A small portfolio of personal work.

Love without possession

The hands of life have made for you a soul,

A soul that, if not perfect, is for you;

Let love for them be that which makes you whole,

For the hands that made their heart made yours, too.

Fear not that you have made this choice alone;

Love has chosen you as its expression,

To honour your other, but not as one you own,

For the heart is true that loves without possession.

Life demands that each of us must grow,

So let them live, let the changes come,

That love may gently guide the way to go,

As light that pulls a flower towards the sun.

By this you’ll know when life moves you apart,

You can find the other beating in your heart.

Elegy I

The clouds have brought us into shade,

But light lives on in every hour

It glows in every leaf and flower

And all the pastures it has made.

The stream is caught by winter’s freeze

But water lives in spite of weather,

In sun and snow it dwells forever

As nightly dew upon the trees.

You are not gone. Love never yields,

You live in memory and mist

That summer drew up with a kiss

And blew out onto heaven's fields.


Sleepless

I dream of you

where ten years from now

you call our children’s names

while they pick blackberries

and ask the name of insects

make chains of grass and 

collect tadpoles

in a jar

once used for sauce made

of October's apples.

They, these children, are glad

to follow the sound of your voice

your loving voice, each word a prayer

they are glad because they do not know

this is the life we were not given.

I throw the children above my head

chase them through the grass

and kiss their knees when they fall

you wrap them with a blue towel

blow hot air into their palms

cupped between yours.

I do not want to fall asleep tonight.

I feel you drawing closer as if I could

reach out and touch your fingers.

I do not want to fall asleep

and find that you are gone

when now you feel so real.

I do not want to awaken

from this waking dream

in case you are not on the other side of night.

Look. Dry light on the horizon

the sky blossoms blue

swallowing up the stars.

The moon is still here.

Perhaps he cannot sleep either

or stays awake 

fooling himself with fantasies.

And yet, and yet  —

This cannot only be a dream.

Wind stirs the fresh scent of 

white flowers into the bedroom

I think of you

and fall asleep.

Essence

I sought your essence through the darkening light, 

To see the source of all your smiles and frowns.

I pondered how to serve this lovely sight,

Recraft your beauty with my verbs and nouns.

Your eyes, that like an autumn ocean shine,

Resist the pen that tries to paint their blue, 

But my pen betrays your perfect rhyme

By painting what it sees and is not true.

I would not wish to capture what is free,

I’ll leave the pen with newfound mission –

To let your silent beauty speak to me,

And choose not words, but rather choose to listen.

What I found I won’t and can’t reveal,

In words that work in order to conceal.

Elegy II

The minutes we had now feel so small,

But in this grief I can be glad

For I have learnt, in times this bad,

A minute is better than nothing at all.

Though happiness appears to hide,

I cannot question the hand of love

That made you, and from up above

Plucked and placed you by His side.

I cannot put in words your worth,

Between these lines, I find no way,

The only certainty I say:

You were like heaven, not this earth.

The bending branch

The tree that never changes form

Will break in winter’s fiercest storm;

The rigid oak in wind and rain

May live, but with the scars that maim

It’s branches, made of wood too brittle, 

Breaking where they bend too little.

The tree that bends in winter rain

Shall see the light of sun again;

The willow, through the frosting gail,

Proves that softness can prevail –

She drifts as life would have her blown

So that she weeps in name alone.

The willow welcomes the winter breeze

That prunes away her fickle leaves,

In wind her branches know to dance

With gentler arms for firmer stance;

Her seeming weakness makes her strong,

The thunder is her favourite song.

Let not the storms get caught inside,

For storms are not by doubt denied,

And storms you do not let pass on

Remain with you when winds are gone,

While bending branches find their strength,

And storms surrendered last no length.

The little things

Let me find love for all the little things,

That wait for recognition all around;

Let me not limit what the brilliance brings

While little joys are waiting to be found.

When all the good in life appears to cease,

When gentle minds are drenched in deep despair,

Then let us find the ever present peace

Where of the little things we are aware.

The breathe inside, the dust upon a shelf;

The coolness of a stone upon the palm,

When watched from deep within your real Self,

Reveal a joy within the deepest calm.

Let me behold these lovely things though small,

To know they’re not so little after all.

Where the spring

violets softly grow

Where the spring violets softly grow

Around the moss stone head,

A lullaby is stirring slow

Beside his body’s bed.

A forest finch with pillowed breast

To twilight turns her tune –

She hops the purpled place of rest,

And plumps her downy plume.

The gentle melody rocks to sleep

The pinkend cloudy sky;

The breeze can hardly dare to peep,

Or waken the lullaby.

Perhaps she sang just to the grave,

Perhaps it was just for me;

Who knew but that she sang to save

What darkened eyes can’t see.

As in some thoughtless trance she knew – 

And so to truth did sing – 

Of something through the air which blew

Of more than suffering.

Forgetful

I spent a long time painting you 

with the white of dove feathers,

But I should have known my shades were soft,

And yours were something else altogether.

I made a crescent of a woman on the canvas

Then I tried music, but heard no tune;

Now I look back at my painting,

And all I can see is the moon.

The cabin

I walk, but walk on half asleep

Just kept awake by frozen feet,

The mountain pass is cold and steep

And slippery with muddy sleet.

I see a cabin, sweet and warm,

A tempting break amid the storm;

The orange windows lit by fires

That make me clench against a yawn.

If I stop, this mountain side

Will be my gravestone when I die,

And on that stone will be inscribed

The testament: at least he tried.

I walk on in my doubting way

I doubt through night and then the day,

But now my soul rises to say:

Doubt and do it anyway.