When You come back again
Would You bring me something from the fridge?
(Steve Taylor & Peter Furler, “Lost the Plot”)
Remember praise?
It fed your roots back when you learnt to crawl,
back when you burrowed into soil
eager to receive all the earth had to say.
And today?
Defeat is the last refuge of the desolate stump.
Promises of orchards seem taunting,
a mockery. We hoped such things when we were young
but now…
Even Nebuchadnezzar, cut down,
hangs no gardens, only grazes like a cow.
But remember Job of the cutdown tree
when the first shoot of green
defies the brown stump.
Remember the farfetched, microscopic life
that burrows like a promise
and fells kingdoms with its might.
This morning, because the start of daylight saving tricked my son into sleeping in, I had time to read. So I opened up the new poetry anthology from Proost Poets, Reaching for Mercy, a collection that I contributed to. I must admit that, the first time I looked at it, when I had just received a copy, I mostly looked for my poems, then to see if I knew any of the names. But this morning I decided to be less narcissistic and began from the front cover, and what I found as I started reading the editors’ reflections and the opening poems was a series of voices that felt familiar, like companions who cared about the same things and had walked the same paths as me: not all the same as me – some far from it – but reminders that a solo act like writing is still not done alone. When the struggle for authentic hope and faith in this world feels an increasingly steep up-hill climb, collections like this can help us feel that we have companions, fellow-strugglers to go with.