Category Archives: Flight

2010

around the zodiac with my shapeshifting spirit guide

again, just posting this in the correct place now…my winning piece from last year – (back when i was GlastoBard MMX)  !!!

<< around the zodiac with my shapeshifting spirit guide >>

 

I saw a noble Holy man

Through Michael’s tower, atop the Tor…

This Hopi showed me such Shamanic plans

Translucently, from way beyond the door –

“Just as a True Brave is a Chief

The Light have their own motif”

(He sang), “Course, what’s truly beyond belief

Is despite their many and varied Beliefs

Not one of them really Believes they believe…

If one wishes to learn how to fly

They should first be grounded.”

As we landed at Wick Hollow

His lesson was how language can fly

Both off the page and to the ear:

 

Well heard, then, The Word is infernally blurred

It’s internally skewed

Yet, in turn, is ETERNALLY LOUD!

 

And, floating, (above, beyond, across)

Is something sadly lost

(Not a freefall drop in the ocean of plop!)

 

Only cosense can ‘co-pilot’ quiet compliance

To coping, collective, co-operative, conscious –

Not the con science of conscience but the Up Wards of upwards.

***********************************************************************************

 

Appearing, once again, my Guide

Invoked in me Mindchemistry

Such as to summon up

The Silver Tongue and the Blarney Stone.

He stood by me now as a Leprechaun

But forthwith… Shapeshifted… into a Pixie…

“To see from above with detachment

Means first to sight from below.

What’s directly around you should astound you

Outside your insides”, he Piped, anext the Holy Thorn:

 

I’ve drunk Willy Wonka’s lifting drink in dreams

I sat up in my body, half-grounded, half ‘midst the astral plains

But i’ll fly at prescription and outrageous discrimination.

 

I’ve seen his outrage lift, as clouds disseminate with bluesky thinking

I’ve felt her tiniest footfall brush, flicked, windswept, such flyaway hair!

I’ve known our love to elevate such that it emanates around and between.

 

*********************************************************************************************

 

I turned to the Mahatma

(As he now showed himself)

– My Aether Guru smiled

Without moving his face.

“Take me to the next Level?” I inquired,

But realised here we were

And from between the Abbey Columns

We Stargated into the Portal

To Receive the Lore of Language

Elevated by subtlety:

 

The Cwn Annwn curs

(Those most Hellish hounds)

Appear, at first, to fly Valkyrie-like

 

In stealth and ravaging lurch

They savage and scavenge for wounds

Each on opposite battlefields, purest unalikes

 

But both Gwyn Ap Nudd’s sanguinest pack at work

And Odin’s noble soldier slakers, ‘twixt otherhoods,

Soar and swoop, detect, select, glide, quite alike.

 

*****************************************************************

 

Now Black Hawk stood before me,

Imploring me under his wing;

Perched, we were, on Gog and Magog in turn.

Up with the Lark, Lucid Dreaming,

Vision came upon me,

Projected on-the-wing from my Flight Attendant,

It was Suggested:

 

There’ll be Bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,

There be Dragons and ‘Ell ’Ounds o’er Glaznbry Tor!

Where a man can emerge, Phoenixlike, at Winter Solstice –

A Somerian becoming a Phoenician!

Eaches’ flight, both from and to the Holy Apple Isle

Landed them HERE!

Where Bards trade and perform before

The finest fellow Bards,

Artists, Musicians, Magicians,

Healers, Actors and Dancers.

 

****************************************************************************

 

Just then, as I Scried, I Espied

My Companion and Muse

Was no man at all and Revealed

The True I.D. of this Paraglider

Was none other than Bridie, who sighed:

“The Sylph, at once Sylvan and Silver and Sylfaen,

Like Modron and Morgan and Magdelene;

The Maiden, the Woman, the Crone

Are the Daughter, Lover and Mother.”

