3rd January 2020
Three Sharp Points
(i)
The man who stood at the gate said to me,
give me her light. I shall take it on further.
I said, No, I shall keep it as long as I can.
That was then, he said.
You were together.
Now, for now, you stay
until your light, in time,
comes with me.
(ii)
Thank God for her.
She died.
She died in Christ.
We often say that the ending
is a new beginning but
that happened years before.
We know it’s metaphor.
Of course she’s dead.
She is actually gone.
Metaphor doesn’t make it untrue
nor the pain less real.
We see with language
and speak in images and
they too are metaphor.
All we know
is that we do not know, really.
But it translates as mystery,
is understood as mercy
and is spoken as hope.
(iii)
The finality is brutal.
He’s gone and that’s it,
apart from our final duties
and all the ambushes of grief.
But a line has been drawn
which we can cross just once
and then never to return.
The door signed No Entry
has been slammed so utterly
that it no longer is visible.
This pleases God but perplexes us
here on the near side.
Pleases God?
The paradox is that Hope is the reason
and Hope is the barrier.
It refuses all concessionary requests.
There are no visiting hours.
Yet our once-dead Hope is risen and
we do our living in Him.
In this poem, she can be understood as he and vice versa
The Feast of the Epiphany 2020
Other
Being Other can mean all sorts of things.
It translates as ‘excluded’ in most societies:
excluded women, or LBGTI+, or skin colour,
or a different neurological pathway, or minority religion
or non-party member, or on and on.
Translations often need to be rejected and discarded.
At Epiphany, we (that is the majority, actively or not devoted),
see Others, countries away from Bethlehem in Judea,
being the ones chosen to be alerted, incentivised,
given the courage, having the means, making the unprecedented Journey.
Across the miles, assembling the convoy,
overcoming the obstacles, taking the stares
and the prejudice on the chin,
persisting and carrying on and on,
merely on the strength of their observation of the night sky
interpreted according to their own beliefs and rituals.
They kept coming, following, quelling doubts,
testing their vocation, wondering about Journey’s End
– where, what, who?
And they got it wrong, had a major cockup
in the obvious but incorrect place,
refocussed on the travelling star
and turned up at the stable,
the actual intended King’s House.
Being ‘overjoyed’ is an understatement.
They were ‘besides themselves’ and,
knocked to their knees before the King,
their King, they worshipped a baby,
the child born King not only of the Jews but of the Other.
They brought out what they had guarded for so long,
the disclosure they had spent two years in the making;
Kingship shown in gold,
frankincense for the highest of priests,
myrrh to anoint the lowest of the suffering.
They disclosed God who redeems.
The Other disclosed God but the usual experts were very disturbed.
Here there is a Word of the Lord for today.
8th January 2010
Thirty Years Later as I Walked
There's a fellside very close
to where I lived when health gave way
And in that place, just the dog and I,
I vented my fury against bloody God.
Why was I so depressed, ill and broken,
a future all unknown?
I try not to make light what was deadly dark.
It clutches at me, hurts me still,
so hard to understand I gave up trying.
I found it quite enough, back then,
to be on my own and crying
Thirty years later I have no answers,
though there are some folk who say
they fully understand.
I've been through hell and see a bit of heaven
And this I say, quite simply: God has a hand
in my life.
So I might as well continue in hope
In fact it’s the best that I can offer.
But, sod it all, I anticipate blessing
and the stunning healing of laughter.
12th January 2020
Ever Stretching
In the beginning,
when God made the heavens and the earth,
what the Father had in mind the Word spoke into life.
He made the galaxies plasticine and the planets within them.
He held them in his hands, the size of a walnut,
and those hands pulled apart and stretched them.
They expanded, they were enlarged, they were models,
no, the real thing just as he had made them,
but growing ever outwards.
Galaxies, stars and planets, they all woke with the start
because the Maker had minded to make them,
created them in time and space at the bang.
Everything was good from the beginning.
When humankind, crown of his creation, joy of all joys,
loved into breath, made from clay, earth of Earth,
free to love and free to fail, snatched forbidden fruit
and were trapped,God’s heart was pierced,
.
So he called again, not in garden but in desert,
called them in righteousness,
held them by hand, gave them as covenant,
as light and liberator.
