Every year, we give over all of December (and usually most of January) to a series called ‘Shadows and Reflections’, in which our contributors share highs, lows and oddments from the past 12 months. Today it’s the turn of David Chatton Barker, who shares fragments from his notebooks.

Notes & Reflections

“My religion is to live – and die – without regret”
Milarepa
:
Deep within and beyond the body,
perhaps the dew may hold secrets for the spiders as shots of wonder for the imagination.
The dissection brings about a terminal closeness, with fear.
:
Hidden
Ancestral messages
Vikings
An old relic broken
:
Bow your spirit
Before
This fragment
Of
The
Infinite light.
:
Nature the law
Landscape the bible
:
Recalling all things we don’t know
The sky looks down
All manner of this ’n’ that
As I sit here in my gown
Angels flash from the north
Calling us to move forth
:
Impregnate the breeze
Stand tall like the trees
Become something absurd
:
Helios
:
Paw and beak
Hide and seek
:
Look with the eyes of love
:
Eternal now
The way
Your way
Horse rolling
The crevice comes calling
:
Mirrored whispers of light
Turn the night
:
Mute
:
Moth makes sense of the night
Bitten out of sight
Sign and symbol
Sigil
Spittle
Safe return
Watch it burn
Ash in urn
Dust of shadows
:
Wrapped in mist
:
All yield
Branch is best
:
Glide blind through darkness
:
Montages
:
It was all creatures…anything
:
The cracks beneath the cobbles
:
To the kept
:
People turned as one
:
So much to walk
:
Riveted by repulsion
:
From where to move. For words
:
Glance was the world
There to sit
Sky there was dream
Almost the only room across the bed
Had with breathing heart
And family bones
:
Knew there was no. Arms outstretched. That lived beneath the sky
:
Took a fall. Happy as the fool
:
Today is called eternity
:
Copy the river
No outcomes
No postcards
:
Built at an angle
Cut by the bramble
Root out and bring deft
Black barbed
Circle crease release divine devote
remote
:
Dip to the season
Never alone
Stuck out of the earth
Pre-birth
:
Faith no fear
:
Do the good that you know
: