Keys to the Green Kingdoms

Boxed set of 10 x 10mls

All words by Simon H Lilly

Key 1 - Forest of Caledon

Green bed
Lie here safe.
Green heart
Rest here whole.
Green jewel
Rest here in light.
Over all and
Over Earth,
Completion.
Sufficient.
Wrapped in clouds
Held, not forgotten.
Endless is the mystery
Of life
Finding itself.
Sun and stars, even,
Watch amazed.
Green heart of
All things

Key 2 - Calanais I-V, Isle of Lewis

Starlight
Ripples outwards.
Past, present, future sitting down
To feast at the same table.
The ancients from whom we descend
Graciously remain;
Their old wrinkled faces,
Their stone fingers,
Reveal the bones, extracting
Meat and marrow:
This is where eternity crystallises.
This is where soul, stone and star converse.
Procession of coincidence.
Listen:
The music of time.

Key 3 - Isles of Lewis, Harris, North and South Uist, Benbecula, St Brendan's Chapel

No where nearer
The Isles of the Blest.
The dead gather together,
Warrior and child.
Coaxed by a hand of hills
The land launched
Into silver sunset ocean.
Go on, you can do it
It will be alright.
Wonders await you…
The voyage into mystery
Stepping stones to heaven.
Eternal islands
Eternal seas.

Key 4 - St Columba's Well

At the green knees of Beinn Tangaval
Little cave,
Stream of inspiration.
White Dove.
Among the wind and weathered rock
Orchid, lousewort and asphodel, secret and safe.
In the bay: turquoise and violet waters,
Arc of white sand.
On the lochside shore
White feather on the air.

Key 5 - Beinn Sguraval

Mountain
Wearing a cloak of flowers.
Grey door.
See in new ways:
Relax, allow your sight.
Where your attention flows,
There is a doorway.
Veils of rain
Thousand primroses
Wonderful!
Melt meanings
Dissolve barriers.
Music is the ordering of silence.
See with your heart.
Nothing is hidden but in clear view.
You yourself are the key.

Key 6 - Sheaval

To bring us home safe
She awaits upon the hillside.
To bring us home safe -
Old roads straight worn
From loch to lochan.
The cries of seagulls
From the land
Lost in mists.
Bell
Chalice
Cloud
Watcher.

Key 7 - Faerie Travellers

Cap of invisibility
Cap of indivisibility.
From whence do the elements separate?
From the instant of central balance.
From what flows the certainty of form?
From the heartbeat between what was
And what will be.
At the corner of sight
Eyeblink or distant lightning?
What you know will blind you.
The oldest foundations are no longer in sight.
The ancestors watch this world, all have names,
Sing their genealogy, have woven you.
Sink into the weave
The world wears you.
Wear yourself lightly
Leaving no footprints

Key 8 - Iona

The heart beats
Then it stops
Then it starts again.
How strange!
The eye that is
The organ of understanding
Is the well
From which fall tears.
Stormclouds rush in,
Salt on the air.
Amongst the leaves
A thrush singing:
Listen, listen, listen to me.
Beauty, beauty, beauty.

No heart can overtake
The long passages of time.
Beauty dissolves, kings,
Saints, seasons, tides
All vanish, vanish
Into the hollow hills.

The hollow hills
Will vanish into the sea
And sunset.
The eye
Forever bathed in tears,
The heart that
Starts and stops -
The thrushes song.
The clouds
Pass over:
Sunlight,
On the mounds of the dead,
Dancing
With the eternal dancers.

Key 9 - Undines

"Your science of rigidities
Are lies of the fearful.
We here are void and free.
Infinite, immortal flow.
Limitless, deathless
Tuned, turning tides,
Roaring silence.
Impossible song
None can forget.
Escape your frozen fears,
Melt
Meander,
You are, anyway,
Made vessels for our fierce bliss.
Flow,
Willing,
Let go.
Find us,
Void and free."

Key 10 - Ard Ri n'a Sith, Isle of Mull


"We shall give to you here
The skill of the song of the Land.
Words of silver
Words of gold
Sweet gale and honey
On the tongue tip.
The melancholy of the curlew
And the lapwing.
The smooth stream of the blackbird;
The harsh heart of the eagle.
For you are only human -
Life as sweet as the scent of violets
And then gone."