Sunday, January 24, 2016

Homeward - a poem

PhotoHomeward

And looking upward
black branches etch across
a pale sky

a shattered mirror
beautiful sad full of
memory

Later walking down through
leaf litter past big
slanted boughs

my heart scatters
north and west
homeward

A gust of blue bursts past:
it is my son who runs ahead of me.


Sunday, June 28, 2015

Seeing the sunrise

Two men who wanted to see the sunrise would be very foolish to argue about the place where it would appear and their means of looking at it, then to let their argument degenerate into a quarrel, from that to come to blows and in the heat of the conflict to gouge out each other's eyes. There would no longer be any question then of contemplating the dawn...
     ~ Augustine of Hippo (from Sermons)

Friday, April 10, 2015

Bog standard poem

I wrote this poem myself. It's an ode to a toilet, proving there's poetry in everything. You'll have to decide for yourself how serious I am.


Ode de toilette

There's beauty even in the humble bog,
it's whiteness, and the whiteness of the brush
offering its handle patiently.
                                               And stood
like sentries in their red and gold, wait two
bleach bottles, calm before their call to war,
to battle with our secret enemies.

Two rolls of paper on the other side
with equal patience wait behind the bin,
whose plastic collar splays out like a ruff:
how noble those whose whole call is to serve.

Black tile meets white wall with yin yang
accord and perpendicular precision.
Black the holy backdrop for the white;
the toilet's double's mirrored in the light.