Isaiah promised and Jesus made good.
He struck as lightning and liberated the tombs.
He stretches out and breathes into humankind
a supple Spirit so that love can spill out,
stretching to no end.
In the end, who knows whether end means anything.
God himself never started and knows no ending,
We here are curious, furious, partial. We swat the air
not aware it is solid. God waits till love wins.
20th January 2020
As January Goes On
The light is drawing out,
the darkness falling back.
It doesn’t comprehend the light,
it’s heading towards surrender.
21st January 2020
Tamed Wild Waves
This tiny wooden shack in the garden
shows off its age
and doesn’t try to hide
the dust and dirt of the spring clean
that never took place
in the so many months
lost to storm-tossed night.
Today, as often, it is flooded
with incense and cigar smoke,
worship and habit,
and Tavener songs in the ear.
A single flame signals lightening of darkness
and the prayer answered:
‘Let me stay level. Spare me from
another plunge into lightlessness’.
I look at L’s poems, which flash
with realism and tenderness,
and the gamut of emotions in all
the sea storms of her experience.
The poet writes from a now safe place
and asks ‘what next? I’m up for it maybe’.
And I, here in my re-sorting place,
can I from within safety put a foot out
and again trust that my weight will be held?
I wait to see, but I’m practicing the present
and enjoying being at anchor
in a tiny wooden boat floating on tamed wild waves.
24th January 2020
Pivot Point
I’d forgotten something apart from my key:
My pivot point. Where it was I didn’t know.
It was no time to be unsure, you see,
when half of me was within a window.
An upturned box was my sure foundation.
It held my weight so up I climbed.
Then came the point of no return
as in I poured and then I unwound.
I found myself on the kitchen floor
somewhat bruised but ready to crow.
It soothed the dog that I was there.
I nursed my ribs and was glad to know
That at least I had found my pivot point!
28th January 2020
The Cravat
We copied Dad (he told us to),
always a smart chap,
and put around our throats
the silky cloths which filled the gap.
They were uniform for tidy men looking informal,
never scruffy, back in the day.
They harked back to frillier times,
winding cloth around the neck times,
Sir Percy Blakeney, Dandy times,
but also the classless practicality times
of all sorts and conditions of throats in need of covering.
Highwaymen and cowboys,
soldiers and commanders,
Beaus and fashionistas
all had a use for something like the cravat,
a necktie from Dubrovnik.
Nowadays, like spats and gaiters
and long shirt tails,
it seems like clothing that time forgot.
But who can forget Nicholas Parsons,
dapper in dress and genuine in charm?
If you want to wear a cravat, like him,
where’s the harm?
I’ll put mine on in the morning.
1st February 2020 Candlemas Eve
With Me
In the darkly wintry night,
February just begun,
within it Christ the Lord is with me.
Enough that he is.
In the sudden snowdrop hope,
the gathering warmth of sun,
within it Christ the Lord is with me.
Enough that he is.
In the merest candle flame,
oil lamp brightly spending,
within it Christ the Lord is with me.
Enough that he is.
In the end of someone’s life,
and in her new beginning,
within it Christ the Lord is with me.
Enough that he is.
8th February 2020
Spring Your Step
Break out, crocus and daffodil.
Nerve us to try again.
Green-shooting, we could upstage Winter
and take control, in the main.
We are source and resource.
Let’s unearth up from the cold.
We’ll break through the surface, shall we?
Our need, to discard what is old.
Innovate, let’s.
It’s time now, free the soul
and be now what we shall be
when we walk the streets of gold.
10th February 2020
Ever Safe
“For in the day of trouble
he shall hide me in his shelter;
in the secret place of his dwelling
shall he hide me
and set me high upon a rock.”
You have always held on to me,
O Lord, knowing me as you do.
You repulse what would destroy me.
You make into a sanctuary
the lowest places I have known,
for you were there first.
You love all that you have made.
You cherish us above all
because you made us able to love you.
We have come to know,
because you have shown us,
that love trumps the dearest cost of love.
It defies its defeat because the Cross is a Crown.
Thorns have bloomed and scattered glory to the four winds.
High upon a rock, dwelling with you,
we are safe now as we ever shall be.
16th February 2020
Sinsorship
Search me, O God,
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me
Actually, there are so many other than me.
