Thursday 22 February 2018

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.






Saturday 3 February 2018

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.