Month: June 2023

Patience

Patience


“Patience achieves everything.”
St. Theresa wrote this in Spanish,
back in the old days, when patience
was a virtue that few possessed.
Patience has vanished nowadays.

It is as dead as a doornail,
as dead as the proverbial dodo,
as dead as whatever cliché
springs to mind in the laziness
of the instant possession of each
passing cloud, each new slogan
marketed madly on the TV.

Turn off the TV. Go out, barefoot,
and walk on rain-wet grass
or walk on sea-wrinkled sand
out into the sun-warmed waves,
there where the sandpipers
stitch their secret messages
and the crows walk barefoot too.

Learn the secrets sown there,
decipher the ancient wisdom
left on the beach by wandering gulls.

There, in the tide-mark you will find,
among the sand-papered bones
and skulls, the secrets that will solve
the mysteries that you seek.

“If you try to force the soul, you never succeed.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 147.

“La paziencia, todo lo alcanza.” St. Theresa of Avila.

Magician

Magician

I stand on a tiny platform, high above
the upturned faces of the clamouring crowd.
Before me, the high-wire stretches across
the diameter of the circus tent.

Clad in the enormous shoes of a clumsy clown,
I grip the wire with the toes of one foot.
Now I must choose – umbrella or pole?

The spotlight outlines my face’s whiteness,
the bulbous nose, the fixed, painted smile.
My jaws clamp tight in concentration.

Clutching the brolly, a good old gamp, I walk
the thin wire plank of my current destiny.
One step, two steps, tickle you under the chin,
and I pretend to fall, grasp the wire, and raised
by the crowd’s gasp of despair, swing back up.

Then, a yard from the finish line, I swallow dive,
turn a somersault in the air, and land on my back
in the middle of the safety net as the crowd goes wild.

“The magician works on the threshold that runs between light and dark, visible and invisible.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 145.

“The most difficult role in the play is that of the fool – for he who would play the fool must never be one.” Don Quixote.

Painting: Fire Sky by Moo.

A Place Eternal

A Place Eternal

When sunshine floods my body
it leads me down into a secret,
sacred space that I know exists
even though, all too often,
I am unable to locate it,
search as I may, but then,
when I no longer seek it,
it is with me, and I know
that I am no longer alone,
but wrapped in the comfort
of an angel’s protective wings.

That haunting presence lingers,
plays melodies within my mind,
invites me to return, keeps me warm
when chill winds blow.

I depart from that place,
a fingernail torn from the flesh.

“There is a place in the soul that neither space, nor time, nor flesh can touch. This is the eternal place within us.”

“You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.”
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 105.

Painting: Sky Wound by Moo.

Sacred Moment

Sacred Moment


Evening falls, leads into night.
I search darkening skies
for the moon’s bright circle,
so meaningful, that light.

The moon, a thin wedding ring,
encircling a gilded cradle,
wherein five planets float.

Aligned, their circular lights
create such longing
in the observer’s heart.

The magic moment has come,
a moment forever sacred.
Whatever happens now
will be correct and right.

Pain and Pane

Pain and Pane

I am living in a Duke of York world
fraught with mood swings and random changes.
When I am up, I am up, and when I am down,
well, then I am down, and every so often,
I meet in the middle and am neither up nor down.

At night I swim among the constellations
and the stars net silver sequins in my hair.
By day, I walk along a piano’s keyboard
and replay life’s ups and downs like scales,
practicing them, again and again.

I no longer know who or what I am.
I only know I exist right here, at my desk,
my table, in my bed, looking out through
a window that has opened in my head,
a window that serves as a mirror.

I step through it, and go back to my childhood
in Wales. I recall the sunny days of sea and sand,
but also those days when sunlight fails, clouds
gather, and the west wind conjures rain and gales.
Such pain as I press my nose against the window
pane, and watch the raindrops falling again.

A World of Silence

A World of Silence

My dreams are black-and-white movies,
no voices, with the cinema pianist tapping
silent notes on the hammer dulcimer.

Shadowy images, cast by a candle, flicker
along the walls, and I am back in school,
walking, half-asleep to midnight mass.

I stumble forward, from that distant past
towards a series of unknown futures
none of which may ever come to pass.

In the Big Top of my head, the gymnasts
hold hands and in silence float their clouds
above the heads of the wondering crowds.

To fall or not to fall, to fall to rise no more.
Soundless sighs erupt from silent, open
mouths as the tight-rope walker sets out.

The umbrella in his hand is a Roman candle
that throws shadows on the circus sand
as clowns with bulbous noses cavort below.

The ring-master flexes an inaudible whip.
The carnival ponies trot up and down.
The motor-bike rider accelerates. In the hush
the bike ascends the Wall of Death and falls,
diving down, down, down, into silence.

“All words come out of silence. The language of poetry rises from, and returns to, silence.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 110.

The Secret Fountain

The Secret Fountain

Go deep into yourself.
Search for the secret fountain,
the well with the sacred waters that renew,
replenish, and flow like sunlight.
Rest by its verdant banks. Here you can
find the self you thought you had lost.

Here, angels take wing and songbirds sing.
Telephone calls, e-mails, social media,
all such worldly things, lack meaning.

Rest awhile. The universe knows you.
Permit it to once again make friends
with who and what you are, what you were,
what you will always be, your eternal spirit
known, cossetted, comforted, and loved.

Your curriculum vitae no longer matters.
What matters is the heart of you,
that gold mine hidden deep within.
Here lies the mold of shining gold that will
enrich your soul, renew your life,
and gift you ever-lasting treasures.

Old Man Sin Drome

Old Man Sin Drome

Damn! He’s done it again.
He must pretend it hasn’t happened.
He struggles out of his jeans,
runs the hot tap in the powder room,
removes his underoos,
and places them in the basin.

He adds soap and watches the water
bubble and change color.
He rolls up his sleeves,
places his hands in the hot suds,
grabs the nail brush,
and starts to scrub.

Cancer. He is washing it away,
removing its stain, the smell,
the pain of its presence.
He drains the water and wrings
his underoos, twisting them this way
and that in an effort to purge.

More water now, no soap.
He waits for the water to discolor.
When it doesn’t, he knows that all
is well and the evidence destroyed.


He wrings out his underoos again,
then hangs them over the air vent to dry.
He keeps a spare pair in the cabinet drawer.
He puts them on, struggles back into his jeans,
and hopes that nobody will ever find out.

Wash Day Blues

Wash-Day Blues

“Out, out, foul spot.” Yet,
however much I scrub them,
those blood spots on my clothes
will not disappear. No seas
incarnadine for me. Picking
at scabs, my fingernails draw blood.
with so many ragged edges.

The old, stale liquid flows
fresh again from once-healed wounds.
Why made me open them up?
Was it just boredom? Or that itch
ever nibbling at the mind’s edge?

Tell me, how do we walk away?
How do we heal ourselves?
How do we forgive and forget?
Does the fresh blood wash away
the dirt I feel crusted round me?
Will I ever be clean again?

Wednesday is wash-day.
I scrub again and again
at all my dirty linen. Then I watch
as my wrinkled skin grows damp, scabs
soften, and I open them once more.

Lost

Lost

Where can it be? I put it
somewhere safe, but I
can’t remember where.

So many things grow legs,
go absent without leave,
walk out of my world.

I am slowly losing control.
My life will soon be left
in somebody else’s hands.

They will control my wants
needs, and necessities.
Then I too will be lost.

Placed somewhere safe,
perhaps, there to lie forgotten,
abandoned, secure, perhaps,
but who knows at what cost.