The earth shifts to the sun,

Fire to you in the new year.

 

Wind shears the stars,

Water cleaves earth and rock.

Life edges in, surprised and glorious.

 

Tumble, clean, shift, cleave, fall, rise, combine:

Fire in you this new year.

The stone split, released with a crack from the mountain, and was carried, gently and urgently, by water currents to a sunny valley three mountains away from where it was formed.  It sat, looking at its journey, and slowly continued on its way, moved by and moving the other elements around it.

One day, a man returning from where he had been, passed by and wrote ‘1 mile from home’ on its sunny side.  “You don’t know the half of it” the stone smiled to itself, as it felt its friend the earth gradually cover its feet.

Coming down from the hills

We walk hand in hand with our friends

And with our selves

 

Smiling, as children join with us,

Inexorable allies and reminders;

Smiling, as bureaus and departments admit that, after all,

They are made of the same cloth which binds and warms us.

A deluge of boxes and labels

Lays spent and dead

 

We are partisan.

Armed with the irrepressible magnetism of who we are and what we know

Rather surprisingly, we find,

We are the winds of change.

 

We meet, and turn,

And recognise ourselves anew

In seas of lively faces.

We are partisan.

The day’s eye, feeling the suns heat,

Expands, unfurls;

Radiates, stretching out its red tips

To thrust its golden centre at the world

And get the benefit.

I find you find me

In times of silence and

Warm dark,

With a breeze just so

Soft enough to stir

The skin in hiding.

Come out of your shadows;

Come away from that familiar cold shelter

Come share the warmth of this fire –

Bring those sticks with you, eh?

They’re getting damp from the drips

Seeping through the rock,

Though the rain stopped hours ago.

Come share the warmth of this fire,

Build it up some and weave with me

A blanket made with fingers touch

And the warp & weft of

Motive, gentle trust.

Here –

Come build the warmth and let it

Soften our brittle edges

As we wrap together

And let the new sun rise.

a visual poem: a kind of 'note-to-self', following a particularly joyful encounter, full of possibility