We’re on such good terms, we are, me and You.
I have a good name, and I’m not one of the,
well, I think you know who.
They shouldn’t call themselves Christians.
If they don’t lust after the opposite sex
there’s something very wrong. Not Christians.
Pastor says the Bible says so, he’s ex
College. Certificate of Very Right above the pulpit.
Praise God I’m saved. It’s all done, nothing to do.
I rest in his arms, only God’s of course. It
is incredible that anyone, Israel excepted, finds You.
So don’t ask awkward stuff. I can explain.
Your Word is all You need to read.
Heretics perish while we’re great again.
Pass the bucket, make me rich, I plead.
☐
27th February 2020
Hope Through Dust and Darkness
Jesus, turfed out by the Spirit,
put out, tested, starved and hurt
had hope throughout the dust and darkness.
The Spirit never left him.
Too hot by day too cold by night
and wild animals threatened him.
There was no Rabbi there to teach
but Scripture never left him.
Satan came when he was lowest
with promises to make him great
if only he would worship him.
But Jesus told him on your bike.
So Satan left and angels came
and gave the Lord a bit of help
and off he went to save the world
and crash the gates of Hell itself.
Dust redeemed, darkness scattered,
our call remains to bear the cross.
Die to self to save the planet,
let screaming grief turn into hope.
Lent 2020
16th September 2020
Conundrum
The riddle of the ambushed mind,
one day secure in health,
shielded within well-being,
nourished in a green pasture,
refreshed by still waters
and soul restored,
yet the very next
yet again plunged into the cloud of confusion,
lost on the fells without a signal
and stranded in the molehills of the mind.
Yet again.
It’s a lockdown.
The key is somewhere else.
Hope is not buttressed
by the comfort of previous rescues.
It is not there in the present,
not within the hard fact of isolation
and unspecified quarantine.
Depression is the trapping of the mind
in the endlessly present helpless moment.
It may acknowledge the truth of
the round-wrapping love of others,
and the proven track record of years of
liberating therapies – eventually - but,
in the now,
existentially,
it’s caught in the headlights of darkness
and spins in the spiral of free fall,
heading towards certain calamity.
Of course it is ashamed.
There are the countless blessings
and all the others far worse off.
This self-pity is pitifully selfish if only you could see it.
But you cannot risk it.
You lift up your eyes to the hills and there is no help.
You remain trapped within their deceiving grip,
panicking for any way out.
You could say it’s all been a bad dream when
suddenly you’re free again, and the mind feasts
at a table in the wilderness,
the honoured guest of quick-eyed Love.
It’s a conundrum.
It’ll all happen again, probably.
It’s the riddle of Easter followed by Good Friday again and again.
But you can’t keep a good God down.
Lockdown is raided, liberated by invading, resurrected Love.
A mind secure in health,
shielded within well-being,
nourished in a green pasture,
refreshed by still waters
and soul restored,
and that’s a comfort.
25th September 2010
Leader
In our face and urgently,
but like Jackanory on steroids,
he addresses us to plead for action,
but more, to be taken seriously.
We ache for him in the task he faces,
so changed from all that he had wanted,
one we all never wanted for anyone.
He’s genetically unsuited because he’s
infected with the virus Flippancy.
Like the Entertainer he’s past his peak.
27th September 2020
Callings
The new and the first-given and the yet to be
all sparkle within their eternal fountainhead.
Holy Spirit is poured down today into shapes of clay.
Some are sharply defined, some are fuzzy,
some not noticed and some side-lined.
All shapes share the one life.
There is only one breath.
The discrimination is ours, not God’s.
His gifts and call are not returned to the sender.
They are out there somewhere, to be found.
Michaelmas Day 2020
Last Moments
What I remember so vividly is this treasure:
she half-opened an eye as if to say Okay,
I’ll be off, and she was, out into life.
We were praying, reading Scripture at her side.
I’d said, Mum, you can just go if you want to.
It felt awful and yet so right.
I was for that moment her priest but ever her son.
She was doing something new with her long, fulfilled life,
and the encamping angels, I see now on their feast day,
were there to escort her.
