Rearrange

Cats chasing lizards on the sandstone
Politicians after your vote on the megaphone
Heat-seeking girls burnt to the bone
Lying in the sun ‘til the day is done
Our time wasted again on our mobile telephone

It’s what we humans do, nothing can change
We cannot stop, we rearrange
A picture here, a dinner date there
A cherry in my lemonade, lemon in my marinade
But of ourselves we are unaware

 And all the while there is the One
Ignored, unknown, the loving Son
Hands outstretched upon a cross
Bearing our pain, His searing loss
It’s time to kneel and weep some tears

 Hold His hands, let Him rearrange
Our remaining years

The Truth Doctor

It is the uniform that beguiles
A golfer wearing a bowler
A Constable in rugby boots
A violinist breathing through a snorkel
Disturbing the equilibrium

And yet anticipation crackles
Time’s come to disturb
To wreck the rut
And escape across the tracks to
The wrong side

To visit the Truth Doctor
The one unfooled by illusions
Who sees past solidity,
Past interlocking crystals,
Into the space within

We arrive, our five senses
Taking us for a ride to
A world where particles will not
Be confined in solitary places
And Dali clocks drool over the edges…

The Truth Doctor has a friend
The Ghost in the Machine.
Facing one another
They play catch, then wrestle
Ultimate realities, at ease, fighting

In a mist, in the chill of dawn.
We stand by, like umpires
Allowed to judge the Judge
The Ghost is felled and, weeping,
We count …7,8,9, Out!

But the Truth Doctor, laughing and
Folded in pain, erupts and roars,
His words filling the Earth
“Three, Two, One...
We watch as Death loses its sting

Helicopter Seeds

My sycamore clock
Is shedding spent leaves and seeds
In time for winter

Folding In

‘Folding in’ apparently is
‘Combining a dry ingredient
With one of more weight,
And wet,
Whilst retaining much air’

If your parable antennae
Are restless and twitching
You’ve tuned in
To our story -
Mine and maybe yours

Like flour in a recipe
I have been taken, by Love,
Dry, and dead with potential
And folded into a Christ
So ready to baptise me…

…in His story
And, like an author
I find myself in print
An autobiography
Another incarnation

Breathing deeply.

And it’s not even breakfast!

5.25

Turning his head hesitantly
Green glowing digits declare the time.
Malfunctioning lumbar vertebrae
However, cause him to wince with pain, so
Inch by small inch, this great man:
This father, this mechanic, this dentist, this musician
This writer, this soldier, this boxer
Presses his clenched left fist hard down
On the mattress, and, gripping the headboard
Shuffles his bum…
Life, reduced to an hour’s toil

It’s 6.19
Standing now, unable to dress
Surfing waves of pain
A spiritual man, his small prayers leaking
Takes baby steps.
Afraid to lean
He wonders where the rod and the staff are
When you need them most.
This great man
Now weak, decreased, vulnerable
Like the man on Jericho Road
In need of mercy

It’s nearly 7
Sunrise light finds birds flitting about
Fetching twigs and food
But he’s not hungry for anything vast:
His plans; now hidden from view.
Hungry only to put jeans on, a shirt,
Socks; a distant dream.
And yet, with ingenuity and time
On they go, toe by toe.
Life without warm feet
Is barely possible.
Walking pole in his hand and…

7.45
…a hundred tiny steps later
A kettle is filled, a switch thrown
And the noise of turbulence and boiling
Fills the air, strong tea is brewed.
Breakfast has begun.
This great man, toast in hand
Leaning on his elbows
Turns his head lazily and
Through the window
Sees another world;
One he used to know.

The Brimming Wasteland

It’s early October, past dawn
And, without us looking,
Someone has cleansed the air.
Fallen leaves, scurry around after her,
Dancing to the unknown
Melody of the morning rays

The trees are showing off:
They fool us as we take in
The chill of winter to come.
Single yellow, brown, green, and red
Leaves fall and, though we don’t loiter
Long enough to see, all turn into soil.

