100: automatic like a rain dance

This is the 100th post to this weblog. So, I thought it made sense (to me, at least) to post a poem from the 'poem for 30 days'. I'm near the middle of this sequence now. This poem was written this morning. It is raw and un-edited. I like it like that. I did just the basic work on it before putting it into the folder. When I get to poem 30 I will then go through the whole manuscript with my editing twist on things. I will probably then work on a number of versions, improvisations on the original pieces etc.

Anyway, here is the poem, and happy 100th to this blog :-)


12 – automatic like a rain dance


Tuesday 25th January 2005


I am looking through the hole in the rocks at
the end of the valley, across the green expanse
to the vivid yellow wall at the far end,
and the rain is dripping off the bricks onto the ground below.

everything glistens like it is alive and alight,
and voices are sounding in my ears, making noise
not words or fragments that I can understand,
or any language that can help with what I am here to do now.

from behind I sense the air moving, I feel the cold on
the back of my neck, a spirit moving past me, leaving
a message which I may understand some day, but
not now, nothing now but the sound of rain across the valley.

and everything calling to me as automatic as the night
that follows day that follows night, all in the sense
that has a natural order, trying to describe the wordless wonder
that sits at the foot of the wall, red it is, cross legged & holding on -

looking upwards to the clear blue sky, watching the sun
as it speeds across from one horizon to the other.
time shifting with no sense now, all speed and fast frame
smelling the sounds and hearing the colours as though I have grasped sense

from the jaws of meaninglessness, the glint of a highlight
in the eyes of the code, wanting it all to be open to my senses
now that I can see beyond the framework of the here and now
to the timeless wonder of a valley within my mind.