A couple of pieces combining Iron Age Celtic imagery with the words those images inspired. Drawing and re-drawing the images,(the originals are on a very small scale, usually only one or two centimeters), words and ideas well up. if caught they form webs, spells, a stratification of constelated concept, a dream of a past that whispers through the too-certain, polite now.
VISION SPIRIT DANCERS
1
Turning towards birdsong,
Letting cold dawn filter
Fevered loves from traversed darkness,
Edges mapped, the contours of velvet lands,
Moonless, drenched in ocean tongues.
A rain of whispers, pattered leaves,
Gulped breathless,
Slight, shadowed.
2
They rise in moonless mist
Sway in cauldron of suns.
Mirrored on bright waters,
Vulgar, unsullied,
Possessed and possessing,
Mapping the lines of light,
Stirring the small white seed:
The fog of becoming futures,
Hungry for eyes and rhythm,
An enclosure of centres.
3
Through, rising upon, resting upon,
Dancing the mists of dawn,
Continuing on paths -
Trails whispered along moonless nights.
Silver mirrored glint,
Soft, percussive gold.
Day and night their rhythm
Adopting the breath of stone,
The gesture of forest.
4
Entrance motions into air
A new cascade, wave rounded, keeled
A fishing cast out, hauling silver gold
Mind numbed movers, serving sinuousity,
Snake-winded, breath-warmed,
Yeast of need.
5
Spinning internal spaces
(That certainty of axis upon sound).
Finding the betweens,
A devotion to subtle orbits.
6
Every thought a dancer.
Spin away centre to centre
Tight-whorled, fine thread
Tied time to time
Place to place.
Confirmation of possession
(A test of understanding).
Dressed ghosts on pathways familiar.
Clap and footfall, the song of breath.
Building up rhythms
The birds of dawn.
Rolling back on itself
The river clothed in light.
Doors to others eddy open and close
The eyes of ancestors,
Their tongues along lines.
SNAKE SPIRAL TORC
We slide spiralling
Ferociously nonchalent
Eyes on fire, laughing.
The tumble of sun on sun
The silk whisper, pale moonlight
Equations piled up,
The footprints marking time,
Precise dancers through space.
A knot upon hillsides,
A marching shadow in the valley.
Enchained to the motion,
Slave of raw power, sudden beauty.
This is our sign.
That we dance the dance
Between dusk and dawn
According to the paths before us.
