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
