Go to Poetry Essay

Echoes of Protest and Pain

“Save, Lord, we perish,” was their cry,
“O save us in our agony!”

Pull me from this, like a bloodied knife deep in the gut
of a bastard being I could blame.
Through loud Heavenly choruses you hear the violent raging
of minds exhausted by holy demands.
Thinking renewed, ever waiting, abiding, watching, denying –
our daily prescription for the disciplines of righteousness,
in the hope of spiritual fruit.
When strength is small, the heedful few are buried again
under heavy frustrations.

Cut me if I reach for God,
Cut when sunshine chases rain.
Cut me when my heart is pure,
Slice through if I'm wrong again.

The Will of Wisdom, when fused with fleshly ways,
will twist dispositions and shatter bodies.
Spirit of Christ within, without,
take, if fitting, all of life's mire we are neck-deep in and,
by miraculous reforms, please breathe on the glow
dying after the fiery zeal.
In the friendless absence of realised love and peace,
through stumbling distresses in many weaknesses,
our deadweight afflictions crush us.

On and on we press,
Through all that God allows,
Though tears blot out The Way
And hands slip from the ploughs.

 

So, when our life is clouded o’er,
And storm winds drift us from the shore,
Say, lest we sink to rise no more,
“Peace, be still.”
Godfrey Thring, 1862

Beautiful Strange

Woodland walks with my wife

After days of ripped lives,
Awakened and whole.
Beautiful strange.

Set still, though hidden through
Nights too long endured,
About the closed-up home
Nature moves suffused.

Whether we struggle ill
Or lie longer weak,
Papery poppies bend,
Birdsong scorns the stark

Towers of western rain clouds.
Woodland scents rise through
Budding branches shading
Deep paths love turns to.

Healing ways drawing us
To vivid and bold.
Beautiful strange.

The Mint Below the Seat

(For Claire)

When I was small I swung my legs
And sang a silly tune.
I counted yellow ladybirds
While Nana cleaned her rooms.

When I was young I laughed and played
Below rain-darkened skies.
I never knew a sorrow borne;
I rarely wept and sighed.

I never saw cut flowers decay
In vases on the sills.
I never sensed the curse of time
That stole my games and thrills.

When I was ten each loving touch
Would ease my pain and fear.
I'd yet to sit through bedside ills
That whispered death was near.

Now older I can understand
That hardship bars my way,
That those I love may someday leave,
But I will have to stay.

Once I was young and liked to pluck
The mint below the seat,
While Granda clipped the garden hedge
And swept below my feet.

In Stone

Now I'm not diseased meat on the medical table,
Tethered and frightened, unsure of my frame.
Now the sting and the bite of life-threatening terrors
Are destroyed like a beast nobody could tame.

Gulf

The gist of the matter at a glance,
Experience strolls while children prance.
Ample wisdom uses knowledge well,
Intellect glories but cannot tell.

Hot blood is fed by thrills and spice,
Bald heads, contented, are not enticed.
Age in a margin is rarely sought,
Youth in a hurry cannot be taught.

It Goes On

In the valley's warm morning air, I unexpectedly remembered someone.
An early thought before the sky was heated summer-blue,
As soft as trodden moss, gentle like the smooth arcs of mist wisps
Aimlessly down from the lake.

It goes on, and I should smile at the memory-glow,
But a lone soul, so detached and vagrant now,
Is likely to sigh and fold against the rough bark
Below cool, dark boughs.

Senseless Connecters

("There is something about her," he confided.)

Take it in instantly when the hair's swung over
unexpectedly, one bright eye looking through, the other hidden.
Acceptance shines certainly when both are close flicking up
By a taller shoulder,
away and back, moving along with that following smile.

It's a labelled small package, elegant on his sunlit table,
wrapped in splendid golden paper.
Trickery would pull the bow to free the lid
hoping it's offered when really nothing straightforward could be said,
presuming too much, frightened of learning
the box is empty for all of the earnest wondering before.

Imagine the trouble if anything is mistaken after the need to tell,
consider the toll if feelings were correctly read,
be afraid of conflict's chill after the hurtful distance is found.
Walk past the way where thoughtless turning
can easily add debt to the senses' trite suppositions.

So much in her light-waisted form tugs at the masses
of notions and reflections forceful for mastery
where nobody ever sees, when few think to venture
why he and she together seem more than what's needed.