Why is it after all these years
Conkers lying open to the sun, stir me?
Hundreds scattered liberally on the Downs
Unlike then, only a few trees then,
In Kent, when conker collection
Was an annual, serious pursuit

Then, glossy coats, their glory,
Fading to matt, yielded to skewers
And triple-knotted string.
“There’s five in my pocket today
One is a fourteen-er,
Battle-scared and doomed”

The trees watch and are content
Boys mostly, some girls,
Blind to the brimming wasteland,
Laden with odd green spiky capsules,
Thrown annually from a height, with hope:
The discarded life of each tree.

Distracted, fooled, and blind
They walk by these ancient life-spreaders
Who wait, God-like, patient yet hungry,
Like surfers searching for the wave,
For just one conker to die, out of sight,
And turn, not to soil, but leaf.

Then another…

In Praise of the Middle

Draw a square on some paper
Draw another around it
Cut out the inner square
And jump through the hole
Into Middle-Earth

But do it when you’re young
Draw a circle
Double its size
And let the years slip by
Welcome to middle-age

 Got my ticket, flying to Egypt,
Jordan and Beirut
On the way to Qatar to feel
The heat of an oxymoron
The Middle-East

Fly past Stone and Bronze
Flash through the Dark
And land, tumbling, one day
Like a jester in the Middle Ages
Heading down the tube of time

And in your travels up and down time
Will you notice the Messiah
Stuck in the middle, a closed heart
To his left, and one to his right,
Open, en route to Paradise?

Talking to an Artist

I got to wondering why
Why I have two eyes
And two ears
Not one

All I can offer is a guess
I’ve been stooping
Picking up breadcrumbs
Fragments, scattered clues

Talk to a scientist and
They will animate technical words
Stereophonics…stereovision…
Depth and focus

Talk to an artist and
They’ll animate
You
And open your second ear
And open your second eye

Can you straddle
With your two feet?
Walking into the deep
Of both worlds?

Hearing words and silence
Seeing the shades of autumn?
Or tuned to cries of the heart
Glimpsing spirit touch spirit?

Like two lights merging
Two waves colliding
Or two hands on a piano
Playing bass and treble notes in you

Are you learning to walk now?
To straddle, to waddle
To stumble, stride out, to run?
I wonder.

Shaving on a Saturday

To shave on a Saturday
This I will not do
I’d rather squat on a porcupine
Than edge my beard into a straight line
Even if Moses tells me to

No! I’d rather be circumcised
And on the Sabbath
Lift no heavy weights
Than smooth my stubble
With sharp blades, single or double

A day’s rest – I insist
Nocturnal and diurnal, joys of neglect
Free to grow, to flex, to sprout
To chatter to neighbours
Flout the razors and…drop out

But Sunday has come
And with it a fresh blade or two
Soap and towels – I’m feelings fresh
But shaving on a Saturday
This I will not do.

Things Fall Apart

Am I old when, from a distance, you see

Hair protruding from my ears?

Or when I smile at those I can’t hear?

Am I old when I can’t remember

Catching anything one-handed?

Or when two attempts are needed

To escape from a chair?

No, it’s when old barriers finally fall,

And, companion of tears,

You watch misty-eyed at

The shabbiness of old paint peeling

Painted with the one you loved

And falling into contentment:

Conversations with the mortal coil

Of secret memoirs, that feed the soul

And as you fall, you fall nearer to heaven

On The Sunset Side

It is late; in the afternoon

The quiet of the morning,

Lost in the day,

Has returned

And the clouds break apart

Welcoming home

Their hero on high

The sycamore is full of light

On the sunset side

Watching rich colours appear

And the sky darken

Once again.

Low horizon light

Illuminates my desk and pen

Where does light come from?

The seeing of a man?

No other creature has eyes

Like a composer on heat

Or the rap artist

Pouring his river of rhyme

Over an adoring crowd

‘In His image’ some say

And who can argue?

Are we abandoned, then,

Like Chinese lanterns

Detached and unmoored?

Or are we portals

For another realm?

Light of the morning

Light of the evening

Fall on me

Let me love the shadows

The dents and hollows

The imperfections

In us all.

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