* Tao Te Ching

* Dogen, Genjo Koan

bird

i read that the body is a depression
and wanted you more.

and walking to the car
weary from the waiting

thinking of the day to come

a single bird
voiced what i’d yearned to grasp

wanted to have
translated into form.

Ron Dowd
Hyperthyroidic Field #5
Coloured pencil and ink on paper, 26 x 19 (approx)

Scything Device (detail)

the scything

there were high meadows
and a wooded pass

there was a clearing
where people gathered

there was a bright device
tall as a building

animated, moired
with conflicting lines –

captivating verticals
of orange, red and violet –

and a moment when the
machine shuddered

halted its vibrant lathes for a time

shifted to other gears,
another purpose

became the weapon,
prepared for the scything

Ron Dowd
Hyperthyroidic Field #4
Coloured pencil and ink on paper, 19 x 26 cm (approx)

Ron Dowd
Hyperthyroidic Field #3
Coloured pencil and ink on paper, 19 x 26 cm (approx)

Ron Dowd
Hyperthyroidic Field #2
Coloured pencil and ink on paper, 19 x 26 cm (approx)

Ron Dowd
Hyperthyroidic Field #1
Coloured pencil and ink on paper, 26 x 19 cm (approx)

Ron Dowd
Un – (Heart’s Desire)
Lino cut, collage

It feels time to publish this little book of poems, The Rains That Fall Around Here on Issuu. All 24 poems, written over the period 2003 to 2009, have a devotional theme.

My poetry output is fairly low, and these poems are for me a distillation of an ongoing understanding and occasional encountering of the devotional, the noumenal.

One of the poems, something in a drawer, appeared in Australia’s Blue Dog; the rest are unpublished elsewhere.

Ron Dowd
Field with Seed-Bearers
Ink and acrylic on paper, 47 x48 cm

Seed-Bearers

Fog horns sound in early morning
mingle with waking reflections.

Soon the yellow sun rises
as fresh as lemon water

burns off the dark mist without effort
warms it to wisps and they disperse.

In the field, bathed in light,
there’s movement.

Seed-bearers begin to rise.

Ron Dowd
August Field
Coloured pencil and ink on paper, 16 x 16 cm (approx)

Opening Krishnamurti’s Notebook, after photographing this piece, I chanced upon the following passage:

It was an evening of light pink and dark clouds. The moment one stepped out of the house, talking with another of quite different things, that otherness, that unknowable, was there. It was so unexpected, for one was in the midst of a serious conversation and it was there with great urgency. All talk came to an end, very easily and naturally, The other did not notice the change in the quality of the atmosphere and went on saying something which needed no reply. We walked that whole mile almost without a word and we walked with it, under it, in it. It is wholly the unknown, though it comes and goes… (Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti’s Notebook, p185.)

A photographic image plus a short piece of text (a poetic) that also functions as a title; and the inevitable distance between the two – a distance we can’t help but attempt to cross.

Picture-taking that considers the gestalt of the photographer and the field in which he plays; having a contact cycle that exhibits all the classic stages: sensitisation, awareness, mobilisation, action, full contact, and withdrawal.

Posts in the Vispoetics category.