Acceptance

I know more than I know*

I have taken you within me

Within me as my contradiction

Yes I have bought into John’s words

Bought into all of the possibilities 

Which your contradictions might gift to me

It did not take a little time

It was not without pain

Or suffering; yet I was steadfast

Here my belligerence helped me

For on many occasions I could have capitulated

Yet always I hung on in there, however fragile

Now, today, I smile; a smile

From I know not where, other than

From all of those contradictions

Which you brought with you

Contradictions, which one by one you handed over

To become more secure, within my domain

* John O’Donohue: Celtic Wisdom - Inner Landscape

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Past Master

I found the book

Spine broken

Tea stained cover

Pages browned with age

Sadly it brought purpose

To an otherwise purposeless morning

In bed until eleven

Not much more to it than that

I also came across the biscuits

Chocolate digestives no less

I don’t recall that you had a favourite

You not being a sweet-tooth, unlike me

His poem, you know the teacher’s poem

There on page eighteen, his poem

Which says so much about you

Although with words which I never could have raised

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Familiarity

The poem about the son struck me

Also the one about the father

Did you not also write

Such relationship poems

Words of knowing, of not knowing

Of curious closeness, of disappointing distance

Did you write out of longing

Or longing for closure

It makes no sense, that I know

Yet the dense matter does matter

As a matter of fact, on some days

It is all that seems to matter

Words for quite unbridgeable words

Except for the clapper bridges in my mind

Words for no purpose of purpose

Except for the purpose of lifting away my working time

My now time; my dawn times, my dusk times

The lifting away is what the poet gave me

A lift in the spirits, a lift for the sensibilities

A whole layer of lifts, into your other world

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Confectionary

I would not expect you to sympathise

Because the butter won’t spread on the scone

After all they are delicious; fresh, warm scones

Almost straight out of the oven

The butter is also fresh, that is

To say it is not soft, nor curdled

It too is straight from its place of keeping

Where it clearly is kept in good shape

I would not expect you to place much store

In my story of the scone, or the butter

Neither the jam, not forgetting the filter coffee

For here they do not do Americano

Nor for you to know that I was on my way

To reflexology, for an hour of calm

As I have my feet scrubbed, massaged

Altogether pampered

I could not tell you, until now

That I would have a small fan

In the treatment room, which gave

A cool breeze, in this the heat of summer

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Spiritual Twins

I had been listening to John O’Donohue

Talking about place, about longing

He had mentioned mountains, streams

Far away horizons

I had watched Boy George on television

Trying to trace his roots in Ireland

He was taken back to the struggles

To the hanging room in Mountjoy Gaol

I slept all night in our bed

That is I did not wake

With my usual aching shoulder

Nor move to the spare room, so as not to disturb

I woke with the words already formed

All I had to do was to write them down

Having done that

I found another poem waiting for me

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