It’s a curious thing, keeping ordinary time these last two years. In some respects everything is very ordinary. We don’t leave our homes very much; each day feels much like the previous one; we see the same people, the same walls, the same garden beds. Yet in other ways nothing is ordinary. We long forContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: The New Ordinary?”
Category Archives: Poetry
From the ground
“Dada! Find wiggly-woo!” the twins cry,exultant at the chance to dig fingers in earthand find its inhabitants in their hands. And so, on my lunch break, I fossickin our newly dug garden bed,each patch of earth yielding a companion for these delighted fingers,and I store the moment like compostto ferment within, to wriggle me alive.
Ordinary Wednesday: Unfinished Business
As a teacher, I have strange dreams. Often they involve classes wildly out of control, or me being absurdly late to a class. The schools in which I teach are often an amalgam of all the schools I have known: the primary and secondary schools that I attended, as they were in the 90s, andContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Unfinished Business”
Elements
Since awe sometimes is out of reachand mind strains in its own finitude, I will take the elements, the staples of the day’s endand breathe in their meaning: grace like the sourdough I stir through the bowl,holiness like the wine I savour though kids tip their food and yell,a table ripe with Godeven now.
Neurochemistry
I’m not sure how science describes it butsometimes a neuron seeking safe passage yetfinding nonesimplyenters black spacewhere nothing is thought or feltas reprieve from thinking,feeling too much.And in that spaceis only staticonly the humming oflost signals.Emptied, what canspeak or console?What can reconnect?Devils silenced, but sothe voice of angels.In this deadness no strong manneed cast theContinue reading “Neurochemistry”
The plans I have for you
Itching ears may long to hear,All is well. Everyone relax.But truth is rarely so welcome, or simple;more often we hear All is not well before it is well.More often the doctor diagnoses before healing;the exiles must first be exiledbefore coming home.All shall be well. All manner of thingsshall be well. But first we must learntheContinue reading “The plans I have for you”
Change the Heart
When those 12 ships turned up in Sydney, all those years ago, it wasn’t a particularly flash day for the people on those vessels either… Prime Minister Scott Morrison It was not a flash day at Sydney Cove,not a flash day for anyone.Not flash for the sailors, turning aboutfor a week in that blasting SouthernContinue reading “Change the Heart”
Running with Horses
Weeping prophet with the puffy eyes:I’ve run with men and am at my end.Tell me how you ran with horses;tell me how you stood to run.Prophet sitting in Zion’s rubble:did you see Messiah weepingin the broken city’s puddles?Did He lift you, man of tears?Broken prophet dragged by crowds,did you see heaven’s horses’ flight?Arms bound byContinue reading “Running with Horses”
The Patience of Bread
To the toddler eye, yeast bubbles for pure delightand the lump of dough is to be savoured now.Try as I might, I cannot explainwhy that treasure must go to wait in the sun,why the instant must make way for the delayed.I too cannot understandkingdom yeast’s delay in them, in me,cannot let go of moment’s feastwithoutContinue reading “The Patience of Bread”
The Weeping Prophet
To be a pariah takes only hateand the unshaken conviction that you,above all others, are right.To be an outcast you only need yellwhen a listening earmight salvage a soul.To be Jeremiah, you need more than that:not only conviction, not only the truthbut the burden of weeping,the burden of love,the knowledge that kingdoms are built ofContinue reading “The Weeping Prophet”
The Consolations of Writing 