Good Men At Large

(in the spirit of Leonard Cohen)

You see them in conversation,

With open gestures and open hearts.

They’re generous with their attention.

The talking flows: it’s no fits and starts.

The defences are done,

It’s a heartfelt sound,

This dialogue has no camouflage. Watch out –

There’s good men at large.

They’re standing in their power,

Steady eyes and feet on the ground.

Their bodies are like a watchtower.

And their hearts  they shine all around.

They’re sovereign kings

But they don’t need to bring

A bunch of followers or no entourage. Watch out –

There’s good men at large.

They’re speaking their truth in relationship,

Their voices gentle, kind and strong.

In their loving, it’s not a dictatorship.

They like to listen; they don’t speak too long.

They’re honest and open,

It’s what their women were hopin’

Was the truth – there’s no need for espionage. Watch out –

There’s good men at large.

These men are generous lovers.

They like to touch, be tender, and smile.

They’re sensitive when under the covers.

And they’re straight-up; there’s no need for guile.

But they’re not P.C.

When they see a sexy

Woman, they like to look at her decolletage. Watch out –

There’s good men at large.

These men are fierce, with clear boundaries.

They’re warriors and not a walk-over.

With a fiery spirit, they defend with ease/

With a spark, a flame, or supernova.

Like a spitfire plane,

They’re true with their aim.

There’s a tally of scores on the fuselage. Watch out –

There’s good men at large.

These pioneering men are changing the times.

You wouldn’t know it if you watched the T.V.

But if you’re out on the land, you would see the signs,

At the gathering: GOTC

Get Off The Concrete!

Don’t be a donkey!

If you’re thirsty, try it, it’s not a mirage. Watch out –

There’s good men at large.

Feb 2012

Outside The Window Snow Was Sailing Through The Sky

Outside the window snow was sailing through the sky.

The slope of the side of the mountain dissolved before the eye.

Clouds came crowding down while wind carried the flurries high.

The white surf washed against grey granite bulks til nothing there was dry.

And this was a scene in a dream.

Tinted window went from floor to past eye.

The scene was a scene in a dream.

Like on a screen of a world beyond I.

The strength of the mountain was like the slope of one shoulder.

The head was in the clouds above reach.

And the rolling snow caught by the wind was a spirit.

Waves of light pouring down and along a shining beach.

The height and the light and the cold and the cloud.

The flurry and the falling and the rolling and pouring.

So where was the heart as this weather made its way?

Where was the watcher inside in the foreground?

What company did he keep in warm room by the window?

Did the fire in the hearth tint the window and surrounds?

I remember the distraction of the beautiful scene.

The softness and the swirl and the whiteness and kindness.

The slope so smooth like some tilted horizon.

The slow-motion presence of this world beyond mine.

But I was listening to the words I was making in response.

Feeling utterly unable to trust in their labels.

What conjurations I could speak could compare with this beauty?

And it cried out for justice for at least one or two words.

Dissolving inside in the challenge of this beauty I spoke.

The words something ‘awareness’ and ‘consciousness’ too came out.

And a feeling inside multiplied just behind the words and within.

Not talking ‘about’ but being the very words that came forth.

‘Awareness’ and ‘consciousness’ filled the room like a wave.

A warm-coloured ocean radiating and carrying smiles.

And the eye for who I was in the dream expanded outward,

Becoming a circle of friends and the window and outside.

3-9-11

Stifled - A Voice For The Animals

(inspired by the film ‘Earthlings’)

Our lives have been stifled

We’re rife with tension.

Our children are condemned.

Our cries don’t get much mention.

What wild dream did you have for your life?

What fanciful fantasy did you feel you possessed?

What hope for a good life did you feel you had lost

Been left bereft of, dispossessed?

We’ve been held back, held down, bound and gagged.

We’ve been stripped of what’s legit,

Throttled, bottled …and bagged.

We’ve been packaged and labelled,

We’ve been set upon the table.

The fat cats have gathered,

They’ve got the gravy boats and ladles.

We’ve been used and abused,

Mis-used and bruised.

Misunderstood, trod underfoot, and misconstrued.

The big washing machine’s

passed us through the mangle.

We’ve been wrung out by the wringer,

We’ve been strung out and strangled.

What wild dream did you have for your life?

What fanciful fantasy did you feel you possessed?

What hope for a good life did you feel you had lost

Been left bereft of, dispossessed?

