soundofmanywaters

  The taste of salt starts in the eye With bitter tears, the remembering Of all those friends you’re doomed Never to see again, That blinds you into looking back. Now you are a slowly dissolving column In the obliterating desert and We don’t even know your name. Just a command. “Remember.”

Is it more of a song if it freely Sings with the death of darkness As the unrestrained Spring pours Through the throats of these tiny birds?   Or are there deeper human notes That ring with our Autumn griefs And Winter silences, until They alchemise into worship?   At one end of my guitar There is a chest for hoarding Golden chords, until they swell With summer harmonies.   At the darkest heart of the world There is a man, all wounds, Who gives Himself to the uttermost In the ultimate act of praise.   If it will make me fit For some part in the chorus Then let me, Lord, be an echo of The ache in Your Spring song.

  When poems were engraved on stones You’d hope some palaeontologist might engage To trace the leachings of once living bones - Your furious monsters and their fossil rage. When poems were made from paper marked with ink You might fold them, hurl them, point first, dart At the heavens, hoping they might sink To find an answer in some human heart. Now poems are made of whispering bits Fizzing around the world - somewhere, you long, There must be a secret somebody who hits Your link and, for a moment, shares your song. But poems are made for an in between, for here Echoes the beat of the Spirit’s brooding wings In the space between words and worlds, and you are near To an endless mind that thought and thinks all things…

I finally wrote another poem! This one has been gestating for ages but somehow just wouldn't come together to inhabit the vision I had for it. I'm so grateful that it has finally connected up at last. Hope you enjoy it and find it as meaningful to read as I found writing it... Always Always this fading, always this flowering The night failing, the dawn fleeing The winter keening for the coming spring Always this fleeting, always this falling The seed hungering for the harvest and The harvest felled that other lives may grow Always this ailing, always this healing The breathing in and the breath let go Stripped out and given to the wild airs Always this breaking, always this birthing Behind us birth is gasping, grave gaping Ahead to feed the all-corroding soil Till at this crux, where North, South, East and West Converge in nails upon the embodied All A death is died that is the death of death And at His tomb a breath is breathed that Spits out stone and Life Himself steps out  ...

Did I mention that I seem to be writing lots of tree poems lately? Perhaps because we see in them a reflection of our own growth, maturing, aging and death? While enjoying a rootedness we may envy... Spinney When I was a child there was a chestnut. Her candles blazed all May long, giving way To tawny rubies casked in spiky green, Her low-arced branches luring me to climb and conquer. Later it was a beech tree I loved best. My auntie had one growing by her gate. Though she had many shapely arms, Babs called her Venus de Milo for her voluptuous torso And sinewy skin. Next came a birch, slender silver  Barred with elegant black, bronze too  at her wrists, yet tough as tundra,  And in season a shimmer of shivering,  Winter-defying gold. There were many more saplings for my spinney, Hornbeams and hollies, lissom willows, Doomed tragedies of elm and ash, Even a few prickly conifers, and then There was rowan… But now I choose you, the oak. Warts and wrinkles, Scars and crag...

  I seem to have been writing a bit about trees lately. I've always loved them, a life form that does not need to think in order to be. The following poem is about two literal trees close to the car park and trailer cafe on Headley Heath. In a poem they are of course metaphorical too, and as reader you can choose which meanings work for you - relationship, endurance, strength through togetherness, faithfulness as a fruitful, not a negative thing. How might a Bible metaphor from Isaiah 61 - "oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord" - resonate with you?                On Headley Heath Two trunks rise into a single canopy A whole summer of sun has Soaked their leaves in gold Which now flames down to earth Autumnally, fire for the dark Where, millionfold, their roots Kiss and commingle and empower Next Spring’s upsurging. How many storms have battered their embraces? How many droughts sucked at their life? How many seasons rippled into ri...