Can I sitattentive to the voice of many waters and yet move, serve, respond?Can I act,responsive to a world of burning rubble and yet listen, stop and breathe?Full of many things, I forgetto choose the better part.Caught in mindless bustle, I catcheternity in the friction that grindsto a hault.O bless the failurethat drives me kneeward.BlessContinue reading “Mary Martha”
Category Archives: Poetry
Free ebook and short film: “And who is my neighbour?”
If you have not yet read or bought your copy of Les Feuilles Mortes, you can get a taster of the collection in this free ebook, featuring some poems from Les Feuilles Mortes as well as some old poems and some brand new ones. You can also check out the short film I made toContinue reading “Free ebook and short film: “And who is my neighbour?””
Face-to-face: After Emmanuel Levinas
My brother’s face is not my face;His eyes see things mine do not see,And when I try to take his placeI’m stuck in his alterity.I do not know what he has known.I do not think his thoughts with him.His father is my father. ThoughHe is not me, he is my kin.Each other face I dailyContinue reading “Face-to-face: After Emmanuel Levinas”
Pruning
Against expectation, thisSpartan clipping makes spring flourish more,this cutting back to bones,to bare knobbly knuckles makesgrowth more abundant when it comes.And so we bearthe naked cruelty of these bare days,knowingagainst all experience,trusting againstbarren winter feeling,enduring againstthe buckling in our bones that wants to fall.
Bone Winter
Reduced to its skeleton, the treeremembers days of birds in bowers,leaves atwitter,branches bent with the weight of fruit,and now bent with the wait of dayswhen flourishing’s a memory.But still the soil nurtures.Still the roots draw deep and branchesin their stasis grow in strength.Still rosehips bud where flowers didand the eagle,grace in his pinions,takes twigs andContinue reading “Bone Winter”
And who is my neighbour?
Love, sensing Self flex muscles,Circumvents the question, takes a detourAlong a Jericho road,A thoroughfare often taken, seldom observed.Love stretches the story out,Beyond expectation, beyond our trust,Defeats its stock of righteous men,Then surprises with a foe.Love befriends the enemy,Gives face and heart to the hated one.Love helps us up the donkey’s back,Carries us safe, far fromContinue reading “And who is my neighbour?”
The Long Ordinary
Winter sets in,rubs his damp feet all through the laundry,wipes his everwet hair with each handtowel,breathes ice on my windscreen,cries soggy complaints on my feet.And somewhere we are lostbetween fire and candle, lostin the long, slow ordinary that yawnsin between.Days blink; you miss the momentof daylight, the chanceto dry out and be.Only blessingspans the gapContinue reading “The Long Ordinary”
Holy Mess
Sanctify the compost heapwhere I trudge in dark with the day’s dank scraps.Sanctify the living stench,soil’s second chance,barren fig-tree’s friend.Sanctify the dishes piledon piles around the cluttered sink.Sanctify the time it takesto scrub and dry,to sort and stack.Sanctify numb fingers, iceon windscreen that delays the day,brittle tests when patience is small.Sanctify mess,sanctify time.Sanctify unholy pain;sanctifyContinue reading “Holy Mess”
Psalm (from “Les Feuilles Mortes”)
It can be hard to capture emptiness with words, but often that is the primary emotion that I bring to my poems. This poem is a prayer that I wrote originally as the final part of a sequence of poems inspired by John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”. The final track of that album is soContinue reading “Psalm (from “Les Feuilles Mortes”)”
Silence
If words fail, being only breath,Look to the one who was himselfThe Word, though many said not.Look to the one whose lastBreath, crushed by Satan’sKnee, was “Forgive.”Look to HimAnd keepFaith.
The Consolations of Writing 