Zen Spring

The quote was on a Facebook friend's Daily Zen for today. The photo was taken in Princes Street Gardens east end on Wednesday evening.

Jewel in the Crown, Swan in the Royal Park

I was privileged to spend the day yesterday based at Historic Scotland Education Office in Holyrood Park. I was facilitating a training day for a very ethnically diverse group and we were taken on a ranger-led walk which included making a nature's palette and learning what to feed and not feed the swans. We reckon we were the most ethnically diverse group to have walked together in the Park!

The swans are looking wonderful as they are in mating plumage and showing off to one another. These swans belong to the queen, the Park belongs to the queen hence the swans being jewels in the crown...

Beauty in brokenness

New through Old

Raked over and swept clean
cleared of rotting matter
my flower bed sits and waits
barren, empty,
fertility tidied away

Sifted through by bird and beast
coated with last year's matter
the embankment sits and waits
pregnant, busy
bulbs soon pushing through

Nothing can be created or destroyed from nothing
there is no growth without some dying
no New Testament without the Old
new beginnings come through pain of labour
the buds are brighter for their struggle.

The brighter the sun the deeper the shadows...

Butterfly corpse in March

Colour still bright with one section missing a Peacock butterfly's body lay outside the pharmacy. I got odd looks from passers-by for crouching down to pay my respects and take its photo. I wonder what its story is?

I am just completing my assignment for Pastoral Care and Theology on the subject of Continuing Bonds as a model for grief.  That, alongside writing my other assignment for the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" which is an obituary for Jesus, means that i am even more preoccupied than usual with the shadows.  This poem is written for all those i love.  As i wrote it, various people drifted through and influenced it:

Ruminating on Losing You

I am still here

and you too are here

but also gone

in this dark daydream of mine

you are lost to me and to the world

in that obvious fleshly way,
your body spread in particles beneath the ancient yew

but i am still here

in that obvious all-too-fleshly way
my body spread across the space

between my essence and the world

i wish that it were otherwise

that you were here and i was gone

for you tread so softly
bring such solace to those you touch

if you were here i might stay

might find a way to tolerate

this cumbersome attire

this body that weighs me down

on waking from my daydream

i find that i am definitely still here

and when i turn to look for evidence

you too are here

and i am soothed

and more content

to stay awhile

longer...

Walking to therapy

Feather image reflection

Frozen poetry

Angel on the path

feather caught on frozen canal

blessing released

feather on the breath of the

Divine, the Cosmic Swan

Trapped

held

stuck

by ice

to the surface

of the once-more frozen canal

Angel skimmed low across the surface

left a trail

of white feathers

sometimes

i see a feather

most times i feel a presence

every time i receive a blessing

Brewing and stewing

Words on the Way

Clouds swan-down on breeze
speed-limit redundant
when the sky is so blue
i go slow, don't rush
(at least until the risk of a library fine
makes me step up my pace...)

Black-headed gull
stalls in frosted air
caught by the possibility
of breakfast down below



 
Imposing, majestic -
i round the corner to arrive in the Grassmarket
turning from student into tourist
- after 20 years in this city this view still impresses
volcanic crag, regally topped and tailed









I am my shadow
sun shadow-maker
railings pierce me
clouds shadow-eater