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Thursday 6 August 2020

Observe

To see within or beyond
To find a way closer
To being at one
In awareness of more
Than ever before

To talk of this place
As peace, or understanding
Even, on occasions
To be blessed with love
Where the words
And the silences wait
For the zeroes of the moment

What is it
Which holds you back
What nagging doubts
Limit your progress
Can you not see the red roses
Can you not smell the freesias
Or the salt spray
From the windblown waves

So to become settled
With the attachments
Be together
With all
That has gone before
And be together
With all
Which will come again


Wednesday 5 August 2020

Route One

So it isn’t meaning or understanding
Which I strive for
Indeed it could fairly be said that I often
Shy away from meaning or understanding

Instead it is a feeling which I hope to evoke
Or more importantly
A feeling which I hope to be able to walk among
Or bathe in, as I write the words I write

The light dims, the breeze picks up
The weather is on the change
A change which may well take me with it
At that very moment the thought

Of the mountain and the river enters my mind
From where and how I know not
The breeze will become a wind
On its continuum, how might I discern

The tipping point of this transformative force
So it is observation, of that which is for itself
Outside of me, which now fuels this writing
Yet also there must be speculation, for how else

To extend the pathways on which I wish to walk
But for now it is interference which halts me
Angst at sounds neither clear nor valedictory
Then to step back, to stop even, although actually

To find a diversion, with new possibilities, instead


Tuesday 4 August 2020

From This Chair

It is about the clouds
For they lighten
Or darken my mood

It is about the colours
And the fabrics
Of the cushions

Not so much
What I made of it
Or what I make of it

Rather the elegance
And the craft
Of other’s handiwork

I bring the observation
One person
Who sits to watch on

Happy
For the stillness
And the space

Between me
And the objects
Of objectivity

Whose wide variations
Ask of me
My many questions


Monday 3 August 2020

That Which Was Her Name

I had a teenage sweetheart
For sure she was a catholic girl
She caught the bus to St Gregory’s
I went to a Presbyterian grammar school

She had a good looking brother
Her friend had two brothers too
Her father was a drinker
A big man, known to those who drank in town

We played down by the river
All-day we fooled around
Only when we got older
Did the love thing have us bound

What she needed I could not give her
Though she never told me so
Just one night at Christmas
She said alone she had to go

Our lives cascaded way apart
Yet, occasionally we would meet up
But I knew full well
We never were meant to restart

Now I hear a country singer
Who takes me back to that girl
To those teenage summers
With my innocent auburn curls

Sunday 2 August 2020

Version Numero Uno

The drawing pen
Has pointed out
The places for correction
As the third eye smiles
Into the ebony and the ivory
Of life’s past reflections

I could not throw a rope
Over fourteen years
Or one hundred and twenty thousand hours
The words never could be
Stretched out so far
Not with any certainty

Yet what is done is done
What was said has been said
No turning back
This writer is not for turning
Sometimes
Not even for starting out

But the job is done
The stones are thrown
Love’s potions have been devoured
All that is left is the setting
The fonts and the spaces
The essences of the meaning

Which another man
May well have explained
Altogether differently