The Kite

Photo: WHB: N.Yorkshire – 2020   ©

As I watch
I marvel
In the silence
At the steady
Rise and fall
The relentlessness
Of that
Sinister hover
That searchlight gaze
The taughtness
Swoop-ready
Slight rise here
There a minimal
feathered fall
And always
The graceful motion
Governed by the gentle breeze
And those deadly eyes
Ever searching
For quarry

Oh the stillness
The forbidding silence
Alive with threat
Fine-tuned tension
So aware
Watchful
For that significant stir
in the grass below
That silent murmur
Minimal movement

No more than
a tension in the air
A breathing of the grass beneath
To excite his gaze
And trigger
His thunderbolt descent

 

Photo: WHB: N.Yorkshire – 2020   ©

Reverie #9: Echoes of the Past

Pen & Ink – WHB … Northern Hills

I need to listen to that hidden sound of silence
the murmur that thrills lost souls
and as it swells
reverberates among those distant heathered hills

I crave to hear it burgeon on that lonely land
that misty moor of distant memory
where dwell lush images of the Green Hill
of the High Cliff
the Cass Rock
the Apple Garth
and the bubbling burbling beck
its red waters blooding its banks
with reminders of its ferrous track

A distant memory
rising from deep beneath those ancient northern hills
born of Nature’s cycle
birthed in ironstone
and nurtured in those recurring dreams of my youth
and the lasting images of my old age

Samuel Palmer’s ‘Evening Church’

Samuel Palmer’s Evening Church

 

In the summer evening’s stillness
under the calm
of the the sickle moon
Evensong is softly sung.
The gentle breeze
catching only the occasional sigh
On the evening’s air.
The hope of summer
rests in the gently rolling hills,
the golden sheaves of garnered corn
and the lushness of the blackberries
in the hedgerows.
With solemn seriousness
Nature sighs
and as the evening cools
the silence of the scene
is pierced occasionally
by God’s evening hymn.

 

Morning Glory

‘Sunrise’ … Watercolour – WHB – 2014

Let me go
Let me run in the early dew
To brush against the laurel’s leaves
Tread the cool earth’s cushion
And linger in the dampness of the silent wood.

Before the cooing of the collared bird,
The bite of the new day’s busy-ness,
Its threats and promises,
Breaks into the stillness of my morning world
And ruptures this mood of mystery
Of thrill and almost menace,
Leaving me to face another day of reality
One more acceptance of the wrenching truth.

 

Stillness

 

‘Solitude’: Rydal Water, Cumbria, The Lake District, UK … Pen & Ink – WHB 1991  ©

 

 

This stillness and the beauty all around me

Bring with them peace and grace for which I yearn;

For here among the lakes and mountains resting

I sense my hopes and dreams will now return.

 

For now I’ve reached a time when life has bitten,

Reminding me of pleasures once enjoyed;

Since lost in cares and daily obligations

How Nature can supplant and fill the void.

 

Its healing powers I know and cannot question;

They bring delights I cannot bear to miss.

They sing to me of other loves and places,

And speak to me of other times than this.