We’ve been caged and chained,

Maimed and made lame.

We’ve been twisted and wrenched, strained and sprained

We’ve been arranged and tamed, contained and constrained.

We’ve been estranged from our kin, cut off from our land,

Cut down in our prime, cut out of our hand.

We’ve been locked up and knocked up,

We’ve been docked and shocked.

We’ve been shut off from sunlight and chained to blocks.

We’ve been jammed in, rammed in, hemmed in and slammed in.

We’ve been managed and damaged, sandwiched in and crushed.

We’ve been force-fed and force-bled,

Medicated and sedated,

Pumped, plumped, and dumped with a diet of lead.

We’ve been shoved down and shackled and shunted along

They’ve put shutters on our minds

They shut up our songs.

They’ve shat upon and crapped upon us,

Zapped and sapped us of strength.

Hacked at us and wrapped us up on the butcher’s bench.

We’ve been corralled off and held off

And walled off in stalls.

We’ve been hauled off to the slaughterhouse

While we called out and bawled.

We’ve been rounded up and hounded, thrown around and knocked down.

We’ve been goaded and railroaded and loaded on trucks bound for town.

We’ve been towed and mowed under and snowed under with stress.

We’ve been stowed on the road where some are crushed to their death.

We’ve been jerked around and jarred, jostled and jammed.

We’ve been nabbed, grabbed and stabbed, jabbed and slammed.

We’ve been bullied and sullied, worried and hurried.

We’ve been harangued and hampered, clamped and penned.

We’ve been left perturbed and disturbed, in turmoil and trouble.

We’ve been seized with disease, left confused and muddled.

We’ve been left needing medicine, food and water.

We’ve been mauled and tortured, slaughtered and quartered.

We’ve been knocked and socked, clocked, bopped, whopped, and dropped.

We’ve been topped and lopped, sliced up and chopped.

Our blood been mopped up, our bodies sent to the shops.

What wild dream did you have for your life?

What fanciful fantasy did you feel you possessed?

What hope for a good life did you feel you had lost

Been left bereft of, dispossessed?

We’ve been herded and bewildered, murdered and killed.

Stabbed and skewered, flamed and grilled.

We’ve been bludgeoned and bashed, lashed, broken and thrashed.

Smashed and gashed open, lives and hopes dashed.

We’ve been robbed and ransacked, ravaged and ruined.

Fleeced and plucked, sent to our doom.

We’ve been presumed and imposed upon

Opposed, and suppressed,

Deposed, dispossessed, truly oppressed.

While you’re inundated with inanity,

Your sanity seems more like vanity.

How can you call yourselves humanity?

29 – 1 - 2011

For Who Might See

You – did you know me when

I fell into the ageless well within?

And you – did you watch me while

I lingered before the flame

Of my Beloved’s smile?

Perhaps you – you saw me dance.

Did you taste the kiss of who

I touched in trance?

Maybe you – in your eyes I recall

A fleeting light:

A moon between clouds

On a stillborn night.

1997

AEIOU

A - ambition to jump over the fence
E - the horizontal effort of the event
I - the stile side-on over which I stride
O - over I go onto the other side
U - the bump as I land down again

14 - 4- 06

Protagonist (Limerick)

In a movie was trapped a protagonist

In a death machine with an unusual twist.

‘Dam!’ he said with dejection,

“I’d prefer lethal injection,

But I’m afraid my doctor’s gone west!”


2007

DJ (Limerick)

A DJ with a vinyl appreciation

Started a ‘CD-destroying’ foundation.

The membership so grew

It was shocking when he knew

That it was a record-breaking sensation!

2007

Thresh-hold (1980)

Light

And sound

and you

and I on the ground

beneath you, loving you with my eyes

Can we not find each other’s surprise?

For changes

conceal, the days

…we used to run through grass

The ways?

only time has passed; no strangers

to each other now

the same delight, the moonlight, the beach

we cannot reach…into..somehow…

And I on the wave

You in the sea, for me for me for me

And you, yes

my love       I’d do anything for you

you for me, save

the days now faded in time

For we have still to find our way

in ceaseless entwine       the days

ahead

the same delight a changed insight

and love, my Love, I’m only so new

for you.

Will you see us now, no longer me

and us on the tide of time just starting to be free?

1980

I, Fish, Wall, Parents, Snap! (1980)

They dart like shadow upon shadow

Content in their regulated, placid world.

