STUCK
My heart waits, aches for the certainty of Faith,
The place between is uncertain, unstable, afraid,
My heart is stuck and I cannot move forward and I am
Afraid of myself afraid of the darkness in me.
I wait like a tremulous bird for the stirrings of faith to rise
Rise from the ashes.
My phoenix wings are burnt and I am bereft,
When will love arise in my heart again.
I sit like a Janus jug turning.
Inside out,
Facing both ways .
Stuck as clay to the wheel for pots,
Turning turning turning
Face me forward, turn in me towards the new day
And begin again.
EXCAVATION
Talking, talking surface words of niceness, politeness
the ache beneath,
the lost conversations hidden forever in my heart rehearsed but never said,
to be in harmony, understood and understanding,
lifting the other from loss and pain,
Oh to be understood by you for you
to know how much you are loved,
ache in the bones loved.
MOTHER.
I do not know what to say how to let you know
- how much I want your healing,
I want your pain to be healed to be forgiven to be restored
for you to be back in the Fathers arms but I cannot get you to see I cannot open your eyes
I cannot reach you somehow and the wires are crossed
and the ache in me does not fade.
Time is lost time is gone and I would want you close by to me
so I can hold you and tell you all is well all is peace all is safe.
So I give you to God I pray His prayers
and place my trust in His amazing grace for you
love Mum x
BREAKING FREE
Forced into the light, by urgency for life,
Flower head shaking off the dirt receives grace like suns light
Deep deep in the clay I rise up bending, twisting, turning around clods
Forcing stretching until the earth breaks and stem, leaf and flower
stretch and breathe in air.
WHO AM I
This is me this is who I am alive,
In the moment in the present,
Deeply loved.
At home and at peace.
Rested in spirit and mind,
Hope lifted, Faith resurrected,
Closeness, blanket wrapped in love,
Nothing can disturb or distress,
Nothing to hurt me not even myself
practicing to self destruct.
I am safe, I am blameless as a new born.
Loved by God, by myself and all I know,
Thank you.
LEANING IN.
Being a friend is more about listening,
Listening between the words,
To the things half said
to the things hidden in the words.
An excavation of who you are
The undertones, the spaces.
We are alone even as we sit together
And yet the things most feared can be shared and carried.
We can lean into one another as I lean in to trust you
And you lean in to love me.
I lean into you Lord I lean in to hear your voice.
No more, no more dissonance, discord, misunderstandings
How tired I am of all of this.
TIDES
Silver is the grey across the sky falling to sea
all light spreading like a mantle .
The light makes diamond shapes on colored water blue yet grey again.
Re creating itself green, mustard, umber, silver, mauve and blue yet grey again,
The sea shifts and recoils from the land, returning to the deep,
and strengthens itself for a new tide.
Returning and retracing to swathe the mud flats, the pebbles and the sand with floods of sea.
BREATHLESS
The birds are breathless as they fly away into the silver spray and sky.
Flying towards the outer edges of this curve of earth,
Where sea meets sky.
Wings sensing the currents before
they rise and rest and drop like a stone
They trust the wind will catch them
and it does.
Adventurers, free wheelers.
turning, tumbling, floating,
flying free
Born to be.
FIGURE DANCING
Figures move and merge, then part and turn,
dancing melodic
opposite then side by side
your partner, then mine
So it is in the great dance of life,
Facing inwards, loving forwards
turning away back to back,
loving and taking, offering and refusing
melting and merging,
rising and falling.
waiting and running,
Like a bird flashing its stunning feathers.
We signal our attraction
Curious.
THE DANCE.
I dance on ice daily,
teeter on jagged frozen plates
I disperse the load across the stretch of my feet.
lifting myself as if by unseen threads to
avoid the drop beneath,
Each step a risk each motion a threat
muscles taut with stress, distress
This is how it is with you, this is how it feels,
unsafe,
dancing on thin ice.
DULL DAY
The washing hangs,
Matching the mournful mood of the sky
- underwear matches,
The wind has left and blown herself away
And the air is silent, empty,
No sound,
My blouse upside down again, disorientated,
Ready to be drowned in water
Again once it starts,
Like becalmed sails in a sea
Distressed dresses wait
Limp
My brain is hanging,
Numb
Waiting for the breath of life to blow
It will I expect.
WASTE
The earth is turning to a new cadence,
Monumental, taking the breath from my soul,
Breath taking.
The earth is spinning slower, the universal breaks are on
Time is reframed and
we travel on her motion unaware.
The time is now no more delays.
The moment has come to rise again to lift high again to believe again
To move-
The hesitation must stop, no more wasted time.
OLD PLACES.
The old places are dead like an ancient river bed dried and cracked.
Rock hard.
Water stagnates
Floating on the surface.
No life,
FACES.
Faces rise and fall in a crowd
Of busy bodies in the street,
Moon shaped moulded by
Life's insistent incidents,
Faces wearing expressions like
clothing chosen to wear for the day.
Faces hardened with work to death and worry,
lined with grief and woes,
folded up with laughter
trembling with giggling
pale with fright, fraught with
inner arguments
Faces being fed, snacking pecking free range
Faces run with sweat, busy, busy, oh to be there oh to be where I was meant to be
Times ago.
