A very good man died today,
Was gone on a breath of light.
He could not stay: it seems
There were other pressing tasks
Beyond our sight, souls to serve,
Somewhere we might, one day, know.
He will lower his head to those souls too,
And soothe hearts, sharing grace;
His hand at a shoulder, sharing care,
Facing with them, too, the question of how we live.
He, so rare, knew how.
Contemplation
My version of sitting quietly with God
Is no kind Eden.
Sounds, thoughts heckle,
Like skinheads in a bar,
Hating my couth look.
Stillpoint
Is a faraway shade moving in slow,
Ominous.
I dread the possession,
Yet seek it;
Eyeballs strain further within,
Socket flesh tight.
Like a dark whale rising
He comes.
And there’s no, no, no room for me.
I slap and flash and flail,
Occipital urgency
To get out, get out
Now.
Tendrils of dream climb my spine,
Like interweaving snakes,
Selfish helix, hemlock rising fast.
Did twin snakes coil Eve’s tree,
Not one?
I watch them come.
And plead for Him to find me
When they’re done.
Storm Rising
There’s a wildness in nature tonight
I cannot answer.
They say a storm is coming,
But I think these surging trees,
Beckon only to eternity.
You and I have known
The glistering cosmic draw
That counters with the urge
For peace, in careless complacency.
How better would it be to have left these things unknown, as before?
There’s a wildness in nature tonight
I cannot answer.
The Question
My heart I made a place for you,
My home I made a space for you,
At sunrise I would wake with you,
By sunset I would ache for you.
Why question my emotion
In light of this devotion?
When passions surge and break with you,
And all I am I stake with you.
Whalesong
Sun streams down
Through blue to a
Spangling point,
Deep.
Still shade below
Could not be life, as I
Flail, graceless, on the surface.
Haunting purrsong
Grows louder;
Timeless, melodic moan
To sound the world I’m here,
Come to me.
Come to my darkling piece of blue
And know my peace.
Rising shadow knows my
Feeble frame and eyes deep inside.
As I wonder, shallow,
At his calm clarity;
Accepting, in ageless wisdom.
John Irvine
A stranger gave John Irvine fifteen quid
To take him to West Lingua.
Slow daybreak on their breath,
The two men sailed in silence,
Leaving flickering Whalsay for Lingua’s dark shore.
John was glad for the cash;
But he’d seen this man’s look in other men,
And guessed he was a suicide.
Ha’else would wan’ three days in that manless, Godless place,
No’but stones and dust?
