The End of Day.

In this tinsel world of botox faces,

perfect orthodontal smiles

and all those desperate attempts

to keep youthful looks

I’m thinking about

the headlong stampede of youth 

and the crumbling that comes with age

and I’m also thinking that for beauty

sunset’s red, orange and purple blaze 

equals sunrise’s swathe of pastel glow

and how, after the end of day,

is the velvet quilt of night

and the diamond litter of stars.

First published at One Sentence Poems.

Cost.

Cost.

So Sam rose early, saddled his donkey,

and took his children up the mountain.

And his children said

“Where is the offering, our father,

and who is this god we praise?”

“You are the offering, my children.”

Then hail of fire descended

and bright blood flowed until all were gone.

Sam sighed, thought he would pray, 

wept a little as he descended the mountain.

A congregation waited below.

“It’s hard,” he said, “so hard.

But what can we do?

We don’t wish it but we must worship.”

And the great congregation shouted “Amen”.

First published in New Verse News as a response the murder of 17 students at Parkland and the response of Republican lawmakers, the President and the NRA.

The Well.

At the Well.

They push and shove

in the crowded corridor,

hormonal haste,

neglect, abuse or confusion

herding them noisily along

but behind the door,

beyond the tedium,

the bureaucratic requirements

of implementation, evaluation, categorisation,

lies the well,

bottomless,

magical,

beyond sweet,

and most of them pause,

open the door,

cautiously enter.

I can’t see a well.

Then let me dip this sponge

and bathe your blind eyes.

I can’t taste water.

Then let me squeeze sweet drops

onto your cracked, parched lips.

The water is beyond my reach.

Then let me help you

lower, fill and raise the pail.

Now freely drink,

deep and long.

Never stop.

I see water.

Then you are free to plunge straight in.

First published at Verse-Virtual.

The Best That We Can Do?

The Best We Can Do?

May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,

give deliverance to the children of the needy. -Psalm 72.

A fleet of impossibly large white boats

lies quietly moored 

at an impossibly beautiful 

Mediterranean tax-haven.

I read of the growing gulf 

between rich and poor,

how even in the mighty USA

the wealth of the top one percent

equals that of the bottom ninety percent.

Then into my mind’s eye chugs

a flimsy boat, overcrowded

with men, women and children

fleeing war, poverty or persecution,

all brave, desperate, hopeful, scared,

all enduring terrible privations,

the lack of privacy, hunger, stench, heat, wet, 

desperate scanning for land,

the gathering sea, the looming swell,

the vulnerable diesel motor,

the creaking of the water-filling vessel.

Then float images of the new gulags,

Pacific Island detention centres,

shimmering heat, barbed wire, dormitories,

hopeless, hollow-eyed children,

vulnerable women,

abusive, predatory guards,

the hostility of the locals

in these places of planned, deliberate inhumanity

designed to deter seeking asylum by sea.

And what I want to know is this.

Can we do no better than build walls

or nightmare places of deterrence?

Does not injustice foster hate and resentment,

encourage violence, revenge,

the bloody carnage of the bombed market,

the twisted tangled of the torn apart train?

Does not the past inform 

that the grinding shoal of inequality

eventually leads to dark stains 

from the guillotine flowing 

through blood-filled squares?

First published at Better Than Starbucks.

The Diamond Python

Under a dome of unrelenting blue

we follow a high plateau

littered with spring flowering,

drop into a gully, cross a creek, 

wind our way along the sandstone cliff face,

bend beneath overhangs, squeeze 

through narrow gaps between boulders

until finally, there it is, a large shaded rock shelf

overlooking a spectacular network of chasms,

sheer sandstone cliffs sunlit in their ancient weathering,

distant waterfall a wind-blown silver thread,

river unspooling through the green grey scrub,

air full of wind sound and bird song.

We drop our packs, sit in the shade.

We think we have this solitary place to ourselves,

until the owner casually drops in

and pokes his diamond head 

through a fissure next to an elbow.

He slithers casually over a backpack,

unhurriedly follows our retreating feet,

unfurling his nine feet of glory.

Large of head, diamond flecked, 

he carries the beauty of the night sky

along his thickly muscular length.

He moves from person to person,

slowly traverses the overhang

and then, branch by branch,

with long practised ingenuity

hauls his limbless mass up a tree.

Time passes.

The ancient cliffs grow shadows.

We must retrace our steps, 

leave this privileged place 

but as we go we carry in our packs

a weight of thankfulness for the diamond Python,

for the gift he has given us,

for his beauty, size, grace and power

and especially for his casual indifference

towards we mere puny humans

now struggling and labouring homewards

through his beauty-filled world.

First published at Naturewriting.com

I don't fear the night

I don't fear the night.

-For my children and grandchildren.

I don't fear the night.

The ocean ebbs. The sun sets.

After the day comes the dark.

So too this body must decline,

yield, slump and fall

before the overlord, Time.

His reaper will come. He must.

The leaf falls, the stump rots.

All living things turn to dust.

No, I don't fear the night,

Yet if from the last sleep

I never in rebirth arise,

though the great gift 

be granted to other eyes,

then let it at least be said

that in this life of flesh and blood

he grew in spirit and mind,

judged none but self,

sought and strove to forgive,

desired justice, was merciful and kind

and grew in patience and in love

despite the ravages  of time.

First published at Praxis mag online

Hope.

When the hidden rip sucks out 

beyond the blue swell 

uncurling noisily upon the sand,

out beyond the raucous sea-birds

circling, soaring and dipping

above the white topped crests,

out into dark, trackless waste 

where the moving water mountain

towers glass smooth and sheer

and over its vast plateau top

waves foam and rumble

in irresistible chaos,

then only surrender remains,

letting the mighty surge

sweep where it will,

holding in a few tiny cells 

the longing for a gentler swell

to wash slowly back

into some sheltered cove

where the patterned ripples

kiss the yellow sand,

where hope fills the clear blue sky

and the whole glorious world

shines again bright and new.

First published at Autumn Sky Daily.

The Green Sea Turtle.

The Green Sea Turtle.

Is she gliding or soaring?

Each beat of her wing-like flippers

propels her massive weight

with its gleaming black carapace

through the trackless ocean

with movement as graceful as flight.

Something beyond reason 

guides her a thousand kilometres 

to the sandy island of her birth, 

to waiting males, mating, 

labouring up the beach,

laying her clutch of eggs,

then dragging her great weight back 

into the buoyancy of the sea.

Will she one year make her journey in vain?

Will male green turtles no longer

glide through the water near her island?

Is the incubating sand growing too warm?

Will then only females hatch

to run the gauntlet of crab, bird or dog

before they reach the swell

and the empty refuge of the sea?

First published at Poets Reading the News.