soundofmanywaters

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...

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...

Beginning  Pause, Bearing the image, Bone of my bone, Stone, Towards bigger poems Pause Sixth Day - almost done. Are we sure we’re ready? Light? Good one! Check. Firmament? Still firm. Check. Land? Alps and orchards, heaths and beaches. Check. Stars? Sun, Moon, Saturn, oceans of galaxies. Check. Birds? Fish and wiggly things? Check. Animals? Hooting, howling, squeaking, squealing. Check. All set then. But are we sure? Can they bear the burden of the Image? Will they speak the lyric of the Word? Eternity paused. And in that pause God dreamed, and in that dream Were burning forests, air unbreathable, Rivers and seas were slicked with liquid filth, Machines for mincing people into mud Rattled and shuddered, while a billion tongues Cursed and lamented, insults, taunts and lies… And drowning in that tide of hate, Himself, Naked and pierced to the marrow, giving all. Time woke again, with a sigh that shivers Trembling through every made thing. And God said, “Let us make man…” Bearing the...

Trees Spinney, Dieback, Veteran, Catkins  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 to conquer. Later it was a beech tree I loved best. My auntie had one growing by her gate. Though it had many shapely arms, she called it Venus de Milo for her voluptuous torso And sheeny 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,  defiant 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’ve acquired some warts and wrinkles, Scars and crags, and I’m drawn to you, the oak. Deepest rooting, widest spreading, you’ve seen off  The scourings of many a grey winter and got the marks. Yet still there st...

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 scale them, you or I, And signal in a frantic semaphore?

Naked and unashamed in broadest day, Unmoved, unmoving, you can never share Our thrilled bemusement at your standing there. You grant our wish, and equally betray – Muscles unmoving, lips that cannot say, Brittle eternity of marble hair, Proportionate perfection! Yet you are Of stone, not flesh, in flight from our decay. You look down with a mute I told you so, Rebuke the perfect place where we would go With all the flesh’s longing to be fair: For in his marble, Michelangelo, If he had missed the giant prisoned there, Had formed no shape to shelter his despair.