And here, on her Mound,

I felt at one with the Earth and the World –

Rose again from her Womb

To hear Her Symphonise:

 

 

A Bard must take Wing,

They must Thrust with sheer Guts

And Lift through selfless soliloquy…

Float over hopeless with hopeful mot-justes…

Soar with inspired integrity…

And beat their metaphorical wings with Flapful Intensity…

Casting their words to the Heavens to Boost

The Air of their carefully pared-down panache…

Forsooth, seeking proof of what Appears to Hover over us

(Not Clouded or Blurred)

Till what’s onerous is feathered to (no more than) alas.

 

***********************************************************************************

 

We Circled now, between the White and Red Springs

And came to rest at Chalice Well.

My Guardian Angel, though nowhere to be seen,

Was right beside me all the while!

Her presence felt, her voice in my head simply said:

 

There are many Flightpaths to the same Knowledge;

Flight is merely a Launch without a Path.

In order to achieve Flight

The Bard must Consider

The Properties of their Words –

Levels of Thrust and Application…

The Balance of Lift and Drag…

Their Planform, both Aspect Ratio and Wing Loading…

That they may Ascend to Descend…

Sideslip and Whiffle…

Till all their Apparel

Is Knitted together like the Barbules of a Feather.

 

***************************************************************************

 

Fleeting in a Fly-past, over the Levels,

Rushing across Airways and riding Airwaves.

We saw Wells and Cheddar, Pilton and Ebbor,

Cadbury, Dundon and Burrowbridge.

“What does MAN want from Flight

But to See and Be Above?

COARSENING Nature’s plight

Devolves and Disenvolves us

– The Forceful Might

Wills His Will”,

Said the Goddess Sprite.

“This has always been Felt around Glastonbury –

Since Ynys Witrin and the Fair Avalon of Albion”.

Then, to our great delight,

We saw something more:

 

In Days of Yore ALL Bards would look to Birds

For Portents, signs from High Above this earth,

So what (ON Earth) have present Bards to Learn?

 

 

Look to the Skies!

A Murmuration of Starlings fell out of the Sky

At Coxley and murmur no MORE…

Volcanic Ash Clouds

Prevented the take-off of all flights

By a BloodRed Sunset, threatening something MORE…

Don’t tell the Bees!

Their number is in serious decline

Workers and Drones Swarm to the Queen till MORE…becomes less.

 

Jenny Wren, the King of Birds,

Perched on Golden Eagle’s Wings,

Once above the highest clouds,

Flew Higher than the weary one.

 

Will We, as Onenation, TAKE flight

To emerge, Phoenix-like, again, on the Other Side

Of what the Mayans described and Prophecised?

 

I check the Pilot Light –

Still Burns, But Shines in Our Eyes…

Yet, yes, we can still be

Ski Jumpers, Freefallers, Street Surfers,

Base Jumpers, Free Runners, High Divers,

Trapeze Artists, Wirewalkers and Glider Pilots.

 

 

 

But MAN has gone beyond the sky,

Infiltrated the atmosphere

And Wished upon a Star to be as Earth…

So I looked again to the Birds

For some Words which would Inspire Insight…

 

Herons clutch a stone in their claw

To prevent them, when dropping-off, from plummeting…

Hummingbirds hang, half-hiding magnificent industry

Through seemingly effortless stillness…

Hawks pierce with their allseeing eyes

But only strike when the time is right…

 

Alone, atop the Tor again,

I realise now I have always known

That when a Bard lets fly

We can either take flight

Or get in Formation!

 

 

© Tony Atkinson,  2010,  Fifth Chaired Bard of Ynys Witrin or Glastonbury or Avalon

Open Gorsedh 2010

Flight Poster The theme for 2010 was “Flight”

New members of the Bardic College:

  • Stuart Carr
  • Vanda Lloyd
  • Phil Stretch :: Crown 2010.
  • Harmony Davies :: Crown 2012 and 2013.
  • Michael Malik
  • Pok :: Honorary Bard.
  • Alison Hall :: Regular Judge.
  • Amber le Faye Moon :: Lady of Avalon 2010.

Declan Millar became our first Younger Bard; Kat Brown was awarded the Tim Sebastion Memorial Trophy; Phil Stretch got the Crown and Tony Atkinson was chosen to become the fifth Bard of Ynys Witrin.