We had the normal mixture of emotions at that moment
and in the aftershocks of bereavement,
and now, in our middle age, taking our turn
to be the senior generation yet orphaned,
we began to set our feet on the twisting path without her,
the same angels encamping around,
and the Lord accompanying us,
all moments as one for him.
MJG 03 09 2000
6th October 2020
Prayer on This Day
Be here with me, O God, Father, Creator,
Life from whom came all life and to whom it returns,
ever-loving Lord,
Be here with me, O God, Son, Saviour Ever in Glory,
whom to know is now eternal life
and in the age to come, fullness,
Be here with me, O God, Spirit, Holy as they are,
Love that unites and shares itself without limit,
breathing carelessly on all that breathes,
in my light as in my darkness,
in my abundance as in my lack,
in my exhilaration as in my emptiness,
in my joy as in my sorrow.
Grant me to know you now
in the blessed, joyful freedom you give,
and in the maybe to come,
to know you in the captivity of darkness,
and in all things to serve you,
who are one God, forever and now,
Amen.
7th October 2020
Odear to Autumn
Mellow it may be,
but this is the season
when dog turds lurk,
waiting for a shoe, any shoe,
in the camouflage of fallen leaves.
This is the season
when the lawn gets its own back,
aiming to break yours as you
cough along with the ailing mower
and stumble over mole hills
and the dog’s erratic trenches.
This the season
when tree branches and bushes whip you,
protesting at your savage vandalism
with saw and clipper and bonfire,
and your presumption that nature should be orderly.
This is the season
of cutting back after Summer’s
permission to indulge and now
paying its bill as belts are let out
and excess is, till the weekend, pruned.
This is the season, is it not,
when we check and clear,
tidy and touch up, ready for Winter,
and when the soul needs to be tended,
ready for floods which might overwhelm,
but, better, for the steady flow of the Creator’s care.
13th October 2020
Jesus-Risk-Taker
Careless Jesus-Risk-Taker,
disdaining inexhaustible
Father-Spirit-His shaped love,
set off for a farthest country,
shedding wealth faster than
a seed-sower as he went out.
How can he, broke, have mercy on us?
Jesus-time-bound, exhaustible Son of Man,
dining with disgrace,
dying beneath contempt,
outrageously back and risen,
jets home to show us his top-class mercy.
Jesus-conflicted, Magi-worshipped, Jews-elected,
Gentiles-rejected, faithful to the Traditions,
mindful of the Promises,
exclusively supplies saving mercy to us. All.
Jesus-gendered, Man of God’s Exclusiveness,
not a woman, not in the wrong body,
not with the wrong kind of brain,
not disabled,
not with the wrong kind of love,
cancels all ineligibility,
shares his mercy with us. All.
He wouldn’t have come if anyone weren’t worth it.
Hell would have to empty before mercy runs dry.
14th October 2020
Our Father Who Slants
Me: Can I be lazy and make prayers up
as I go along?
Myself: Yes, of course you can.
It’s a good way.
Just let it all pour out.
As it happens.
As you’d talk to an old pal
in a faded cardigan
sitting in a scruffy armchair
whose springs have sprung.
Me: That’s great. How I often do it. Why not?
Is there any better pal on earth
than Him? I just say Dad, My Old Man,
Or Father -
In Heaven -
Yep, far out (as we used to say in the ‘60s).
You’re the wonderful source of it all. THE far out.
Our -
Ah yes. Not just mine. Of your children. Of everyone. Of course!
Hallowed be Thy name –
not Harold! Sorry, joking’s not for praying, is it?
Lord, I just want to praise you, you’re so great.
I want everyone to know you, to praise you,
and to treat you worthily
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done
In, on earth –
(will either do? each makes me think)
If only what you want to happen really did happen everywhere!
Down here, just as it is in up/out/who knows where,
Heaven - that’s where you are, Lord. Here and there.
Give us -
(Us – there we go again, we’re praying plurally)
This day our daily bread –
Note, not the stale stuff please!
Oh alright, yes I would try to be grateful
for stale crumbs if you couldn’t spare anything better!
What’s that? Jesus often put up with less than best?
It’s what he signed up for when he came down
to earth from heaven?
Ok, and also I’ll try to remember that Christ points the way
to THE Banquet.
And forgive us our trespasses / sins -
Yes, I need you to clean me up, change me,
give me a clear conscience, get me ready for the Day.
