In a squall

In a squall,
a sudden gust
along Commonside Ridge,
I rush to your oakside.
In that squall,
excited,
I see your leaves
bowling over the path.
Because of you
and the brushing squall
I remember joy.
I look up through
your browning tops
with their patterings
then down to where your stays
hold you fast.
In a squall,
I lean into your great girth.
You lean over me,
live pillar.
In that squall,
your slowsway is an
ocean liner coming
into the quayside,
slow shuddering,
lining up
to grind against something.
I fancy that I hear your heart
(unless it is mine)
beating out its
ancient reason.
I'd rather be crushed
by you than by
any mortal.
That would be
some kind of justice.

Here, at Rhoscolyn.27.03 2010.

What does this Nature do,
implacably, with majesty,
drawing from us
only vengeance against nothing.
So slowly, with grace,
she folds and crumples
the crust, sets the largest things
moving in a slow waltz,
the tiniest things trickling,
full-formed,
stranger than fiction,
sweet beyond imagining.

The Buzzard brown,
planing and keeling,
keening into her lift
is true,
while F19
fighters rend the sky
with awful roaring
and firecracking,
slashing and stunning,
ghastly beyond imagining.

For all our mixing,
our fixing of fact
our fighting impatience,
our fiddling to make faster,
there is nothing,
nothing we can ever do
to surpass her,
not even by stealing her,
subduing her,
snuffing her out,
shutting down her sweet light
with hard, glaring orange.

Here, at Rhoscolyn,
the pinpoint dancing
of diamond on azure
dazzles,
drawing the pleased eye.
In a March-stiff breeze
here are hares cantering,
black-tipped tuffets
matching each other,
matchless.
In an Indian spring
sentry Stonechats
lead us on
from pillar to post.

Here at Rhoscolyn,
Hen Harriers scissor
the dun marsh.
On a still March night,
here at Rhoscolyn,
there, in Palestine,
is the Pole Star
and witness friends
winking, pausing,
breath held still
to take ours in.

Oh stars,
dear stars,
oh how you are betrayed!

Wealth equals misery. 15.03.2010.

An article in the Observer 15.03.2010. by Jamie Doward discusses the relationship between wealth and misery. The findings by some researchers in The Economic Review that levels of happiness tend to stagnate as the people reach saturation point in terms of their consumption comes as no surprise.

Consumption eats the
soul away. Mammon maketh
man more miserable.


Wealth times consumption
divided by time equals
man-made misery.

Blair's Faith Foundation. 14.03.2010.

The Times highlights the growing influence of Tony Blair on the religious 'community' in America and Canada. He's busy forging links with the most dubious, affluent and economically strategic 'religious' leaders/foundations/billionaires.
His Foundation, however, is on rather shaky ground as he has presided over FIVE wars and the murder, during those wars, of hundreds of thousands of people, plus a few hangings(no wonder he joined up for Confessional). Moreover, he did so with a perpetual grin. As Shakespeare would have it 'one can smile, and smile and still be a villain.'
He is preparing to launch a Faith offensive after the launch of his book'The Journey', for which he netted a 4.5m advance.

Blairing about God,
his Faith Foundation's really
on dead shaky ground.