A.A. Marcoff
Valley of Wonders
the water reflects a still sky, visible as a surface of light held like eternity in a still mind: it could be a lake of dreams where moon and sun and Milky Way come to shimmer, and evokes a communion of water and moment and light, stands wide and wild and white: here I see a heron in a grey meditation, poised in its own grey silence: the heron gives rise to focus, a grey phenomenon: beyond it lies nothing but shadow, and memory: I recognise the heron as the whole of the world, all that is now, and will be, and was long ago when the stars were formed: here everything remains implicit, like the space between dreams, the overlapping silences of worlds: I consider this valley a valley of wings, a valley of light: was it Coleridge who asked: Who could be an atheist in this valley of wonders? this is theatre, a poetry in which the heron manifests some figure of speech that is complete in itself, and in this place freedom really matters, like reeds or grasses: the horizon stretches nowhere but now, and goes grey and away and everywhere like space: I am standing in the grey rapture of the moment, a halo of mist over the heron, and this is the way wings fold like a fan: it represents a grey language that has no more meaning than the wind, and here by the water, I speak from my whole being words spoken by Thich Nhat Hanh: This moment is full of wonders:
what is water?
it is a world
where herons go to dream
& on which
the sky rests so silently
About the Author
A.A. (Tony) Marcoff is an Anglo-Russian poet who has lived in Africa, Iran, France and Japan. He writes haiku, tanka, tanka-prose and mainstream poetry, and lives near the beautiful River Mole in England.