Enclosed from above by fluorescent light,

Behind them a wall that’s more that wood and plaster,

A mile wide yet paper-thick, which is strength enough.

The wallpaper endures no tricks from the light

That is diffused through the veil that is a curtain

Which will never seek audience.

Morning, and behind the wall, a world of voices hurting

Without precaution, while I am forced to listen

For fears, of detection, or of curiosity?

I won’t go, where were you, I was depressed, two days?

The echoes hang and then absorbed through the wall

For my benefit.

The wall, that separates the tranquillity, ignorance, bliss,

From the harsh oppressive reality of marital mistrust.

All’s quiet of the home front: the smile falls with the face.

1980

My World (1980)

I fought on the wind that began before time

In the beginning it wasn’t this way.

But now the risks I take are all mine

And I alone reap the pay

The cry of the wild, the effortless climb

The speed relative to none.

These are the qualities I want to find,

The careless risk of waking up blind

If only to look at the sun.

The relationships too difficult to grasp,

Of self-seeking people among

Whom I’m left in a world of my own with the task

Of having to reach their one.

If only so I have this paper to show

That I think like all the others.

Well, you won’t find me there, I’m enjoying the air

Of my world, their ideals, it smothers.

1980

Awakening to Memory (1980)

(Note: refers to a time when, awaking from chaotic dreams of medieval chaos and ruin, I recalled a happy memory to calm me. I remembered a time at the lights in Newmarket with my lover, when she asked for her ‘drug’, and I kissed her, thinking impulsively she meant ‘me’. Two guys in a van behind us clapped – such romantic spirit? My lover explained after that it was a cigarette she meant. In the poem this memory is translated into medieval garb from the dream traces).

Carrouselled past Shavian

Flowersellers, to days of when

Medieval knights and damsels

Fled from evil sights to castles,

And past bombardment of quaking towers

The last enchantment, for waking now,

My dreams have gone, and I’ve lost the battle,

And streams of consciousness now grapple

With thoughts of sleep and safety’s shore

For fraught with deep pangs greatly more

Of love and loneliness, my mind

A dove on a lonely quest to find

A memory

Of when we

Were carefree

And laughing

Reminisced when, on trusty steed,

The damsel was kissed, when just such a deed

Was requested of the prince, who confused the words

In the message rather, since it amused the bards

In the minstrel troupe behind, who clapped for more

And the damsel looked blind to what the kiss was for.

Not a kiss was the request for the task, nor a hug,

But for Turkish cigarettes when she asked for her ‘drug’.

And awakening to memory, I welcome reality.

In taking you with me in my dreams, you are in me.

1980.

Mushrooming (1980)

1, 2, 3, 4

Naga Saki

When will the rain with the wind wash down.

The death toll sound in this peaceful town.

His…tory

Hor…izon

Clouds in the south lie limp on the line.

Watch as they wash over memories in time.

Her…story

Her...eyes on

Me.

The Sun Trip: Suicide In Space (1980)

It was the flight of the Icon Tester.

I was taking it for her first run.

When I thought of how I missed her,

And flew into the sun.

The video hummed by my side,

The technician’s hands were wrung.

He said, ‘Look man, you can’t commit suicide,

We just can’t let it be done.

That Icon Tester’s brand new,

It’s worth a heavy sum.

And top-grade pilot’s are few,

We can’t afford to lose another one.

I said, ‘You try and stop me, for

I’m looking after number one,

And life’s not worth living anymore,

I’m making the final run.

My wife died two days ago,

And life’s no longer fun.

And now I’m going to join her, so

Say goodbye for me to everyone.

The pain I felt grew more and more,

But the instructions couldn’t be undone.

The last thing I saw was the white of the core,

As the ship and I melted into one.

5 -7- 80

Song For Daphne (1982)

Tree of the cascades

Visage swathed in green

The robe of winter’s queen.

How the night wind races in your memory,

Though the darts of dawn

Silver the dew

Adorning your limbs.

Deep-rooted memories echoing

Like lyric strains of birdsong

Filtered through your leaves

That shimmer in the breeze.

When once you ran you cried ‘Diana!

My limbs are like the wild wind.”

And, green nymph, your legs would ache,

Your body taut

While stalking prey.

O fledgling!

In dewy youth

Summer’s song was golden.

Now your supple leaves are falling.

In their wake you find none forming

A royal wreath

To still your aching heart.

