Thursday 28 March 2013

Living Wide Awake...Fully Aware!

Wind slaps face backhand hard...mind pried open, head shaking awake as misty cold dances skin...too often the miracle of the cognitive and emotive sit in neutral bland...dead to life’s breezes, warm or cool, sadness or joy...seeing nothing...eyes wide shut!  

My reflection today again chews on embracing life's banquet vast. My daily cup of twenty-four is here to imbibe and roll slowly. These gifted wholehearted moments are either readily and intentionally savored or spit aside in flippant fling. Too often I buy into the narrow idea that sensuality only equals integrity’s dark side, as legalism grabs freedoms throat and squeezes life bone dry...result...soul parched, panting living water!

Will I allow life to pass vicariously, sidelined, yawning others engagement? No! I choose instead to grab the gift of the present in an attempt to resemble a grand library of dog-eared, note taken, extravagantly fully connected page turning chapters, a completely spent force of having lived hilt deep in reveled wild! 

For those of you who don't know me well and my introverted exterior, all I can say is that a books dust jacket only tells a limited story...one never knows what goes on just below craniums protective shell.

Despite my lifetime struggle over on the dark side with the companion clouds called depression, there lies heart deep, a wild explorer who has often and does risk life full out despite the chains that weigh and drag heavy. 

So, here today, a cast shadow of poetic memory of one personal late afternoon's wander across the highlands of Scottish wildness...a recollection giving pause in thankful gratitude for the divine gifts of sensuality...sight, sound, taste, touch and smell...and as I do, I remember that shadows exude colour and are sculpted only when touched by sunshines caress.


A Celtic Pathway Psalm


Character...a recently completed 30" X 40" acrylic on canvas























Highland wander Celtic north...
Perth and on to Aviemore....
Reaches high, then valley’s vast...
Crest again, and on once more...
Inverness and over west...
Kyle’s Lochalsh, then further south...
Donan’s jeweled castle sits...
Clasped in emeralds deep sea green...

Lusters magic light arrives...
Kilted Celt of giants size...
Golden plates of abstract hurl...
Sparkled fire of diamonds cut...
Dazzling all the lochs below...
Brings me fast toward awe’s prize...
Whispering self, and yet again...
To whom to thank for all that’s wrought?
I sink to ground in mulling thought...
And then conclude in silence still...
Tis something grand from far above...
Than off cuffed chance of happenstance!

And then my eyes with view once more...
Come clear through joy of mist...
In sketchbook quick I stroke...
With crosshatched lines in sepias ink...
To capture crisscrossed thoughts...
That would attempt to fly and lose...
Those savored tasty bites of praise...
That roll and swirl...
Around the tongue of mind.

Arrow slanted sun glides low...
As day’s again about to close...
Scribed in lines with ochres glow...
Pen to parchment musings write...
Scratched aside on flash freeze sketch...
Captured curled winds splattered ink...
Reminders seized before they fly...
On lost memorials endless tide.

And so it is with years long past...
That once again at home again...
In studios soothing warmth of womb...
That floating by on minds eye drifts...
That blustered day of long ago...
Where Argyll’s cloud that scuttled cross...
And sunlights hope broke weary path...
That in those moments fleeting passed...
It was for now, to hold faith fast...
Those captured thoughts were held scratched safe...
To recollect with thankful praise...
And bring embrace the present now...
And hang on hope for what will come, as yet not known!




















Soli Deo Gloria
J. Douglas Thompson...SDG
Copyright 2011