As we forgive those who trespass against us -
If they deserve it, obviously. Oh – unconditionally? Really?
And lead us not into temptation –
Lord, I’m with the chap who said he could resist anything but that!
But I’m finding it so hard, every time, every time.
So glad that you conquered it, Lord Jesus, and paid the price of sin.
But deliver us from evil –
Save each of us from the horrors of it, please, or it would be unbearable.
But even more, You took up the Cross and said ‘Follow me’.
I want to be where you are,
and evil threw itself at you till you threw it off.
I’m running out of words of my own now,
so I’m just Going Up a Notch:
Thou who from Heaven came,
Creator born a creature,
Blessed Virgin‘s Son
of Holy Spirit,
we praise and magnify Thy name,
now and forever,
Who reign in unity with Father and Spirit,
One God, world without end.
For Thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever,
Amen.
16th October 2020
Commemoration of Bishops Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer Psalm for the Day
O Despondent Sea
You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Psalm 88
You’re just a moaning Minnie, Psalmist,
aren’t you?
Don’t you remember Dunkirk?
The small ships miracle?
The Blitz Spirit?
Have you never fought
on the beaches?
Show some backbone will you?
Read Maccabees!
You’ve never been burnt at the stake, I think.
Ridley and Latimer cheerfully put up with
much more than you.
They were real men. Lit a candle!
That would drown in your misery!
Still, I guess your Psalm will squeeze
into the Collection, despite containing
not a word of praise to God.
Just think of your royalties!
Edited 18th October 2020
16th October 2020
Commemoration of Bishops Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer
Evening Prayer Mark 16
Down at the Spooky Tomb
Mary, Mary and Salome went visiting His tomb,
Now then, how shift that rock in all this nasty gloom?
Eeh, said Mary, quite contrary to her usual self,
light’s on, tomb’s open, angel’s on the shelf.
Eeh, they said, a bit in dread, how has that chap flown in
neat and pressed and overdressed and just where has he been?
Cathedral choir? Or London, higher, to go and see the King?
You’re far too late, the angel prate, and blew dust off his wing.
The Lord’s about. God got him out, alive as live can be.
You’ll have to tell the fisher fellas ‘Shift swift to Galilee’.
That did their heads, they ran and fled and never said a word.
But still, I’m told, that sorry fold of fishers found the Lord.
20th October 2020
Light in a Time of Covid
Through gossamer wings
Love shines its frail stencil into looming night.
This darkness in prospect looks to snuff out
any ground down hope left over from before.
So strong is fear, so powerful.
Let Leadership bluster and posture.
It can no longer rouse us into the virtues
of common purpose, to see us through the heat
of this searing wildfire, to buy some time while science races,
focussed on the prize of making the flames
retreat, of reducing a giant into a dwarf.
God’s Love seems as much use as
a pail of water against an inferno.
It’s present within time and eternally beside it
but so what?
Yet, as a child’s first breath fills other lungs with joy,
so the beat of butterfly-winged light
insinuates the rumour of hope in place of fear,
and writes a Gospel narrative that
all can be, may be, shall be well,
For Christ is among us
and the darkness has never put him out.
22nd October 2020
Looking Round the Cat
Not a chance that you can in fact do this
when she’s sitting on the keyboard
or against the monitor where
she needs to be to get a good look.
There’s me thinking that cats have better eyesight than I.
O ye of little sense
Density is in no proportion to size,
but at least it was easier when she was tiny.
Don’t even bother trying to move the cursor.
That’s just asking for it,
and provocations WILL be punished.
O ye of little sense
You should have known – have you no brain? –
that anything that includes a mouse is hers by natural right.
And an owner has by right of possession the option
to knock off your desk anything,
anything, which amuses her so to do.
It’s the Royal Prerogative.
O ye of little sense
Your sole reason for being in her presence
is to pick up and replace in loc
aforementioned unspecified objects,
which she may randomly, as she pleases,
stare at instead for the time being,
until she is minded to repeat the gracious action.
Asking questions about this is not appropriate.
O ye of little sense
You will be informed when your audience is ended.
By default this occurs when you look at your watch
and get up to dash for the diary appointment
for which you are now extremely late.
