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Collection 8: Sonnets

Collection 8: Sonnets Dark Lady, Michelangelo, Sonnet on the body of Christ, Bearing the Image Meditation on the body of Christ Lord, at your feet I fall, that holy place where lepers and harlots lie, and parents plead life for a dying child; so, grasping grace, I touch your wounded feet, and tell my need. Your arms reach out to hold my grief and shame, to lift me up, to heal and set me free; Your broken hands roll back the stone of blame to bring new life, and now take hold of me. But how shall I look up into your face, Your eyes consuming with their unmade light? For love unbounded burns me in your gaze And I must die to live within your sight. Your feet, your hands, your shining face, these three Are mercy, power and endless love to me. Bearing the image Still without memory, still unaware Of any possibility of future, there Sprawls Adam in his golden thoughtlessness Upon the green of Eden, where he is Contemplated. While he continues whole Completeness only incompletes his role. Th...
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Collection 7: Following

SoundofManyWaters Collection 7: Following A Rose Garden, Mielahti, Not another poem about writing poems, On Beauty A Rose Garden So I planted the garden for you. To guard it, a hedge of sweet myrtle, Within it, lily of the valley, rue and rose To keep me scented of you till you come. All through it of course there must flow A stream of limpid water, Running and singing and shining From a broken jar of clay. And come at last you do – but why must you Ignore my gate, break down my hedge And trample my flowers? Why could you not linger  on the lawn I laid for you, but must go straight ahead (my hedge again!), leaving only an irresistible scent, and the  faint echo of a call? So I followed in your steps, that led After many days to a high rugged hill And a torrent that thundered With the sound of many waters. Far away and small my shattered garden. It seemed you had a wider field to walk, Immersing me into a deeper stream. And at the summit, you at last, Plainly waiting for me. “L...
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Collection 6: Birds

Collection 6: Birds Flight of birds, Dawn Chorus, Towards Bigger Poems Flight of Birds Meaning and remeaning with the seasons, This is their art. They follow The Sun swelling in the East, The grub swelling in the ooze. They celebrate in vast carnival Wind, star, storm and bird-wing And the expense of themselves. They plan nothing: bird-blood beats in them: "We are and we are Yours." But this thin line of words thrown out Along the sky-tide of Your will, Does it hold anything of You? Yet because I must learn You I shall outfly these birds. Dawn Chorus 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, ...
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Collection 5: Coming to the Cross

  Coming to the Cross • Always, Remembrance, Silence, Pearl beyond price, The Conspiracy 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  To walk all ways with us and Spring is  Always Remembrance So from your high cross did you see afar in the armour, swords,  the boots and horses, the tramp of armies off to ano...
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New Look for SoundofManyWaters

Thank you everyone for sticking patiently with SoundofManyWaters as it has grown haphazardly. As all posts were in date order, some poems that I think were pretty good were stuck at the bottom where it was hard to find them, while still more posts, good and bad, arrived above them in the sequence. There was no thematic arrangement, so you couldn't look for the type of poems you were interested in, you just had to keep on burrowing down into the heap until either you found something you liked or gave up. There have grown to be over 50 posts, so it could take you a while... I'm now attempting to grapple with these structural issues. I've noticed that my poems tend to cluster around certain themes: prayer and worship, the cross, following Jesus and being a disciple, connecting with other people, birds, trees, water (especially with the light sparkling on it), and so on. So why not group the posts around these themes, with several poems on each theme all together in the same p...
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Collection 1: Worshipping...

Worshipping After George Herbert, Ashburnham woods, Mielahti, Belonging, Stained glass at Harnhill After George Herbert Prayer from the first, a new born baby’s cry And in the dying soul’s departing sigh. Defibrillation, jolting us to start The blood now beating through a broken heart. Prayer in the desert blooming all alone A rose whose sweetest scent to heaven is blown. Prayer in the hubbub, linking all in one As each lone flower leans toward the Sun. Prayer in the groaning of a world in pain The darkness weeping for the dawn again. Prayer in my faltering words of guilt and shame The quiet whisper of a healing name. A living water welling up from deep A soil that nurtures roots through winter’s sleep A fire that blazes out with life, not death A breeze, a gale, the sharing of a breath. Prayer at the cross’s foot, an agony That dives down deeper than the abyss in me. Prayer at its height that, jabbing at the sky Pierces the Father’s heart with my heart’s cry. Prayer reaching out, a co...
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Collection 2: Searching...

Searching  Homo Disneyana, Call of the wild, Perspectives, Held, Belonging Homo Disneyana           I. Homo Disneyana Lopes through the litterscape Of the late Anthropocene Leaving a trail of  discarded identities From whose throes arises An army of the maimed. Disneyana stands, turns, Proclaims his creed as  a counter-curse: “I can be anything I want!” But the spectres unimpressed Crowd forward and The pursuit begins.            II. Scrolling through the screenscape Of the early thanatocene Disneyana hopes a void  To echo his vacuity…  But the stardust drifts  into disturbing shapes Almost as if there were a mind… Jabbing out the cosmos, He rams in his earbuds And grabs for a safer app -  “I’ll catalogue my selfies!” - Not to hear the Voice,  Not to see the Face: “I can be anything I want,”  “Except Yours.”           III. Saints Walt and Jeff, Sain...
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