soundofmanywaters

  New Song   The growl begins in the gut Pain and resentment fuel it Until fermented it chokes and burps Its way up. In the chest It sobs and sighs as sorrow Adds her keening to the noise. Somehow dodging the Censor Who knows it must never Ever be allowed to emerge It grabs hold of the throat And howls itself at the night…   Where it is heard by the True Human As he weeps over his city And rages at hardened hearts And arms himself for battle with the dark…   Man of sorrows, break my heart For what breaks yours, Let your passionate wrath be born Amid my petulant rumblings, Let my feeble tears mingle with yours that I may learn a love more deep and fierce than I can yet desire.   Then my song will seek the sun Grow wings and fly, scattering Notes that sparkle in your light And shower down upon a thirsty land.

  Dieback I cannot see an ash tree Without searching its fingertips For the first stains. Life slips away by inches Leaf to twig to limb, then Rotting to heart and root. For I remember the chestnuts Before canker spread and seared Them to an autumn in June. And I dread the coming of Winter that devours all. And I remember the elms Striding, towering, crowning, Gone.

  Bone of my bone In a velvet purse I keep blood and treasure, destiny and source – fear my hips' swagger! You are the pen that skids lightly on the paper. I am the book that holds the word for ever. I am you and not you both kin and stranger like lover and like foe I demand surrender. "Bone of my bone" is what Adam says when he first sees Eve, according to Genesis 2. Isn't it great that the first recorded human utterance according to Genesis is a love poem? Thank you to my mate Chris for that wonderful insight you passesd on all those years ago. Yet Genesis doesn't tell us what Eve said in reply... so this poem is imagining what she might have said, possibly in anticipation of all the incomprehension, struggle and pain that would arise in future between the sexes, but also the image of God's love burning in her for him.