soundofmanywaters

Lifelines I remember when I could still see The lifelines in my unhardened hands. Now they’re lost in a maze of wrinkles. Is it the tools I have gripped, trying  To tend the worn and broken? The scribbling of a thousand pencils As I pursue that elusive masterpiece? The weary worrying at keyboards? Is it snowdrops planted, roses pruned, Compost shifted and spread? Guys who nurture gardens Can’t be all bad, surely? I hope some of it is fingers pressed to strings,  Stirring sweet chords to life… I hope Little of it is fists formed for fear or fight. But at my best I wish this net of wrinkles, Drawn through the trickling stream of diminishing days, Holds in its mesh caresses, tears wiped, Comfort for the lost and lonely, Even, sometimes, the hungry fed? My kids embraced and knowing they are loved… Then I could feel that, in the slow Withering away of my palms, they might At least have grasped something. Migraine A diamond rattler coils around my sight A rainbow chainsaw rasping th...

10,000 plus views! It was amazing to come back from our summer break in Finland to discover that SoundOfManyWaters has now received so much attention. In June 2025 I was excited to report that SOMW had received 3,000 views. By May 2026 that had grown to 8,000. Now we are in five figure territory! Thank you for taking the time and trouble to visit this blog and check out these poems. I hope that you have found them enjoyable, meaningful and inspiring. However I have suspicions about some of the views. The stats are starting to show strange spikes. All of a sudden, on a single day, there are a couple of hundred views in a country where there has been little or no interest. Why should several hundred people in Vietnam or Singapore or Germany or the US suddenly all decide on the same day to check out my work? I surmise that these views do not come from humans but from bots. My guess is that tech corporations are hunting down text to feed into their large language models so that when a bore...

Remembrance, Red Army Choir, Hand Crafted Remembrance So from your high cross did you see afar in the armour, swords, the boots and horses, the tramp of armies off to another war the flags of battles and the hills of corpses? So did you hear among our taunts and sneers The echoing centuries of rage and hate? the weeping lovers and the mothers' fears, The curses hurled, the ever hardened heart? And when they gave you bitter vinegar could you taste upon parched lips the sting of pain? the mad, the violated, those who  bear sorrows drowned by the victors' idiot song? Finally, when they bashed an iron nail  into each hand, and in your side a spear aimed for your life, could your heart still feel Compassion for the ones who slew you there? An athlete’s sweat, a mother’s pain, are wounds Of love: nothing lives without a sacrifice. Not the bite of nails, it is love that binds Your broken body to this killing place. Red Army Choir This is not a war Rumbled the tank as it crushed a car...

Highland Fling, Michelangelo, Florence, Stained Glass at Harnhill, Dark Lady [An ekphrastic poem is one inspired by another work of art, for example Keats and his Grecian Urn or Auden, in his Musee des Beaux Arts, by the works of Brueghel.] Highland Fling You are not dancing but      Floating Over crossed Scottish swords      Flashing Defiance at gravity      Flouting The drag of mortality      Freeing Your heart from its heaviness      Flaunting The reward of your training      Flying In the gale of the spirit      Flaming Heart, face and hands skyward      Flinging. Your dance is ending, the pipes are      Falling Silent, you rejoin the world of the      Floundering And become again my dad.      Fleeting My glimpse of your sky-flung soul. My dad was a Highland dancer and a very good one, so much so that he became a judge a...

Bottom, A New Orpheus, The Clown Bottom I hope that others look on me as deep, Witty, perhaps, serene and debonair: But I’m known by the company I keep And I’ve got you behind me everywhere. Others I try to approach with dignity To give a good impression to their mind: I turn to go, another view of me Presents – yours is the face I leave behind. My softest paper shows consideration, I faithfully transport you to the loo: Why must you interrupt my conversation And air what hardly passes for your view? Prelates and professors, potentates, Please don’t look down on me for my poor bottom: Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and William Gates, And Taylor Swift - you all know you’ve got ‘em. Almighty Lord, that has made all things well, You know the secrets that we try to hide. You know it’s bad for us when egos swell: You gave us bottoms to bring down our pride. A New Orpheus The Muse is a flighty bird and proud Who stays half hidden in her high cloud, Will not flit down and talk to those Who would be ...

SoundofManyWaters Collection 9: Relating Furies and Gorgons, Bone of my Bone, Semaphore, Bearing the Image, Indigo     Furies and Gorgons   Blusterless Agamemnon The wind gone from your sails Buy a fair breeze With your daughter’s blood And get a hurricane With talons in it.   Medusa rises from the abyss With serpents rising from her hair Each slithering shape gazing With the face of the oppressed: Despised daughters, belittled Sisters, grieving mothers, Abandoned widows and Rejected lovers.   Quick, Perseus! Raise your mirror before their stares Strike home into your stony heart.     Semaphore   Somewhere we lost the knowing of each other We made an image, stuck it on a shelf. Now you are left so many lies to smother And I must labour on to lose myself.   Now mountains rise between us, gaunt and high And no-one knows what we are waiting for. Who will be first to sca...