Words-poetry - Jason Davis Photography

This website is mainly devoted to my photography but on occasions I find words can add to my creative expression both of my time in nature and my journey of self-actualisation.

I often end up sitting close to the edge of a cliff face, watching, listening, thinking, allowing myself the space to absorb the environment and moment, the following words are from an experience of being engulfed by sea mist at dusk.

The cliffs are great beasts

The cliffs are great beasts

Lapping at the waters edge,

Thirsty

From their migration

Through time.

Mist sidles in,

A lovers whisper

Soft and lingering,

For a moment

Only I exist

In this silent fullness.

40 fathoms below

The sea gasps,

Then sighs,

Shifting, settling

Into folds and crevasses

As night unfurls.

Living by the sea inevitably means that seagulls will be present, soaring on the air currents, scavenging and fishing, finally leaving at dusk.

The gulls are leaving

The orchestra has been tuning since dawn,

Strings screeching in anticipation,

Scales, vigorously grated,

Pitches brawled over,

As the gull choir

Threatened with trussed tongues,

Have been confessing all morning.

A loud cloud, cumulus of birds

Rising and sinking through the ranks

Greater, lesser, common

Are unified in a deeper knowing.

Finally, the gulls leave

Warmed by sieved sun rays,

Engulfed by the moment

They pilot the steep point,

Dreaming on the wing

They steer north to the hidden land.

Setting in weeping amber

Time’s bright eye quivers on the horizon,

The trembling lace of sea

Offers a golden inheritance,

The sun's final gaze,

Through a shroud

Woven from dusk and night.

The Lighthouse

White sentinel

Bone bright

Needles the sky,

Blinking a bleached strobe,

Soulless

And disconnected,

Stroking the land

With indifference.

Belching a forlorn call

A hollow resonance

Tones into rock

Mapping fault lines

And the defiance of granite,

Pale green lichen

Clings to the cliff face

Quivering in ecstasy.

Shag Rock

Flight and fight of tireless Shags

Stragglers in the turbulent drag,

Storm, ocean, rocky crag,

Home to a huddle of ragged flags.

Sculpted granite, diamond tipped

Sunbaked and iced with shit,

Southwesterlies, cruel Atlantic,

Weathered monument to feathered grit.

The fierce sea

Facing the fierce sea

The wind scratches

At my eyes

With ice claws.

"Turnaway" she screams

"This is not for you"

With the squint of an Inuit

I take it in.

Bright moments of

Waves colliding

White script skipping

On undulating grey and green.

"Turn away!"

Her sharp breath,

Unsheathed with force

Thrusts me to the ground.

Prostrate and ego bruised

I fall into this gift

Tumbling into

How it is.

A raven laughs his gritty call

"Look at me, look at me"

Flaunting a whirligig

Because he can.

I stagger home blessed

It is amazing to see gannets out to sea, diving headlong into shoals of fish, they seem possessed, diving, sinking and rising only to dive again, they are such beautiful birds, with their broad wingspan gliding in formation over the waves.

Hungry Ghosts

Sighted from the head, out to sea

An armada of gannets sweep the ocean

A rhythm of pale scars on a shimmering skin.

Free flow peloton, gliding the breathing swell,

Skimming stones, skipping foam

Appearing, disappearing.

Undistracted by the hall of mirrors

They fathom the shifting surface,

Stalking bright flesh and shadows.

A squadron of ink tipped Angels

Mobilised for a steep descent

Plummet into the lead pool.

Puncturing the pillow of the seas embrace

A horde of ravenous hungry ghosts

Feast on a shivering shoal.

Ache of air calls

They pop up like submerged buoys

Birthing into sky's bright breath.

Pollen dusted spearheads whet their gullets

As quicksilver writhes the white slide to death

A snowstorm of winged sarcophagi takes flight.

Twilight

Embers pulse on the horizon

As day's last breath

Resuscitates shadows.

In a final attempt

To steal the limelight,

Sun slides off stage

In a grandiose death

Of spilt blood.

Air,

Alive with the song of blues,

Earth sighs umber,

And an evening raga

Of Indian red.

My hands,

Brushed with

A whisper of cobalt

Conducts a symphony,

Unravelling me

As the moon

Dances on the sea.

I live in an area that is a destination point for tourists, it is beautiful and full of wildlife however the real nature of the place is experienced by spending time in it, both day and night, in sun and storms.

Seal Song

A lone deep call

Vibrates the low atmosphere,

Pounding off the ruin of rocks,

Chiselling a cavern in the wet air,

Seal song, soul song

This tourist haunt

Becomes wilderness

Cow's penned in cliff top balconies

Remember their pain,

Swollen belly's bellow

A choking chant of lost children

And long nights,

Their hollow sound

Sinks like mist to the shore.

The creatures that exist in the landscape around me filter into my own personal mythology, a merging of outer and inner worlds.

I am always excited to meet ravens on my walks, it feels fortuitous, we often share a brief conversation, for me they hold power and wisdom, they demand respect.

Raven speaks

Raven speaks with forked lung

Leaking well of uncensored song,

A hawk and a hack of rusty croak

Knife held firm to his thick frilled throat

A volley of velvet sharp calls takes flight

Retch of fletch from the quiver of night,

A spray of quarrels tipped with coarse laughter,

Feed on the now or in the fields of hereafter.

How I long for the crow of guttural glee,

A gift to this earth and to my ear, ecstasy.

Ravenous

Krakatoa erupts,

Jet-black plume

Corrupts sky,

Shadow wallowing

Light swallowing

Raven beat of black piercing sleet

Machete beak and caltrop feet

On a ledge

Close to the edge,

A squealing pouch of scampering bones

Trembling sack of tender moans,

Heartbeat to meat

In a sigh.

I became fascinated by a Jackdaw that would feed in our garden, it had lost all it's tail feathers, possible from a fight with other Jackdaws, yet still found a way to manoeuvre the turbulent skies and find food for it's family.

Tailless

How do you fly?

How did you survive?

All jack and no daw,

Take the flack with no caw.

Yet you do fly, do exist,

Like a B2 bomber

You have lived by stealth,

Quietly, on every periphery.

Coming into land,

Such careful clumsiness,

Mindful manoeuvres

From the school of hard knocks.

Take flight, take heart

Look what has appeared at your black door,

Drifted into your pewter claw,

Slack jaw

A gift so rare it is on the extinction list.

Love, deep and pure,

Without judgement,

Let no-one tell you

you cannot soar.

Covid had a dramatic impact on my life as it did everyone, because of my transplant and the immune suppressants I take there were added fears and concerns, my life has yet to return back to how it was before Covid.

World’s can disappear

World’s can shrink, slide away

Out of reach,

Disappear,

My world has

Whilst I was breathing,

Dissolving on the out breath,

When I felt vulnerable,

Was vulnerable,

Am vulnerable,

Is there anyone there?

Gasping draws phantom friends,

Into my hastily constructed pen.

Smile,

My lungs inflate,

I sigh from being touched,

Feeling connected,

The sharp pain of arthritic joints

Deflates my tired soul,

Withdraw,

Cower,

Lick my wounds,

Slaver over them,

Gather,

Reach,

And the world spins,

There is no ground,

There is no sky,

World’s can disappear.

Kestrel

Sitting in stillness on a cushion of wind

Presence so profound reality shakes in fear,

A finger trembling having found the truth

In the book of emptiness,

Suddenly,

Sliding down a wormhole in space

Appearing stage left,

A magician in the art of here and now.

This profound moment of being,

Echo's through time,

Pause, gaze and move on,

Russet instructions from a Rinpoche of the skies,

Leaning into the void, gone.

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