One Red Line

In the waiting minutes

Working at the old table

With its creaking screws

I use up the time

Supping builders’ tea…

…One red line appears:

On are hauled the boots

And, stooping under the low-lintel,

The garden gate open,

I press my foot on the forest floor

On tanned autumnal leaves

Crisp and curled

From the heat of high summer

Like tinder ready to burn

Reaching for a second life

Nodding past the outsiders

I ship no accusing looks

Suffer no shouts of Unclean

My Covid sentence served;

A prisoner welcomed home

Like the Sons of Adam

Wandering the Earth, infected

Waiting for the soldier’s spear

Running with water and blood

Set free by one red line

Waiting

It’s a Tuesday, hot and humid in July

Heat soaking through from all sides

A sweltering still afternoon.

Forlorn and yellow sycamore seeds,

Autumnal before their time,

Hang listless, like me

Waiting

Waiting, in my case, for the Covid

Power-drain to be repaired

And limbs refilled with

Will and purpose

And a mind to wake up

And imagine more than

Sleep

Progress: twenty sit-ups,

Only to lie long dormant.

Later, a poet, sent to trouble me

Whose words, like piano notes,

Danced me away.

But I have insufficient battle to be

Jealous

One day, I say to my boots,

You shall walk through Welsh mud again.

I long for wild weather, howling hill winds,

Black fingerless gloves, steaming mugs,

And crouching on a frozen summit,

On Sugar Loaf with

You

One day

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart

News from Downing Street 7th July 2022

The vultures gather

Flying in from the sunrise

Early from the west wind also

Carrying the scent

Circling now

Ready

For the prey to come

Dressed in suits, tie pins

And buttoned shirts

Serious faces crowding the cameras

Taking in the collapse

In real time

A carcass thrown

From the dark door behind

Sunlight dancing for the final time

From the blond mop

And small eyes and a sad heart speak

Weary words

‘The King is dead!’

But will the corpse occupy

The chair?

A nation waits

Holding its black and red flowers

Dark suits ready

To pay its respects

And disrespects

A legacy of too many dying

Without a hand to hold

And behind those eyes and

That dark door

Lie all the liberation from twelve yellow stars

And the howling tears

Of blue and yellow Mariupol

Of a red wall collapsing

Presiding over things falling apart.

Love Wreck

Phase 1 The Wrecker

My vessel is cracked and

My defences lie shattered

Inside it’s all splinters.

Invaded I can’t…flow

Debris is everywhere.

Hit by Love

I can no longer hide

No longer hide

Phase 2 The Squatter

But when the wrecker comes

With forgiveness and

Demolishing grace

Then, from the ashes,

New houses arise.

He moves in:

No external life-coach

He

Phase 3 The Landlord

Few know the secret

Secret life

Long hidden but now

Installed

One source, one river

One throne

My Fire, my Wind, my

All in all

Loose Change

Pig. The ceramic one that stares at me

Frozen in time

Is still fed, when food is found,

But his expression

Is little altered

A decade has passed

Since his last oil change

The rubber seal left undisturbed

Until this morning                                                                   

And out it, they, pour

Metallic sounds

Like snapping branches

And small sounding cymbals

Announce the purging

Tanners, shillings, and half-crowns

Jostling, like children

For their place

Woe betide anyone who says to them

‘Loose change’

The Queen’s face will not be amused

There is a date that must not be spoken aloud

Valentine’s plus one, 1971

In a stroke, at midnight,

The pig became a museum

And its currency lost all purchasing power

Like all of us, sons of Adam,

Caught up in a Messiah on a cross

Brought into His death

Losing all our old purchasing power

And buried, out of sight

And now? The whole of creation

Stands on tip-toe

Waiting for the new currency

God’s loose change

Sons of God, to be revealed.

Psalm 23 for the Invisible Ones

I am a film star
But no-one know
I have forgotten my own name

I am a doctor healing
And no-one saw
The coldness creep over my heart

I am the pastor preaching
Yet I am the one
In deepest need

I am the navigator
And no-one knows…
…I can’t see my way home

I am the one sheep
Alone in the herd
Needing to hear your voice
Just one word

My name

And peace, the quiet waters by
Restore my addled mind
River running
Cool. Calm. Clear. Deep.

Melancholy – a prelude

Above ground we are all Mariupol
Tulips remaining in bud
Nervous to unfold vivid colours of Spring
Clinging to the past
In hope of what?

Above ground a million Covid masks
Squelched into the mud
Trailing from bins
Forgotten in jacket pockets:
Yesterday’s news

Today’s news, a jumble of images
A glossary of sadness:
Oligarchy, Donbas, Slava Ukraini,
Thermobaric bombs
An A-Z, or just unjust Z.

