The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendel Berry

"The only journey is the one within"

"I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other"
Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a young poet

Corporeal

Cruising Paradise - for Sam Shepard

                                            Moss      winter    2018

December

I lie on my bed and stare out through the vertical blinds into the smoky white sky, and try to hold onto a single thought.
Nothing comes.
Everything is static and I can't find the answer that I need.
It's like I'm standing at the edge of a long tunnel, calling out into the dark and the only thing I hear is the echo of my own voice trailing off into the blackness.

The end of the road

Revolving towards another beginning

Insignificance

"The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water."
W. Somerset Maugham - The Razor's Edge

Epeius

Nobody can save you but yourself. You will be put time and time again into nearly impossible situations. They will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. Nobody can save you but yourself.
Charles Bukowski

Me estas mirando? part 2

Santa Fe

come per incanto

The river Don navigational canal

For Alena

Alena Kolosarova 1928 - 2018
Rest in Peace

Ίρις

"And now Iris, fleet as the wind, was sent by Jove to tell the bad news among the Trojans."

The Iliad Book II

The road east

Who were you yesterday,
blowing through the curtain in my memory

me estas mirando?

A fire on the horizon

He stood on the beach and watched the black water splash on the frozen sand like a million unanswered cries for help. The dementia of overwhelming loss gripped his heart and it left him impotent on the shore. He closed his eyes and thought of her somewhere far away and he imagined her smooth skin reflected on the water caught in tiny fragments of perfectly distorted beauty and piece by piece the images of that world slipped and slid in the tide and were taken away. He screamed at the ocean until every last drop of energy left his weary bones and when he had finished and after he had emptied his soul out into that void at the edge of time he started to cry.

voyage au bout de la nuit

voice

                                                              Kissing Oaks      Moss       Yorkshire

A persons voice triggers a much more complex, intimate and expressive connection that a photograph can.

The future has always been there

The tree I climbed when I was a kid

sometimes

Sometimes I wonder if I am nothing more than a collection of memories

This is the way I look at the world

from darkness to light

Solaris - a love story

“What is art? ... Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.” 
- Andrei Tarkovsky

Roads

10 - 10 - 10

                                            Moss           Yorkshire          2018

to be aware of other realities

La Jetée

A Wild Sheep Chase

"Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die"
- Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

Canada geese

looking at the place I come from after being away for decades

A Promise

                                                  Fishlake                      Autumn                2018

"Love is harder to give up than life"
Journey to the end of the night - Celine

The last days of summer (my dreams from this room)

                          Mileticova       Bratislava     Summer     2018

Evenings with the sound of buzzing mosquitos and memories flowing through my mind. Cool mornings awakening to the blue light and birdsong of the dawn chorus. A distant church bell and the voices of children clattering against each other like bright colours splashed across a grey wall. Trying in vain to hold on to the fading edges of a dream that briefly became a reality and that will one day sink into the deep ocean of subconscious. To be fully aware of the infinite pleasure and great cost of a single kiss. To watch shadows grow longer until they eventually expire as the magic hour draws to its conclusion. To love with my eyes and heart your clouds and trees, your old staircases and narrow streets and the light as it catches in the long grass that dances in the breeze. To walk slowly and talk quietly and spend these moments collecting memories, brief snatches of time that fill me with joy. To be awakened from the slumber and numbness of loss with the feeling that I can continue this journey knowing that it is possible to learn as much from failure as it is from success and to know the similarities as well as the differences.

Thank you Bratislava for these years of learning and growing.

Journeys

From here to there -
fifteen years gone

To watch the suns faded glow reflected on the ocean
and sift the sand in search of a pearl
to let regret dissolve
and be released from the chains of unfulfilled memories
to throw the shreds of negativity into the air
and watch it all wash away with the tide

life in the palm of your hand

A poem to the heart of the one who gets tired too early
tenderness craves one more kiss before it learns to regret
all of the time we can fit through the eye of a needle
measured out lines that we draw up and let out the door
offering kindness as if it were your last day
suffering will free you enough to suffer some more
sitting here early not wanting to miss the transport
take me away to the place I used to call home
back to a memory 
something that no longer exists.