In Donegal Hills (For CW)

In the soot-streaked wall the grate is warm and dusty white;
Two mugs and a plate on the chipped hearth
Show the turf's supper heat.
Accepting the good chilled air
He's standing unshaven at the open door,
Hands in deep pockets, shirtsleeves rolled high.
Close treeless humps of hills
Block the clouded mountains beyond the tufted lane;
The foaming stream gushes darkly,
Gurgling on the withering browned slopes.
A windless sky, dense with low Atlantic greys,
May soon drop rain on his stark view,
Singular, and remembered often.

Vase Flowers

I'm weary of
flowers in my house this Spring,
beautiful but fading rootless,
stressing the dreadful companions
death and disease.

Better out-of-doors' blooms in gardens
or flung wild, fixed for vitality,
from seasonal life to life
where they belong,
not tied unfitly to hardship's tears.

Shabby Suit

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
Henry David Thoreau

Unholy are the calculations
hammering thoughts beer can-flat in a sinking mind,
digging in deep hollows for reasons
not torn up yet, that won't ever.
Draw them out, then spin and weave them in,
donning flaws all the way fading
along cracked paths on the other side of the bare hearth,
wherever home was, and when.

In a sewn pocket finger-clink old coins your grandfather hid –
never spent, worth stealing.
Cross the road shopless, too worn to zebra back
to racks of gent's coats reduced, none in a wasted size.
Add values, the poor begging when
barging in, elbows punching into a warm space.
Peer through sheltering glass
muffling heavy vehicles' roaring and piercing-pitch school kids.

Lean on the litter bin, scatter butts to
the endless tired watching again.
High cold drops are massing
to run over double yellow lines your life is parked on,
shaded by a sickly avenue tree cemented in.
Wear that shabby suit out, denying what you are recalled when
others rage, deride, remind you behind you scorning faceless.
What remains can't turn away younger, head sound.

Pain Harness

Pain exchanges distant for devoted
and so ignites love
Pain exposes true riches
and makes peace valuable too
Pain insists we beseech and blubber
Pain burns off clogging dross
Pain points at limitations we had ignored,
reduces us, crushes souls

It's pain in the human frame
It's pain we can't ignore
It's pain that harnesses and educates
It's pain that plunders all

Pain buries us in frailty, mortality
Pain devises worthwhile goals
and ridicules every fantasy
Pain convicts
and announces crimes
Pain ponders the future fearfully
and obscures every horizon
Pain is revelation and uncertainty paired

Funeral Kin

What you don't know is where you won't come—
That's fine!

Stay there in cool responses or worse,
Maybe sure you know better,
Possibly a victim of unkind criticisms
Invoked by these accumulated and familiar blank spaces
Where your earnest connections
Would surely pierce harsh, long months that may visit you too.

Self-pity never made it through
To anywhere anyway!

So, in unprotesting review,
Rather than the rash ire that's easier,
Maybe it's a gap best left unbridged,
Or worse, a deepening hole we will fall into later,
After years of digging and tossing dirt
Around those we need more than one another.

The Compromisers

So the crime we find is just human behaviour
Everybody's in the line
Time will find
King's X

Fall away again but come back victorious
Praise fervently then renege each Monday
Brotherly love faltering when arrows fly
Routine hugs befitting the meeting's closure

Personalities defamed at the dinner table
Sharp tongues carving blemished brethren
(And the angels' vilified endlessly)
Forgiveness through bonding fading in time

Scripted teachings flying away in the exit's fresh air
Doctrinal schisms afflicting the ailing Bride
Cosy devotionals reassuring yet feeble
Late night rhymed prayers that trail off into sleep

Burdens they can never fathom
Pain thrashing meagre academic faith
Spiritual growth through fiery adversity?
Endless suffering wearing them down

Surrendering to temptations in private
Shadowy lust in hot seclusion
Flashes of brute anger tell the fruit was imagined
Youths commit adultery with a fallen world

The Me in You

You've worked your brain so hard
Your conscience leaked out through.
"I've sought the Lord about it,
"And this is what I'll do."

Necessity has forced a trip
With selfish slips and prayers amiss,
Steam-opened flesh out on a limb
Betrayed the Master with a kiss.

None dares to point the finger,
But what's that fruit on view?
Call it anything but sin—
I see the me in you.

Go to Poetry Essay

photography | gallery | quotes | dementia