From 'Incredible Countries'
by Colin Oliver
Bees
To the orchard
we take the new hive
and put on our veiled hats.
The swarm hangs
among the apple blossom.
Down they drop
with one shake
of the branch –
half a bucket of bees!
Poured into the hive
they quieten
to the drip of syrup.
Watching,
I’m a veiled hat
with nobody inside.
Wolf
World I am you;
I cannot be kept at bay.
A wolf, I take all
in one bite.
My features have become
nothing but mouth,
a mouth nothing but air.
Here on the plain
of openness
I am ever new to myself.
And the world before me
is like a forest
on which suddenly
snow has fallen.
(A collection of poems. "The poems are arranged in roughly chronological order. Many early ones are expressive of seeing into that transparent inner nature which I believe we all share but so often overlook. Later poems widen the scope but are suffused, I think, with the same essential awareness. I have carried some home from the fields and hedgerows intent on keeping observations spare and scrupulous. Occasionally the subject of renewal in different guises has pressed itself upon me, like a refrain. Here are also bitter-sweet memories involving experiences and people called into the present and held with a tenderness. It is my hope that the reader will discover poems in this book which will be like stepping stones to a place of stillness." Colin Oliver.)
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