Earth Pathways Showcase

It’s deep dusk on the woodland track … and an intriguing shape emerges a stone’s throw ahead. Lifting the binoculars slowly reveals Buck Hare nibbling trackside herbage, edging towards me. Always a treat to meet a hare. His movements suggest we had been unknowingly approaching each other and if I freeze, he will come even closer.

While I’m still and moth-quiet, his fear transforms to curiosity, perhaps even recognition that I am no threat. Little by little he edges closer, looks at me, chewing thoughtfully, tries one side of the track, then the other. We enter that extraordinary experience – human accepted into the rest of nature – and he comes closer still. While I’m marvelling at this special moment, he approaches further, now only ten feet away. I’m hardly breathing and daren’t move a muscle, nor predict how much closer he’ll come. There’s a spell where he seems to wonder whether there is any other way round me, but then it’s as if he’s actually coming to meet me. He comes up with that lolloping hare gait … but then nonchalantly passes right next to my feet, and behind me the way I’ve just come. It is only when I turn to look that he suddenly skips off into the darkening wood, and I’m left holding with joyful wonderment one of the most privileged moments of my life.

Buck Hare © Brian Boothby 2023

A subtle moment between winter and spring,
Imbolc, perched on a blade of frost,
teases a cold thaw
from a sharp freeze;

days have inched longer day by day,
fibre-optically instilling new light
in feathers’ rekindling from survival
to flamboyance;

post-traumatic debris:
whipwired grasses,
loomed on splintered twigs
mossmould to cups for new eggs;

birdtalk and flowerstalk conspire,
whispering between the buds,
and the longer light leans now
toward a distant dawning colour rush of equinox;

the brooding winter shroud slips,
twitches with brooding spring secrets:
alike, but different,
the puberty of the year.

Imbolc © Brian Boothby 2020

You leave no written word, I say,
You leave no written word,

( .... while the falling of the rain
leads us dripping to the cairn ....)

This is how we write, you say,
This is how we write.

( ..... in the shelter of the stones
there are echoes of the echoes of echoes, echoing .....)

But how do we know your mind, I ask,
How do we know your mind?

( .... and the rhythm of a rhyming
rings remembrance in the rain .... )

It’s written on the land, you say,

It is written on the land.

Chanted Conversation with Nether Largie South Cairn, Kilmartin © Brian Boothby 2020

Fire as lightlure, sparkspinning shadowdancer,
.......... step-light, eye-bright, knitting souls to bones,
                            holding our dreams for safe-keeping.

Fire as solar heart, radiant orphan, starsibling,
.......... double-edged sword, driver of drought and scald,
                            rainbow, aurora, renewal and ruin.

Fire as pot-baker, charcoal-maker, oven, still, welder and smelter,
........... brightmetal midwife, forge-focus, torch and crucible,
                            fusion of To Be and Done.

Fire in the belly, spirit whipcrack, ember of genius,
........... cutloose cup of daring, leap of love,
                            arcing out of time,
                                          unleashing soul from bone

Album (from Firegazing) © Brian Boothby 2016

It could be missed,
Just for want of an outstretched hand,
Separate death on every island
Because no-one dared the sea.

But from such a scattering, here's a thing:
A navajo frame, threads of unsung mystics;
There, aborigine weft, tibetan warp;
In us all, colour and strength,
Spirit and science.

From every island hands dare the sea,
A new tribe is weaving
To warm mother earth.
It can be done.
It could be missed.

It could be missed © Brian Boothby

Breathe in
the deep faraway,
clean the palate on the moist and smell of far-off snow.
Gentle the eyes on moss-top autumn trees
and whistle in the winterbird from the patchwork stars.
Feel,
through the veils of living,
deadline tangle, shoulds and must-haves
to un-be
from whatever dulls and disenchants.

Whispering like a spinning wheel,
threading one year to the next
goes Samhainstory:
aspen a-shimmer through the deep soft faraway;
weaving through the whistling constellations;
through the veil and silk of snow
and also .......... bright in the being,
Right here, right now.

Samhainstory © Brian Boothby

i remember

       the breath that makes up everything

i remember

       being so small that i am the point of everything

i remember

       speaking without words, knowledge without language, wisdom

                                                                                       before thought

i remember

       the union of opposites within the beating of blood, within the within

i remember

       the fusing of subject and object

i remember

       land's life being my life

But sometimes i forget

       and remembering is like coming home, every time

i remember © Brian Boothby