Below ground. How are you?
It’s in the winter that spring is planned
That invisible quiet hinterland
Of the human heart
Where the seeds of heaven fall

Where melancholy gives way
Where winter loosens its grip
Where…those that go out in tears
Bearing seeds for harvest
Will come home rejoicing.

1054 and all that…

Surely you mean 1066
Hastings and one-eyed Harold
The Conqueror and Norman arches?
One Sunday in October
Dawn quiet disturbed
And weary autumnal soil
Running blood red:
All over by tea.

Another Sunday
Twelve years before
Split East from West
Constantinople from Rome
Communion wafers suffering schism
No longer handed one to the other
You can still hear the painful cries:
The tearing of the map

No more so than in besieged Kiiv
Or battered Mariupol.
Turning our tears to
Higher ground
The wounds to heal,
Turning our tears
To Higher ground
Our wounds to heal

Revolution

Press Lord, press me under
Under, under your grace
Wrench me free
Free from regulations that fail to regulate
From striving that fails to check self and sin

‘We are born free, yet everywhere
We are in chains’
I’m not so sure Jean-Jacques
‘For freedom, Christ has set us free’
Paul, for this, my unending applause

The Pharisee chained no longer to law
Out of his depth in grace
Feet off the bottom grace
Nothing, no more, depending on him:
Swimming in unexpected love

‘Freely you have received
Freely, freely give’ you say
No charge, it’s all in the offering
Press Lord, press me under
Under, under your grace

Jonah’s 3rd Day

I remember the past
But cannot tame its power
When coins had names:
A tanner, half-crown, and a shilling
When ten-bob notes were brown
Coal was black and coke was grey

An age of miracle and wonder
Rolling Rs, blowing gum bubbles
As big as your head,
Waggling ears and wood-pigeon coos,
And smiling girls perfecting handstands
With long straight hair

Early mornings full of swirling fog
The sound of cars sawing
Choke in and choke out
Of ice inside the windows and
Fighting for the three-bar-fire
Winter school in shorts

And family secrets
Dying with the pipe-smoke in the lounge
My hero demoted to decay
The strong so weak
Wretched mourning over the empty chair
And the failure of truth to hide

Making my way detached
From anyone who could know
The questions no-one had words to answer.
No-one I knew anyway
Until I, in the pub,
Spilt my beer – and my words:

‘Christ!’
And she said:
‘Why did you say that?’
That was the prodigal son
Coming to his senses
That was Jonah’s third day
The light guiding me home
O! I remember the past
But cannot tame its power

‘Christ!’ I say now
Kneeling with tears of joy

Steadfast

A poem for Ukraine inspired after walking past Antony Gormley’s one hundred iron statues on Crosby beach, unmoved, facing the wild waves and gale-force wind off the Irish Sea.

***

Who ignited this fire you must not see
Behind my sad stern eyes?
Impassive and unflinching I stand
Tight with resolve: 
I shall not be moved

Pack me in your ice floes 
From the east and from the north
And I will melt you
I may look cold as steel or as a statue of stone
Yet, you will find, I am too hot to touch

A day is coming when I will bend once more
When I will shed a tear
When I will again export wheat and rum and light
When my flames will brighten the night sky
And I will walk in Another Place

Keeping it simple

Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea

No publicity

Just sat on a beach

I like that

Mary left the kitchen, put down her knives

And sat at his feet

No fuss, no words

I like that

I need that

To keep it simple

---

Psalm 30

Eyes closing, I drift in time and watch my
Father counting rusty nails one by one
And dear Mother the gallons of water
Clear and cool in the hand-hewn cistern
But this morning I look down
And count my ribs in unceasing pain

I heave in air from the midday heavens
And remember the scripted and dark night:
Messiah bird caught in a fowlers net.
I, brought down to tears in a garden
And rough, soldier hands, wear a
Crown of thorns for the world to see

My friend, Iscariot, Judas, I see
His eyes in every skull gazing at me
Abandoned by God and man, darkness comes
To hold me between Heaven and Earth
To pour out the nothingness
I have, my blood and final breaths

The seed, I said, must fall into the ground
And now I am falling, falling so deep
Absent from Heaven I descend into Hell
I am weakness now, spent, beyond life
But it’s my aloneness that’s died.
In the cool of the dawn, the stone rolls…

…away! I breathe the stale tomb air in thanks
The angels and I sing songs and we dance
Then stop: the scent of spices makes us hide.
Like children disguised, we dig the rich earth
Leaking joy. Knowing the women can
Only hold a little, I say, ‘Mary!’