I also was there in that same cave and seeing that handprint from 30,000 years ago changed my life forever. Every day I think of that person who was our common European grandmother/father (perhaps emigrated earlier from Africa) through whom I am connected to every person I now meet. We each shall leave our mark on the world and on others. Everyone's fate and actions affects us as we affect them. We are one in the web of being. Thank you.
Thank you for this beautiful, moving and living art. It brought me to your poem, 'Faces at Braga' one of your writings that most molded my life. It brought the smells of the burning lamps, the oscillating fire of the candle light against the 'solid rock', the point of decision, 'WILL you step thru?'
I have just left the Canyonlands and stood mesmerized at the pictographs, imagining peoples’ of so long ago, I lay dreaming of shamans and animals while lying in my tent with a desert storm surrounding me… and then this poem came!! What a perfectly articulated song if words to carry me home to return to again and again. Thankyou many times over
There is not one poem of yours that I read that doesn’t break my heart open. Thank you for this stunning work. Listening to the ancient calling . All blessings to you, David.
Among the most powerful moments in my life are those inimitable encounters with ancient marks on stone which speak to us in the moment: theirs and ours; in the endless now.
I am reminded of Annie Dillard's work titled "Teaching a Stone to Talk" though what we consider inert minerals have always spoken to us, why else the urge to reach out to them and add our own voices with pigment and chisel?
Today is Earth Day in my country. It feels a very appropriate synchronicity to find this poem waiting on this day. The Earth is always speaking -- why aren't we ready to listen? The simple awe of the magnificence of our shared world was also felt by our kind through all time. Those fixed images on steady stone are alive and moving so gracefully, so inspiringly, one can hear them breathing... and share the wonder through to now of holding witness, if only for a moment, to the beauty which surrounds us, moved by the unmoving.
How odd we use the terms "stony, stone-faced, granitic, obdurate" to describe other people. Perhaps we can rediscover that shared awe despite our preconceived expectations of the immovable and inscrutable?
Thank you David, for reminding us to listen. In OUR time.
Geraldine, on this hard, hot summer nite your words appeared. It took me a moment to reorient myself but then I recalled something which continues to stir, from John O' Donoghue. I can't recite the precise passage but in it he refers to how "the clay dances" when two souls meet who were once that same clay. So your "soggy stones" reference is a good descriptor of the human "clay" from which we arise animated (hopefully) when in proximity to ancient kin. Might this be one explanation fo the common phenomenon of "love at first sight"?
I also was there in that same cave and seeing that handprint from 30,000 years ago changed my life forever. Every day I think of that person who was our common European grandmother/father (perhaps emigrated earlier from Africa) through whom I am connected to every person I now meet. We each shall leave our mark on the world and on others. Everyone's fate and actions affects us as we affect them. We are one in the web of being. Thank you.
Thank you for this beautiful, moving and living art. It brought me to your poem, 'Faces at Braga' one of your writings that most molded my life. It brought the smells of the burning lamps, the oscillating fire of the candle light against the 'solid rock', the point of decision, 'WILL you step thru?'
I have just left the Canyonlands and stood mesmerized at the pictographs, imagining peoples’ of so long ago, I lay dreaming of shamans and animals while lying in my tent with a desert storm surrounding me… and then this poem came!! What a perfectly articulated song if words to carry me home to return to again and again. Thankyou many times over
Yes. We still touch the mirror, the paper, the canvas, the screen: I was here.
There is not one poem of yours that I read that doesn’t break my heart open. Thank you for this stunning work. Listening to the ancient calling . All blessings to you, David.
Among the most powerful moments in my life are those inimitable encounters with ancient marks on stone which speak to us in the moment: theirs and ours; in the endless now.
I am reminded of Annie Dillard's work titled "Teaching a Stone to Talk" though what we consider inert minerals have always spoken to us, why else the urge to reach out to them and add our own voices with pigment and chisel?
Today is Earth Day in my country. It feels a very appropriate synchronicity to find this poem waiting on this day. The Earth is always speaking -- why aren't we ready to listen? The simple awe of the magnificence of our shared world was also felt by our kind through all time. Those fixed images on steady stone are alive and moving so gracefully, so inspiringly, one can hear them breathing... and share the wonder through to now of holding witness, if only for a moment, to the beauty which surrounds us, moved by the unmoving.
How odd we use the terms "stony, stone-faced, granitic, obdurate" to describe other people. Perhaps we can rediscover that shared awe despite our preconceived expectations of the immovable and inscrutable?
Thank you David, for reminding us to listen. In OUR time.
Geraldine, on this hard, hot summer nite your words appeared. It took me a moment to reorient myself but then I recalled something which continues to stir, from John O' Donoghue. I can't recite the precise passage but in it he refers to how "the clay dances" when two souls meet who were once that same clay. So your "soggy stones" reference is a good descriptor of the human "clay" from which we arise animated (hopefully) when in proximity to ancient kin. Might this be one explanation fo the common phenomenon of "love at first sight"?
Margaret Russell 4/24 I was so touched by this poem. You gave me a real gift today! Thank You❤️!!! Margaret
Very poignant. Touched my heart and soul.
Thank you!