Reduced to its skeleton, the tree remembers days of birds in bowers, leaves atwitter, branches bent with the weight of fruit, and now bent with the wait of days when flourishing's a memory.
But still the soil nurtures. Still the roots draw deep and branches in their stasis grow in strength. Still rosehips bud where flowers did and the eagle, grace in his pinions, takes twigs and plants them atop His rising hill.
Son of man, speak to the bones. Speak to the longing marrowed in bones. Speak more than the mere promise of seasons: speak deep to the riddles of blood and bone earth. Son of man, shall these bones live?
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 lost between fire and candle, lost in the long, slow ordinary that yawns in between. Days blink; you miss the moment of daylight, the chance to dry out and be.
Only blessing spans the gap between now and the length of days you long for, creeping up to you in beggar's clothes, with a leper's lips and the nagging daily reminder that you are caught in finitude, built to stretch in timelessness, bound by time, to give of time, to bide time, to abide.
Sanctify the compost heap where 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 piled on piles around the cluttered sink. Sanctify the time it takes to scrub and dry, to sort and stack.
Sanctify numb fingers, ice on windscreen that delays the day, brittle tests when patience is small. Sanctify mess, sanctify time.
Sanctify unholy pain; sanctify this senselessness that drives me to the end of me and sends me to Your feet.
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 so sparse it can hardly be heard at times. This is my attempt to set that emptiness to words. The recording was produced for the online launch of Les Feuilles Mortes, with Ashlea Ephraums, a talented young performer, reading.
Buy Les Feuilles Mortes at the Lulu store. All profits go to Tear Australia’s COVID-19 campaign
If words fail, being only breath, Look to the one who was himself The Word, though many said not. Look to the one whose last Breath, crushed by Satan's Knee, was "Forgive." Look to Him And keep Faith.
Kneading after the kids are asleep and the day's tidy-up's done,
kneading unresolved jobs and disappointment into positive dispersal of yeast through dough,
kneading prayer, kneading thought of friend in need, kneading the loss of this or that hope, kneading hope.
And pounding, pounding heaven's door like a breadboard, pounding grace into slack and crumbling day, pounding the gate of coming kingdom, pounding the weight of the season, the wait of the harvest, the slowness of leaven, the tarrying rise.
And waiting. Dough sits before the heater. The day's done, and morning will show what will rise, what still waits.
As schools reopen in my part of the world, I have had the strange, disorientating experience of returning to work yet nothing being the same. But beside my office in the school library are some gorgeous auburn leaves that soothe me whenever I pass them. So I’m sharing them here with you today, along with a snippet from one of the poems in my new book, Les Feuilles Mortes, which is a kind of prayer for all of us as we imagine life on the other side of Corona.
And do not say, When all this is done. Think bigger than the mere return of leaves to trees. Think seasons not yet imagined, transformed.
(From “Autumn Leaves: Tanka for Isolation”
Les Feuilles Mortes is available for digital download here. Tune in to the online book launch on Saturday 30th May at 8:30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.
I’m thrilled to have my new book of poetry “Les Feuilles Mortes” ready to launch on Saturday 30th May, one week today. In our society distanced days, it’ll be an online launch, but this has given me the wonderful opportunity to have more people involved than I would have otherwise, with friends near and far contributing poem readings or joining my virtual Taizé ensemble for some goosebump-inducing music. You can access the launch either here or at my YouTube channel, 8:30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time. Grab some wine and cheese and have your own book launch party from home. Can’t wait to share the experience with you!
I’m looking forward to sharing a number of videos of poems from my upcoming book Les Feuilles Mortes in the coming weeks, including several from my friends and readers across the world. Here is the first, a letter written in quarantine to my young children.
The Consolations of Writing 