At this point the Sovereign will herself arise
and require you to hold open the door or window
so that she may proceed to her next audience.
When she is ready.
You know it makes sense
23rd October 2020
Fearfully and Wonderfully
after Psalm 139
With my eyes shut I look to Heaven,
to you my Searcher, my Maker, the one
who really knows me through and through.
Much as I love you, you do sometimes
make me uncomfortable. I try to get away
from you, so I open my eyes.
But there you are, all over the place,
down by the peaceful river,
navigating the crowds and the shops,
keeping a social distance, and working
on that building site over there.
Remember when you used to be down the pit,
way down in the depths of the earth?
Only you could be creative while hardened men
kept rigidly to their protocols and safety precautions.
At least when things went wrong,
as they often did,
you were already on the spot,
ready to comfort and reassure,
ready even to die with the miners
when the roofs caved in.
You knew what to do.
You were with plague victims
as they suffered and
frightened soldiers in battle.
With the airmen, as well.
the pioneers of flight and,
when war took it over,
the crews shot down in their last moments.
Higher still, astronauts who made it,
and those who were killed,
had you with them.
You are present in every place and thing
and person that you have made.
No door can keep you out.
I cannot.
You amaze me as I recollect that
even before you gave me my start
you knew my finish, and you have stayed
with me all the way, even in my wickedness
when I thought you would disown me.
So I give in to you.
I admit it would be nice
if you could get rid of the low life for me.
But I have crossed a line here.
And I’m due an M.O.T. test – for me!
Please get me ready for the open road.
I’ll let you take the wheel.
28th October 2020
View from a Poet Tree
This from our Special Correspondent
Advisory:
Marauding bands of welcome ‘Do-Gooders’
are spreading out across the British Isles,
doing good, being of practical service
and meeting needs.
Expect candid reactions on Covid actions,
heavy and persistent compassion
and love in action.
Community initiatives are expected for all areas.
Red Alert:
Hard of Hearts and Self-obsessed should take shelter
while making urgent evacuation plans.
Road Conditions:
Major routes are expected to continue to be
blocked and paralysed.
Prepare for long waits but take urgent measures
to ensure personal and near to heart safety.
The apps for predictive road maps for exit are
currently very slow to download.
Outlook:
Clouded with frequent bursts of joy possible.
Hope on the horizon.
31st October 2020
Finding Our Way
They used to navigate by the stars,
allowing the heavens to help them
find their way about earth.
They studied and measured and plotted
their course through to a safe haven.
Humankind, now, has stars less bright.
We set our enlightened sights less high.
Maps, traffic reports and indispensable
Satnavs are the tools for which we reach,
hoping to arrive and to get there
on time.
Our loss but our convenience too,
when they do not lead us into
a road least travelled.
Mapwork, patchy in fogginess,
cannot replace the inner light
which was once and again shall
become our surest guide
in failing sight and
the alarming black of fear.
1st November 2020
Clocks Went Back
Clocks went back
and Lockdown’s back.
Now we have to start again.
It’s been our fault, that’s by default,
Michael Gove has made it plain.
Shut the shops.
Selling stops
unless you run a Takeaway.
Stay at home and be alone,
we’ll let you out an hour a day.
Don’t get ill
as, if you will,
the doctors may not care for you.
There is a plan, but no one can
admit they don’t have much a clue.
7th November 2020
Provisional Faith
For the time being,
and for the needs that I have,
I use the name God and I believe in him.
I live by reference to him,
in experience more than explanation,
for faith precedes sight for the time being.
I need a best guess to understand
all that I can.
God, as far as I need
to think of Him,
is Trinity, co-unity.
Community is where I need to be,
for the time being,
to give and to receive life.
The need to live for the time being
is met by what has been provided.
I shall no longer live when I no longer need to.
That will become clear when
I no longer need to breathe.
It is provisional, because
it is what I have to go on and because
it is all that till now I have experienced.
And what has been provided I find is enough
for the time being.
It has always all been provisional,
for that is the incentive to reach
for progress and growth,
for fairness and proportion
for the time being.
The wonder and mystery of what will no longer
be provisional will be when all needs are met,
and there is no time being.
9th November 2020
Hearing Voices
We don’t have to listen, but we often do.
Any voice is an addition to ours,
and a complement, corrective or comfort.
