Like this:

The trees:

are beautiful,

green above the sheen of a clear stream

they’re swaying,

soaring zephyr-stirred

on a background of azure purity.

The unmovable: it’s evident,

in the smooth movement of the stream;

rolling, splish splash

in grass banks.

Up above: a glide of vapour;

white cloud benignly

shifts as sun

(God’s sun)

beams down,

his light bathing bathers.

Droplets depart mother river

splashed upwards they

glint before glistening

on skin.

They rinse clean skins of bodies,

that, once apart,

melt one-wards and meld

becoming boundless,

as boundaries disappear

so that together, here,

all are One.

And in this nature

this wildness of blue, brown, green

in the life-filled

brilliance of sparkling water’s sheen

all is one,

undivided,

The Unmovable

in motion –

One in the Oneness;

Nirvana.

This is a rewriting of a poem I wrote a few years ago after a spiritual experience I had after a rave in the Welsh mountains. The rave was a pretty dodgy techno party, frequented by the usual deadbeats and misfits of society that these events attract. Fun nevertheless, and located in a beautiful spot called Forest Coalpit in the Brecon Beacons. We stayed at the party until about 9am, by which time the sun was really scorching, and then drove a mile further up the track to a spot by a beautiful stream where we got out and had a dip. While there I had a very powerful sense of spiritual elation, brought on in part by a book I had been reading about religion and spiritualism (The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley – amazing book). The references to the ‘unmovable’, and ‘one in the oneness’ and ‘nirvana’ come from the theological writings I discovered through this book. Looking back, to suggest I attained nirvana is a bit pretentious – if I came anywhere near it it didn’t last, although I still remember the feeling I had.

This is the second rewriting of this poem, the first is on this blog and entitled ‘After the Party’, and is less high-flown.

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