questions, and thereby separated from the rest of nature. In our mainstream culture (both religious and secular) we place ourselves above the rest of nature, so the polar opposite perspective does have a corrective value. But it leaves me unsatisfied.
My sense is that the writer is placing herself alongside me, the reader, and the other humans. She is not awarding herself a free pass on the grounds of her vividly present and enacted imaginative empathy. So I would say to her what I say to myself. As I read it, there’s a strong invitation to self-compassion in the last verse.
Our finite minds are as natural as anything on earth.. Our questions about who we are, why we’re here and what to do are part of us. For me, the only way through them is become more skilled in the process of inquiry and to learn to live by its fruits. I value this poem partly through what it evokes directly, and partly because it stimulates useful inquiry.
June 5, 2019
POEM: A SPECIAL DAY (CHOSEN FOR ELAINE)
Today
is a very special day.
Today we celebrate
sun and rain,
light and dark,
the cycles of life,
the great turning
of the wheel.
Today we celebrate
every leaf on every tree,
every feather on every bird,
every drop of water in every stream.
Today we celebrate
green growing ones and winged ones,
two leggeds and four leggeds,
all who walk, crawl,
swim or fly.
We celebrate
each breath of air,
each morsel of food,
each beat of our hearts,
each healthy cell.
We celebrate
the profound miracle
of being alive
in this body
in this moment
on this planet.
Today,
like every other day,
is a very special day.
Kai Siedenburg Poems of Earth and Spirit: 70 Poems and 40 Practices to Deepen your Connection with Nature Our Nature Connection, 2017
(Poem shared on the occasion of my wife Elaine’s birthday. It was transcribed for me on a card sent to me on my own birthday last month. It prompted me to buy the collection, which I recommend.)
May 1, 2019
POETRY FOR THE MERRY MONTH
Below are two versions of late fourteenth century verse, written by an anonymous English author, probably from North Staffordshire or Cheshire. It depicts the turning of the wheel of the year as it moves through spring into summer.
The first version is a mid-twentieth century translation by J.R.R. Tolkien. The second is the original. The poem is embedded in the text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which arguably shows an immature warrior class (King Arthur’s knights) being taken down a peg by the primal forces of nature.
The extract here stands outside the main narrative, which occurs during the Christmas festivities of one year and the Hallowe’en to Christmas period of the next.
“But then the weather in the world makes war on the winter,
Cold creeps into the earth, clouds are uplifted,
Shining rain is shed in showers that all warm
Fall on the fair turf, flowers there open,
Of grounds and of groves green is the raiment,
Birds as busy a-building and gravely are singing
For sweetness of the soft summer that will soon be
On the way.
And blossoms burgeon and blow
In hedgerows bright and gay;
Then glorious musics go
Through the woods in proud array.
After the season of summer with its soft breezes,
When Zephyr goes sighing through seeds and herbs,
Right glad is the grass that grows in the open,
When the damp leaves
To greet a gay glance of the glistening sun”. (1)
“Bot thenne the weder of the worlde with winter hit threpes,
Colde clenges adoun, cloudes uplyften,
Shyre schedes the rayn in schowres ful warme,
Falles upon fayre flat, flowres there schewen.
Bothe groundes and the greves grene are her wedes,
Bryddes busken to bylde, and bremlych syngen
For solace of the softe somer that sues thereafter
Bi bonk;
And blossoumes bolne to blowe
Bi rawes rych and ronk,
Then notes noble innoghe
Are herde in wod so wlonk.
After, the sesoun of somer with the soft wyndes,
Quen Zeferus syfles himself on sedes and erbes;
Wela wynne is the wort that waxes theroute,
When the donkande dewed dropes of the leves,
To bide a blysful blusch of the bright sunne.”
(1) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo translated by J. R. R. Tolkien New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1975
(2) C. Cawley (ed.) Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight London: Dent & New York: Dutton: Everyman’s Library, 1962
May 7, 2018
POEM: FIELD AND SKY
At the sallow’s* gap
we step through the hedge
and are nothing but field and sky.
Hares race, lurching
to a tussle,
their frenzy printed in the soil.
The kestrel soars –
pausing, head down,
to sew with the finest needle. (1)
I like this poem for two reasons. The first is as a beautifully written nature poem. The second is the experience it triggered for me in the second and third lines:
we step through the hedge
and are nothing but field and sky.
It is as if the hedge is a portal, and stepping through it takes us into another world, changing us into field and sky. Yet it is the same world, experienced differently. In this version we contain the natural world, holding the lives of hare and kestrel.
Contemplative moments like this – whether directly in nature or evoked in poetry – can take me out of my boundaried sense of self and place me more fully in the flow of experience and relationship. In their afterglow, I feel a certain poignancy at the fragile, ephemeral, not-to-be-taken-for-granted quality of such connections.
*salix caprea, also called pussy willow
(1) Colin Oliver High River Sudbury: Downstream Press, 2006 (Available from poetry section of the shop at http://www.headless.org/ )
December 20, 2017
POEM: A WINTER EDEN
Warmest wishes to everyone for the festive season and the coming year. Here and now I don’t have a ‘deep midwinter’ feeling, despite the short days. I’ve been walking by my local canal in a largely green world, with a defining image of sunlight on ivy. Alders are growing catkins. Midges abound. Robert Frost’s poem below, in a snowy New England setting, celebrates the exuberance of life whenever it gets a chance.
A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.
It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer heaven overhead,
And last year’s berries shining scarlet red.
It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beast
Where he can stretch and hold his highest feat
On some wild apple tree’s young tender bark,
What well may prove the year’s high girdle mark.
So near to paradise all pairing ends:
Here loveless birds now flock as winter friends,
Content with bud-inspecting. They presume
To say which buds are leaf and which are bloom.
A feather-hammer gives a double knock.
This Eden day is done at two o’clock.
An hour of winter day might seem too short
To make it worth life’s while to wake and sport.
Robert Frost
November 13, 2017
POEM: THE SADNESS OF THE GORGES
Above the gorges, one thread of sky;
Cascades in the gorges twine a thousand cords.
High up, the slant of splintered sunlight, moonlight;
Beneath, curbs to the wild heave of the waves,
The shock of a gleam, and then another,
In depths of shadow frozen for centuries;
The rays between the gorges do not halt at noon;
Where the straits are perilous, more hungry spittle.
Trees lock their roots in rotted coffins
And the twisted skeletons hang tilted upright;
Branches weep as the frost perches
Mournful cadences, remote and clear.
A spurned exile’s shriveled guts
Scald and seethe in the water and fire he walks through.
A lifetime’s like a fine-spun thread,
The road goes up by the rope at the edge.
When he pours his libation of tears to the ghosts in the stream
The ghosts gather, a shimmer on the waves.
Meng Chiao (751 – 814) in Poems of the Late T’ang Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965 (Translated with an Introduction by A. C. Graham)
October 27, 2017
POEM: PIUTE CREEK
One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge
Gone in the dry air.
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow.
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.
Gary Snyder. From The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness and Joy edited by John Brem. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2017