12 - 11 - 82

Frog Prince (1980)

Occasionally
A frog,
in jumping
From lily-pad
To lily-pad,
Misses

The jump,
Falls in the water,
And wonders
Whether he is
Swimming or
Drowning.

23 Vows (1999)

To feed the little mouths,

To sexually arouse,

To be a good man around the house,

To keep my fury doused,

To stay with you til home come the cows.

To heal the bitter rows,

To fill the day with wows,

To keep wearing the trous’,

To convince you of my powers,

To be with you to wile away the hours.

To appreciate your vows,

To work on being good pals,

To be tidy as a mouse,

To forego the mood that sours,

To praise what’s inside your blouse.

To work to have what’s ours,

To remember to give you flowers,

To in your mind take a browse,

To make sure old skin sloughs,

To heal you of your ow!s

To in love-making nip your brows,

To show you now the hour is

To remake our mutual vows.

Seasons Of The Soul (1998)

Life (unfortunately?) is not a linear progression of continual transcendence.

We loop-the-loop in periodic cycles whose zenith

Is the acquisition of higher consciousness given as grace or guidance,

And whose nadir is the sacrificial ordeal of the redemption of lower consciousness

And the gift of initiation.

A catalyst kicks it off, a season of the soul.

Looking back I can reflect ‘that was the period of my life when..’

How did that one begin?  What started the wheel to spin?

We were on a roll, a spark ignited, something fired the imagination,

And we got caught on the rising tide, the movement of transformation.

The ‘New Age’ is largely a solar cult, fashioned from sunny California.

The sparkle of spiritual images from the commodity capital of Hollywood.

Bought in the marketplace we must make them our own,

Bringing image together with shadow to become real,

Find what is uniquely ours from all the ideas that appeal.

A calling turns us inward, beyond the public domain.

What got us kudos was not enough, the outward expression is flagging.

What was once professed we must now confess we know not where it came from.

And we ask in declining days of summer if we might humble ourselves to listen

and accept the lessons of the guiding ones.

Grace is the gift of those who have stopped seeking or struggling.

Outward confidence becomes the inner ability to confide in oneself.

Something nudges us from our certainty and calls into question

The mission we thought we were on.

Sweet season of touching the future self where it’s already all been done.

A crisis takes us full circumstance, opposite where we began.

We must enter the underworld embrace and allow an understanding.

Every aspect of ourselves wants to be accounted for and included.

The stretch in ourselves as we remind ourselves of the light while in the shadows.

It is the shamanic ordeal to use these tools for transformation.

And in that said period of your life, wasn’t there the determination,

To break several cycles of similar fate to gain an initiation?

The gift you receive becomes your service to see where others are caught.

What gold did you uncover?  The rhythm and pulse of life discovered.

Seasons of the soul beyond which realization is sought.

Radical Revision

Thomas undertook a radical revision of his life.

His life he felt to be a fiction unread by most men.

By ‘most men’ he reckoned anyone unacquainted with strife.

With strife at his roots, is there anyone who could not understand,

Not understand more than a superficial gloss or first glance?

“First glances won’t tell a thing about me”, he declared.

He declared to himself a radical revision the only chance,

The only chance to be read where the level of fact was bared.

Was bared and naked of fictions the place where he’d see?

He’d see if the answer was to be found at the roots.

The roots were where no words could capture such truth.

Such truth was not the various versions of him it suits…

“It ‘suits’ of others, yes!” he said, “but not of me.

Of me they know so little. Deep at my core is pain.

Is pain and strife the ‘fact’ of my deep enquiry?

Deep enquiry then is at least a form of vision I gain.”

I gainsay you’ll guess the insight that occurred to Thomas.

To Thomas was given a gift when indeed he saw again.

A gain begotten when the light of awareness is on us.

On us the onus to clear the path of our life of the slain.

The slain are the dead-eyed men we see ourselves as,

Ourselves as lonely and unwitnessed by others at the core.

The core in truth has always possessed the light that it has.

It has been covered by a fear that it’s only ourselves that we saw.

We saw that without others loneliness seems to win.

To win new eyes to see we must give up one more view.

More view in fact that to see only ourselves here is to sin.

To sin is to see the ‘I’ and not become the ‘Eye’ that’s all of you.

