A Spoken Voice.

Past and this morning mixed in a landscape and music.

I first heard this during a snowstorm. When white fell with the music. Trees hung bound hands down to the loch in storm reverence. Touch the water. The sky was washed without any other sound but plucked strings. Pieces fell.

A brief silence.

A line was drawn across the dark by a water bird sailing. A ghost hunted, quartering my personal landscape with a prayed map of prey. Silver light was married briefly to the board washed morning sky.

Tones played across white paper. Writing began with a lack of colour but brought with it a joyful dance.

Across my footprints in the snow.

A spoken voice in the language of these small islands

And a seabird wind fighting the shore

Mountains far shouted

To a mourn of the sea

Drum sounds hanging in time then falling

Around a rush of stone

Where worship wept

And a carved wooden cross

Was fixed to the sky

A cry in the seal voice on these rocks

And the piping of the small ones

Rising from the falling waters

Grasses that flow as your hair

Fine washed with face mist cleaned

Land that folds as you do.

A shawl that panics about your head

And a brief squall that falls across the water

Wet that cleaves to your body, darkening your clothes

A buzzard that echo mews in a depthless sky

Hanging in the world moving beneath its watchful circle

As a word presumed spoken direct to your mind

In the language of hunters and islands

Heather scratches its purple marks across rock and mountainside

Writing the words you say but cannot hear in the arguments of the restless

Hinds gather in command at the top of a lower hill.

Swept of its loneliness and sun shadows

Suddenly bright as laughing

And the owl ghost of you flies beyond me and into soft wet light

You rest silently into these stormed landscapes and love your present thoughts

Lingering in the white spinning air

 

 

Author's Note

The music was the late Martyn Barrett The Wedding. Listen to him if you get the chance.
The image is mine and is the view at the back of my house as I write.

Reviews

[Corset]

How absolutely beautiful.

[Ken Simm.]

Thank you so much. I am honoured you think so.

[Corset]

quite so my friend, very beautiful.

[Ed Hart]

my goodness Ken, what a song, what a potent scene...i am pinioned by the power of your words

[Ken Simm.]

Now that will enlarge an already large cranium.

[W.k.kortas]

There is a boatload of the remarkable here: the stunning eye for detail that is the hallmark of your work, naturally, but what also struck me was the interplay of religious symbol (the "carved wooden cross" which is "fixed to the sky") with what could be termed the pagan-- "the language of hunters and islands"-- or at the least the forces of nature, and it doesn't escape notice that it is the latter which has primacy here. The manner in which the piece both begins and ends with snow/whiteness is a marvelous technical touch, emphasizing the cyclical aspect of nature. It is always a pleasure to read the work of one at the height of his powers.

[Ken Simm.]

I feel at a loss to know how to reply. Other than to say a heartfelt thank you.

[willweb]

Ken, the music is in your poetry. Your words sing in soft tones echoing across the white mountains. Always when I read you it is a journey for my mind and my senses. Your photograph is beautiful and your poetry spellbinding. I find myself lost in your words, but happily lost, disovering new places, new sounds and spectacular views. Bravo my friend.

[Ken Simm.]

I am glad you were happily lost Will and not the other kind. Thank you.