A solo may be isolated and vulnerable and shut in.
Or a solo may be a part in a choir
in harmony or in discord.
We usually select which voice we hear.
There is Mr Speaker who ensures
that one can speak, and all be heard,
and over there is Speakers Corner
where you speak as judge and speaking, learn.
Then there’s whispers that suggest and plant
and there’s the power of gossip to supplant.
There’s sweetness in those trees up there
and grounded screeches wasting air.
There’s the voices of reason, conscience,
or voices raised in rage and hate,
those choreographs of provocation,
but shouts may cheer, and cheers acclaim.
There are all the voices ever made
since first God spoke and it was well done.
There’s the singing that’s been music to our ears,
which has lodged and burrowed like an ear worm,
which has formed and made us into what we sing.
There will be voices always
and songs and poetry and choices.
11th November 2020
Yes I Remember Armistice Day Poem
Yes I remember dry eerie craters, amphitheatres
in a blitzed city, still there a decade after war’s end,
the starkly empty blisters on the landscape of London,
that city of museums and dreams, of Nelson and Wellington.
For a small boy, this war so long ago in history was now,
and we saw it from the car then as we drove by.
There were few poppies in those once deadly pits,
but in summertime the inevitable Purple Willowherb
sprouted in clumps, insisting on populating the desert
and waving louchely, like the cool as cucumber heroes
who languidly struck matches on war-scorched metal
in our fertile imaginations then as we drove by.
In our quiet, suburban town I never thought
that the large car parks next to our church
were where real people once had lived and some died,
that the very building had fallen and had to rise again.
Were Churches not eternal, for ever? Untouchability
was taken as given then as we drove by.
We loved playing the games, my brothers and I,
imagining the fearless heroes so like ourselves,
and captivated by the war comics and the action stories.
We were just as fearless and, against even greater odds,
we conquered on land and sea and flying through air.
We were sure of our just cause then as we drove by.
Oddly, those adults we knew who had been in the camps
would never speak of what capture meant and how it felt,
but in their place the silver screens would captivate us.
There were Brylcreemed sportsmen saving and, oh glory!, conquering!
Yes bliss it was, a sort of poetry, that we felt on Westminster Bridge
in those legendary childhood days as we drove by.
14th November 2020
A Prayer When There is
No Time for Words
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15th November 2020
Brinkman Ship
Oh Brinkman Ship, where you gonna to sail to
Oh Brinkman Ship, where you gonna to sail to
Oh Brinkman Ship, where you gonna to sail to
all on that day?
Close to the wind, wind’s not gonna help you ...
all on that day?
Close to the rocks, rocks are gonna smash you
all on that day?
Close to deceit, deceit’s not gonna save you,
all on that day?
Close to corruption that’s not gonna fix it
all on that day?
Oh Brinkman Ship, still time to sort it
before that day.
(Any similarity to events current at this date is purely intentional, but the tune that the pome could be sung to is that of Oh Sinner Man, and Afro-American Spiritual made popular in the 1950s, and which is the first song that I can remember singing when I joined a Church Youth Group in 1964. I may have travelled on theologically from then, but as nostalgia, well they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.)
15th November 2020
Sunday Best or Whatever
God used to be so well dressed, didn’t he.
If you look back at all his publicity shots and releases
from MGM right back to the frescoes below ground
where the first followers buried their dead
and stayed for Church there,
he gets more and more grand.
And when it became very lavish,
Popes and Bishops as Princes in Palaces,
wow, they went to town to have an award-winning
Best in Genre.
So, unless you were a grovelling peasant,
you looked your best in Church.
Only right and righteous
to wear your best for God.
Then you’ll know your place,
and Quality always tells.
But we moderns, we’re in a different age
and we don’t do posh so much,
except at Baptisms and Weddings and Funerals,
and at worship anything goes.
Comfort is in, formality out.
So God’s had to rethink his own wardrobe!
You could say, though, that for a faith which
is based on Incarnation, and a brave God
taking the risk of flesh and every possible danger,
it is God’s wardrobe conforming to ours, not ours to his.
Yes he does have uniforms. The ikons show that, but there’s
no one more relaxed than the Three of Him.
I bet that they are scruffs up on the Main cloud.