Category Archives: Poems

by

Pulse

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Stillness draws a line

Hip to heel to patient neck

Motionless as a man contemplating distance

As one beholding haughty peaks,

Empty realms where nothing breathes

Ascends with his eyes

Turns again to another wall

Each step is a continent,

An ice silence.

Granite matriarchs. Vast ochre cratons. Unanswering scrub

Deliberate and condensed

Makes a map with hands and air

Begins

 

 

First grasp

Sudden delight

Sweetness of fresh hands

Fluid-fingered and spider-limbed

Knees new, all co-operating

A joyful vertical swim

I am an instant lemur-like

Leaning into the embrace of

Concrete and corners

Holds my hands as a lover,

Banishing hesitation

Halfway high,

The slow ebb of impulse

Anti gravity reality returns to perch

Buffets my eardrums

Acid fingertip fatigue attacks:

An enforced pause

 

 

Above is

the line out

below

only    slow       regression

Concession to retreat:

Unnecessary.

 

Wired in neuron and muscle grip

My assurance that these things will hold

Knowledge of strength beyond my twitching arms

Reach again

Fingers, skin failing

Loathing letting go. Hating pain and pressure

Falling is not a crime?

A chance for arms waiting to embrace me

 

 

Muscle shake

He is crane-necked, artfully wedged

A chameleon wall statue,

Satellite eyes hunting for holds

The delay is brief

(A trademark, it seems)

Soon lunging swift and pulling upwards again,

Practiced strength

Composed. Intent.

Watching, I wonder at rockfalls and burial

How I can work these pulleys, but did not forge them

Whether we will always agree.

Hands swim backwards to chalk

Shoulders taut, splitting defeat with one last lunge

A quick kick of toes and a slap of palm

It is finished.

An understated feat,

Heart being conquered

I wait

 

 

Now at rest

The line of that gaze contemplates mine

These eyes that pure summits have lit

This face smoothed by thin air and self-survival

 

My blood drums from the climb

I am drawn still.

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by

The wine was only a metaphor

I’m just a vessel
Cheap skin for this quick and dirty party
Blown up and thrown into the grass
One glittering eye

I can decant you all my wisdom
But even Solomon was a slave,
In the end
I lie here bedside my foreign husband,
For all his agnostic silence,
A better Christian than I
(At least at cursing)

I dry the mouth
Not the sweet Reisling promised
Not full-bodied and bold
Not the delicate French beauty
Common plonk
Who made you from clean water?
More like the stone of the jars

In the morning I lie blinking
Puffed with sour grapes
Awaiting my fate,
The sun on my swollen cheeks

If I could have warned you I would have
Miracles happen to some
I had thought this for you
I was told of this
Only given one word of advice:
Trust.

by

Arapiles

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Where the falcons roost

We have escaped and will not return

On the underside of the sun’s eye,

Four million years from the sea

We keep one eye on the moon,

Two hands on our pulse

Let the light lead as best we can

While we have it

The world sleeps to the sound of the barn owl screech

We alone rattling in our cages

The cool crags shoulder our stealthy weight

Steady (mostly) under our curses and threats

But better to be shouting out here

Than sleepless and sullen on the inside

Better to be breathing in the lidless dark

Than embalmed by our sweaty sheets

 

Breaking the day into smaller chunks

The marvellous coalesced quartz clasts

The measured tapping of our nut tools

The pause

The sigh and the heave

The scrabbling of skin on stone

The gasp and the grasp

A welcome relief from snoring,

Litters of laconic laughter

Or the tapping onslaught of tentpeg hammers

 

We escape our skin,

Our skulls

Our skeletal jokes

Our dulled delight for our plasticised life

We find our sinews and connect them again

With fingers cramping

 

Still, there is hurry even in this world:

The push-pull of dominion

Callous down-treading

The refusal to look sideways to lizards for advice

Blindness to the ants

Cursing of sun and rain,

The very mothers of our stone playground

 

We pause to find the path.

As always, lingering can become hesitation,

A swoop-down desperation

But calculations can rescue

And love, which requires time,

Conquers all

We lack nothing here.

This kingdom belongs to us,

And all who wish to share

All that entry requires is

The shedding of cynical scales,

Rebirth by renewal

The desire for new sight

Life is for children, for the innocent,

For those of us who have been rescued for recreation

Adventure is not a luxury

It is the only way out

May it find you ready,

May you find the one that calls you

May your heart and limbs arch and arise.

by

Grey and Orange Warmth

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Preconscious

Double-barrelled robin song splits

Fuzzy REM nonsense, full bladder gone quiet

Wake to perfect stillness. Balanced and satisfied

Stretcher and down comfort,

Tender squeaks of dawn birds

Slender tarp skin holding for

Staccato taps of rain.

Steadied. Heart beats full, alert

Lie in readiness, mental limbs prepare to move

As deliberate as that sickle-tailed insect,

Bronze, gold-tipped orthopteran

I found inching forward on the doorframe last night

Slow

Leg by leg

Tibia,

Careful footpad placement

So I make my way toward your heart

Keeping upright,

Barely in step with head,

Heart

Spirit. I Ignore down

Slackline precision. Eyes ahead

Blindly toeing each step

Cannot count what it would cost

To lose you and fall.

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by

2 Corinthians 3:3

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A mystery, this convergence.

All our lives, storylines entwined

Strands waving in an unseen wind

Our hands, the visible marks

Of invisible God

Triplicate,

Singular

Author of this epic; bold, unfurling

True tale of complexity,

Fathomless as the dark

Your lines,

My lines

Words live and move

Become aligned

Giving voice to that ageless shout

From beyond sound itself,

Older than genesis itself.

 

 

 

Do you hear what I hear?

The echo from the other side;

Deep calling to deep

The force behind the yawn of waterfalls

The power that etches gullies and carves out caves

Unremitting

The soft,

Unhurried

Inexorable strength of water

The surge that catches us in the waves of His sea.

 

I am looking down into a valley

Of scattered sand and bleached bone

My arms have fallen, limp at my sides.

I see

We are all so sadly impotent.

Pained and pallid, in poor measure

Speechless before the joy of His pure, unclouded love

We ache before the starry brilliance of His skies,

Utterly empty while we are full of ourselves

Mouthing sounds without meaning,

Vague utterances to the deaf and the mute, unblinking stones

Yet somehow

Despite our loss,

Inescapable as the train of Himself

All that is sings with the light of the same explosive dawn:

Love.

 

 

The shadows are already fading

The world and all its cries becoming slowly breathless

Fixed in the eternal aurora of His flames

He will close down all meandering steps,

Igniting thorns and subduing fallen stars

And at the last, as always and in all things

TRIUMPHANT

He will sound a fulsome, mighty roar

A final call to quiet and to stir

To reawakening, all in accord now fused

Ringing in a sublime and ceaseless wash,

Circumspect with awe

Battleplots silenced

The inky seas tamed

And what we have begun to sketch here

In broken lead, with trite, unsteady hands

To be continued forever

Expanding into the completion of His grace.

Only He ever knows what will be next.

 

John 16:13

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