16-5-10

Being Under and Down

Knew that sensation of being under and down

Shedding light skin rubbed smudged bunching dull edges

Infinitude left in the moment carries right right the way down

Inner thighs the bruised breath the head rests near the bevel

Undone beneath brow ridge the eye suns in the sundown

Cast arcs reaching far past the cave where heart gauges

Thumps fear beats the loudest the darkest is down

Prise prison til lengthen the sentence lies down

Narrow scent sent long long hallways serious sound

Check echoes of memory the trail follows the ground down

Shoulders relay it follows rolling train of the serpentine spine

Phantom arms yearn for knowledge from every ledge down

No hips hold such blood vesselled in delicate harbour

Sorrow shifts levels tails ripples in destinies down

Marrow and morrow and endless days laying down

Subterranean terrors near carefully sharpened sense

Eyes are streaming dreams in the darkened way down

Shutters of shadows flashing light waves listing in rhymes

Borrowed burrowed furrowed the body smoothes it down

The groove grows the road ploughs rows tossed in dust

Childhead turns in undertows mid time laid down

30 - 11 - 10

Rest My Tired Soul

Rest, my tired soul
At the foot of this falling water.
See the wide arms of softened rock
Woven again into moss and bush
Welcome my small body on this opposite bank.

Hush, my climbing thoughts.
Let the rustle and the lisp of lacy water
Brush my mind away, and listen
For the gulp and the swallow under this
Where bass notes on rocky chambers play.

Sing, my worn-out senses.
See the beak of blackbird dipping
And the scuttling, skipping of his feet
Take a rising path through leaves and moss
All the way up this wet-soaked bank.

Feel, my frozen clay of skin.
Count the waves of ripples swaying
Folding the light towards my feet
The sweep of breeze and green fronds nodding
Yes, I’m related to this scene.

Pause, my moving life.
Study the constancy of this waterfall
The left, the right, the middle paths white
Of milk of Mother Nature’s dream
Casting small boats of fleck and bubble before me.

Warm, my tired heart and mind.
This course of life-renewing kindness
Is written within me too, my body’s tides
Of falling and rising waves of energy
Are held by earth and stream and sun.

19 – 11 – 2010

Hands Loosely Folded In Prayer

Hands loosely folded in prayer
Thumbs touch, resting like lover’s heads
He below, she leaning in, shared
Wonderment in the flowerbed’s
Soft pillow, the day above in blue
And should the night roll right around
Like a counterweight, the view
Of heaven’s host of lights be found.

Hands loosely folded in prayer
Lips want to kiss the cool thumbnails
Two half-moons under shiny veils
And nostrils rest and draw upon
The air and light from father, son,
One hand the parent to the other
The space they share, theirs discovered
A place for holy spirit there.

Hands loosely folded in prayer
Fingertips touch the mountainous knuckles
Like unborn children’s heads to knees.
Before the bosom, one’s childhood suckles
Upon itself in dreaming seas
And so the hands become a womb
Enfolded spirals like seashell rooms
Breath at the foot of the stairs.

Hands loosely folded in prayer
Fingers make furrows across a mound
A fertile world, two roots going down
To elbows anchored near the hips
The space between where eyes like ships
Approaching a bright new world explore
The fissures leading to the core
The fecund treasure there.

Hands loosely folded in prayer
The folded fingers a double roof
The heels of palms the floor, the hooves
Of goats that press on angled walls
Starlight streaming above the stalls
Thumbs move now from lips to forehead
Third eye the star that sees the bed
And the baby cradled there.

18 - 11- 2010

Contentment

The rock that sits
that waits in the corner
Behind the door
should it be needed
As a doorstop.

The picture of my guru
arms upraised in blessing
That never tire;
the fullness of that moment
As a constant reminder.

The tan underside
of the guitar strap
Turned to view.
No shoulder needs
To stretch its weight.

The droop of the lily
over the horizon of the pot.
My mind resting enough
to note its want of me
With a little water to revive.

Cancer

Right, you got me off the mark fast and furious:
You bring to mind the word ‘canker’:
n. 1. An ulcerous sore of the mouth and lips:
That’s fine, by chance I have that at the moment:
Stress-related, embarrassing, but at least it’s not going to kill me.

n. 2. An area of dead or decaying tissue in a plant surrounded by healthy wood or bark.
That’s more like it. I always found that fascinating, that trees had dead parts next to live.
Are you then the canker of the human world, the dead we tolerate among the living?
No, you are worse, the dead that presumes to be alive,
The fool haunting our world not seeing the light.

n. 3 & 4. Any of several animal diseases attacking especially the ears of dogs and cats.
Any source of spreading corruption or debilitation.
Dogs and cats are sensitive creatures, their ears burn with your lies.
You are corruption, corrupt, bankrupt, broken to pieces, entropy,
Infesting others, investing others, wanting them to mirror your lie.

