And yet
what is mind ?
Say that we are
textual beings
readers of all things
say that words are
our common currency
our feelings
put into breath
our ideas
all notions
of time and space
all relationships
and especially
that shared passion
we call love
John Lyons
On a cold winter morning
the magpie bathes
in the garden bird bath
Three times I saw it
jump into the icy water
and flutter its wings
so as to wet itself
all over
and each time it jumped out
and sat shivering on the wall
fluttering it wings
in order to shake off the excess
before repeating the exercise
a plump black and white magpie
time carelessly beating in its breast
and who knows what
running through its mind
full of the joys of life
John Lyons
It is what it is
neither in the pale light of dawn
nor in the deepest dark of night
is it anything other
than what we give to each other
There’s a wholeness
about two people coming together
so that without suffering
a diminishment the selves fuse
into love’s common purpose
and note how each separately
exhilarates the other
with singular commitment :
it’s an exponential becoming
the sum of two being greater
than the single parts
We pool our solitudes
without wholly abandoning them
and just as we preserve our personal
time and space we permit ourselves
to wallow in that other heart-felt dimension
that is unique to our coexistence
John Lyons
Corrected text
Today I have
a mind of winter
a heavy frost overnight
has coated the cars
with freezing ice
and the glazed paths
are treacherous
underfoot
as I make my way
down to the station
now is no time to slip
and break a bone
in the darkness
A mind of winter
in which all things
fall back to the earth
trees stripped bare
to reveal hidden nests
a world it would seem
in disarray
in which things end
the only warmth
to be found
in the arms
of the one I love
the one I love
John Lyons
What Wallace took
from Emerson
that the beautiful rests
on the foundations
of the necessary
the poet’s fidelity
to his office
to the announcement
and affirmation
of the beauty of things
All form is an effect
of character
all condition
of the quality of life
The soul is the form
that makes the body
: the beauty of a rose
is not arbitrary
it is the embodiment
of a truth and only as such
does it enter our spiritual world
and love is the higher beauty
to which our human souls
necessarily aspire
John Lyons
The common English oaks
cast a towering shadow
over the platform
at Barnehurst station
the pedunculate oaks
with their sessile lobed
spirally-arranged leaves
twisted into rhyme
Time has again gone up in smoke
as autumn has drained
their lush green leaves
to the colour of tobacco
Clad in thick fuses of ivy
from head to toe
these trees are doomed
as their lifeblood
is slowly sucked away
No glorious spreading crown
for these emaciated specimens
no monstrous girth—
their acorns litter the ground
cracked and crushed
under relentless waves
of commuter feet
Time feeds on time
a parasite that will
one day bring these trees
crashing down to the earth
and so these rugged branches
will rot back into the soil
from which they once emerged
ash to ash
dust to dust
But the minerals
will rise again
the resurrection
of the molecule
is not an article of faith :
oak leaves are indeed
hands reaching out
to future hands
Wallace
John Lyons
Attuned to the eloquence of light
and shifting shades of darkness
all our perceptions coloured
by subtle changes of circumstance
a poetry steeped in mindful inflections
number breath and melody
the immense orchestration of life
whether in the busy thoroughfares
or simply contemplating an empty
landscape or watching the foamy sea
sift through sand on the shore
there were thirteen blackbirds
all of which took to the air
spread wings and flew out
beyond the poem back to where
they belonged in the innocence
of non-judgmental nature
poetry : the sacrament of praise
John Lyons
Instances of what we are
shifting portraits
temporal illusions
dressed for the occasion
in which context is all
The sea retains the memory
of creatures that crawled
onto dry land and evolved
into the open air
our beginnings like all
fresh starts
humble and grateful
for the opportunity to grow
We pray for the gift of music
for the gift of words
for the gift of love
for the gift of human solidarity
for the fragrance of flesh
freely given freely taken
for the imagination
to move forward
leaving the past behind
old lessons learnt
We despise effigies
and make our monuments
from the moment
we despise all that is feigned
that reeks of indifference
and phoney affections
The authenticity of life
demands
that love be genuine
that it should never be betrayed
and that the tongue
should be generous in its praise
of true beauty
and all earthly freedoms
John Lyons
A significant landscape
one in which you are present
or another in which your absence is noted
in which there is a snow-capped mountain
and a blue lake
and ants crawl across a dusty path
marking time
one in which the sun appears
or the moon
and an infinite number of stars
a silent landscape
or one in which the wind howls
and tall trees shake
a landscape in which
you might one day reappear
one in which your days
were once filled with love
before that too passed
along with faith and hope
and left you emotionally
destitute
Amid the chaos
amid the brash cacophony
an essential silence
at the centre of our being
in those moments
when the self is nursed
by the natural world
by observation
of all those rhythms
that echo those of our blood
the play of light on water
the movement of tall trees
that dance in the breeze
To them we owe life’s breath
and the beauty of autumn umbers
Every artistic gesture
dating back to the origins of time
is an act of love
the essence of the universe
is invention
John Lyons
