Sunrise to Twilight (memories of summer)

The above titled poem which follows came out of a conversation with a friend last night.

The gentle orange orb's rise
announces breaking day across the skies,
a welcoming song bids me awake
anticipates what's to come -
new hopes, old fears, Opportunity to take.

Reassuring rays caress my face
melting yesterday's cobwebs' embrace.
The glow seeps through and stains my insides,
warmth and security rise up
and beckon my smile like jazz melody.

Strange communion between
creature and creation, as the
sun's rise makes its declaration
provokes the soul ecstatic with
quiet joy of such union as
beauty is unveiled.

Midday malaise is interrupted
directed from its thronging way down
the ally of rest, just for a while.
Humanity comes together, we talk
and laugh and exchange - how strange,
Contentment reached as destination.

Diamonds arranged on jet black velvet
pulse pearlescent white from
the consuming expanse above.
Peering upward to vast array
becoming easily lost as a leaf
tossed to and fro by Autumn wind.

The Elegant Distants form their
constellations as if working together -
all the more my wonder.
Yet in the midst there is
mysterious calm and awe-laden peace which
whispers when I listen closely.

Memories - these on-going gems
transport and share themselves when contemplated,
all the more I yearn for them,
my memories of summer.

carrion

This is a poem I wrote for when thoughts in our mind circle relentlessly in our minds like vultures, weighing down our spirit.

Rise into the Light


Ideas, dreams, anxieties, thoughts
Rush around busying the mind.
Sometimes colliding, creating
More of the same – creative
Destruction plays its game.


Sometimes, in torrents they come
The deluge submerging, overwhelming
Subsuming and blurring each other
Rendered opaque, as blackness
As burdensome – clarity no clarity.


Captivity to darkness is embraced,
The melody of creative destruction.
To languish there is a millstone,
Weighing down; exerting pressure.
Yet, the burden is needless.


Needless – the burden that is,
Its power is a fiction claiming
Jurisdiction of the mind.
The fiction that there’s no way
Through, no way out.


The light – there for those who seek it.
After the torrent, there’s calm
To rise up to the surface of
The water and break through
To breath and life and clarity.


Authority asserted – clarity regained
Ideas, dreams, anxieties, thoughts
Have their character again.
Creative destruction plays its game –
Will you play it at its own game?


Rise into the light.

the knife-edge and the circle

My mate's new baby boy.

The knife-edge and the circle. The knife-edge: we're alive then we could be dead at any time entering into what seems so much to be a final and dark unknowable unknown. The circle: with every person passing there is at least another to replace the passing.

Why do I struggle to suspend my disbelief that I must cease to be? A question, I think, that all humanity must wrestle and come to terms with in some form or another. As a person of faith, I would contend that this is equally the case for people of faith in one religion or another. Very practically, we can't be around to know what it's like to be dead - this makes sense insofar as we seek to view it from our current 'state', this state of life, the only state we can know without 'transferring' to another even if (notwithstanding the large assumptions just made through the introduction of the terms 'state' and 'transferring'. Here I take 'state' simply to connote that there has to be a distinction between life and death, nothing else.) we will know what it's like to exist (in some form) in a non-physically-alive-as-we-know-it-state, from that state not from out current one. This is a factor I detect which contributes to our struggle to suspend our disbelief.

Further, it is this factor that makes sense of death as an unknowable unknown. It is in this light I'd contend we have to accept this unanswerable struggle and question, that we cannot suspend our disbelief. So rather, it must be a question of how we are to deal with/cope with/face/manage our lack of belief and it is in this that I feel we face the prospect of our ceasing to be with a level mind.

Fragility. We are fragile, which brings us back to the knife-edge and the circle. Although our very life is so fragile and subject to so many possible perceived 'risks' (about which the media are excellent exaggerating) this very fragility can enable everyday to be approached and valued and made the most of as it should. Through our fragility we can enter into a fullness of life as we value every day, not missing any opportunity and see the beauty that is always present around us, in nature, in people, in the arts, in the smallest details and in the most comprehensive ideas. This is a liberating fragility, not a tyrannical and pessimistic 'I might die tomorrow so had better make the most of today' fragility. We come to value that there can be strength in and through our weaknesses and find beauty in unexpected places.

Beauty in the midst of and as well as and in spite of the mutilation in our world...now that's a hopeful prospect.

noise

is everywhere. Crashing in around us crowding out its very creators and recipients. No thought for rest, not thought of sanctuary or quiet as the tyranny of our 21st century urgency presses in around our Western feet. Vision: clouded distorted inverted arrested.

TV, radio, internet, media, words and platitudes and opinions and never-ending 24 hour drum beating and

Adverts, marks of Empire, assault our senses as we journey on the street in the home nowhere off-limits - why should it be? Surely we have to make way for Empire and her unstoppable and implacable reign?

Rest. What's that? You mean to say you have one evening in your week where you speak to no-one, communicate with no-one in order to STOP and REST?

How ironic - it actually sounds vaguely subversive behaviour to stop, rest contemplate, find sanctuary. This, however, is strength not weakness.