Cancer, the crab, crustacean, carapace over cephalothorax. Carcinoma, creeping ulcer.
Clutching with claws your hold on our lives, demon of material realms.
Malignant tumour caused by the abnormal division of cells, invading surrounding tissues.
Blind materiality. Carcinomatosis – n. the existence of carcinomas at many bodily sites.
Ah, but epiclesis - the call to the Holy Spirit to turn bread and wine into body and blood of Christ.

We will name you, Cancer. We will address you by all your names.
We will learn the words to hold our power against you.
Even if cancroid – adj. 1. similar to a cancer 2. similar to a crab – we will know you and see you.
Our call is life, of the living, to the Life Force, to consecrate again our daily bread of life.
The transubstantiation of the Eucharist is more a miracle than your self-making.

Take this bread and wine and make it known to us as human flesh in kinship with the divine.
Anull in us the pernicious notion that this body can mutate in darkness by its own.
From the ouroboric ovum of a single cell, to the birth of a baby with 20 million million cells,
And the universe of 50 million million cells in adulthood, we are the united light.
Lend us the language of metaphor – it is body and blood because we pray and say it is.


3 - 2 - 2007

Talk of Such Things

Talk of things where one holds one’s breath.
Walls of citadels dusty with the desert’s wrath.
Face of fear, and death is stalking the streets.
I cover my heart now aware it is heaving red meat.

Night is swarming with locusts and lies.
All appearances wear a disguise.
In darkened doorway does my body give in,
Disappear in my chest and grow thin.

Eyelids shade like a camel’s wisdom.
I ride on the storm from my fabulous prison.
A troubled genii in a bottle’s throttled torment.
But the blood clutches the feet on the pavement.

The singular eye turns a gurney of gyres.
Golgotha is its claim and desire.
What witness am I that I’m caught in this web
While the light of the world rose into red?

The wash over me clears my mind of illusion.
Such imaginal memories seem not a delusion.
Wouldst my heart drip with red and the light lift my lungs.
Wouldst my breath give away and such speech light my tongue.

Child At The Breast

Sun-golden mounds of molten motion
Home-warmed hands hold bobbing boobs like the ocean
Knoll-nudged fudge-brown nipples rippled roll out
Thumbs tug titty-treats of teats in your mouth.

14 - 4- 06

Past Life Memories With My Father

1.

We sat upon the temple steps
Overlooking the marketplace.
Casual, side by side, on the uppermost step,
So that neither would presume to sit higher.
And yet still the dark mystery behind,
The large doors, the smaller one inset like a jewel.
Only at times of great festivals
Would the larger doors be opened wide.
Then the crowds jubilant and wild
Would bridge the distinction made
By these soft low steps of stone.
In my hands, forearms resting on knees,
I finger a stalk of straw, blown by winds
That gust occasionally through the city gates
Lifting feathers and dust from the streets below.
I turn the stalk as I turn my mind,
Sifting the dry contents of fields forever turned to hay.
You too are unsure where to look.
But your hand gestures to stay my meandering
And point out something that occurs below.
Ah yes, this stalk is yet no cryptic key.
I stab the air in vain and flick it away with my wrist.
Whatever, we must stay present with this.

2.

Maddened fireflies assail the lanternlight.
The envy of these motherfuckers might
Come to grief with little distinction
Other than their own extinction.

3.

Bearded we might
Scuttle down priory hallways,
One leading the other by the elbow
As though in flight.
Cloistered amid the booklined walls
We try to recall where we have read
What might beckon the other from the night.
Something seen when the moon was passing
The leadlight window framed above.
The hands turn thin sheaves of manuscript
As though we know there's little time.
And who could say what was discovered,
How much the two friends dared to share,
The ages lost and yet in passing,
Who now knows what's next in line?

4.

Sorry, the train began on time.
The words were planned that were to rhyme.
The sense is now what's left behind
Once thoughts have been committed to line.
Some missed the junction, went astray,
Like you and I from day to day.
What use regret and guilt and shame,
The many thin grey shades of blame.
The most is what is left today,
To bring it forth else fade away.


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