Faces beautiful, sculpted by experience and life.
DEPTHS.
Down in the depths of me there is a wasteland,
A place so barren.
My soul is dead in parts, it is heavy with life's
Sadness and grief
And I am too scared to open the room and look inside.
To allow the healing of love and laughter again,.
There is no where to hide, no place to run.
I cannot fight myself I must relent and open up me
to the deepest love of all.
He who tasted and drank deeply of the cup of sorrow
UNDERSTANDS
so that I can,
WHY?
Don't you know that I see it all,
I see the wanting to be the best, the apex,
the longing for significance,
That causes you to look down ever so slightly on me, it is subtle but I see,
Wanting to pull me down to your shape and size, to manage me
to make me in your image
But I am not I am free in God's image to be who He wants me to be.
Oh let me go and let me fly free.
Don't try to make who you think I should be but let me just be.
Then I will be free and you will enjoy me more.
And we will laugh and joke about this time and the passing through
the valley.
Be free to be all you are and never doubt my cheering from the sidelines.
MY FATHER SAID
My beautiful ones, made
to reflect all my glory and majesty.
Don't run away and hide
don't hide from me the unspeakable things you are
and have been and say inside yourself
For I know it all,
And I love you
I love you
I love you.
I love you.
FLIGHT
Have freedom
fly with me.
It is better if we fly above the earth's
travails and suffering
for there we will be able to see
See solutions, answers,
To see clearly from above
the eternal perspective
down to earth.
DAUGHTER.
You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,
you startle me with the way I see my other self in you.
The child, the girl, the woman.
You puzzle me.
You antagonize me
You hide from me
You throw your anger and disdain at me.
You are up for the fight..
You hide because you are known
You break out in laughter and excitement, anticipation.
You dance with joyful abandonment.
And I fall in love with you again.
I cry for your wounds knowing I can only partially heal,
kiss them better put on a love sticking plaster.
God heals all wounds He is tender in this.
HURT
Volcanic rage, molten anger,
Furious hurt.
It's not fair I cry.
No it's not He says.
But the only person you hurt is you.
DOWNPOURS
Sudden shock falling
Onto the place/space I am,
No warning.
Unprepared I am afraid,
of the downpour.
It exposes me.
Sharp pin point
daggers of water,
shock treatment
awake to the marrow
blast away the numbness,
revived.
LISTEN
Listen the rocks are singing,
the stones are crying out,
They sing the song of times before time
They pour out their praise,
they Hallelujah day and night,
They state the obvious
blindingly,
They hide behind, hardened exteriors
shaped by wave and wind into landscape
If they monumental, stately, grand
Praise.
Let your rock hard heart be broken wide open
and Praise!!
LOVE
Love is a tidal wave, endless rising from the depths of God's heart,
love is a force of grace and kindness-
rich in beauty and sweetness,
waters clean and clear,
rippling with life,
glistening with tears
running, laughing babbling
overjoyed
seeping in
trickling through
gushing,
torrents of love,
Oceans.
Out today,
Not at home
The place I hide,
Like some hot house plant,
Rarefied,
Out to face life in the living.
DEGAS
Monsieur De Gas well heeled,
Alone with paintings, and the company,
Of pastels,
Berthe Morisot talks,
Ooo la la Miss Lala
ascending,
Jete, arabesque
colors of the dance
Work in woman form, ironing yawning,
bathing.
Spartans forever in the fight.
Eyes fail me.
I am alone sightless,
but my name is Degas.
WORDS
Stabbing your words makes me feel sick
makes me want to retch with pain,
knife edge, twisted.
hurting in the flesh wounds
revisiting
old bruises screaming agony,
deep deep into the private pain.
Unseen.
dark red blood
from my soul.
and I cry.
ROCKING
The sea rocking, slapping port side
hulls and sails jibe
cutting a fresh stroke
through the spray,
house of light shifts sea
into coloured diamonds
horizon sways green grey,
motion of a deeper rhythm,
and I am rocking in your arms.
WALK ALONG THE CLIFF TOP.
Narrow path skirting the cliff edge
trees blown flat
bent into shape.
Giant hand of wind,
whipped into a frenzy
plaited the grass
Hard worked soil,
tilth dug
rain flooded.
Mud sucking
at my ankles
stuck,
Eyes sting with rain
half closed
biting on the skin,
Raincoat filled with wind and me
like a sail on dry land,
I jibe.
Sounds of sea on stones
tumbling, rustling
echoes of shells
Edges evaporate
slide to the bottom,
path retraced.
Here I can see,
the open sea,
through the Needles eye.
WOMEN WHO WAIT
I have waited for beauty, lovely as a sun kissed dawn,
I have waited for my knight,
courageous in his shining armour
to catch me, rescue me, slay the dam dragon
I have waited for the babe within my being
to grow, delighting in the poking finger of life inside this swelling body,
Waiting cell by glorious cell, to be shaped and formed
into you my lovely child,
I have waited while the child grew
blossoming, laughing, maturing,
I have waited for you to return to me as I let you go.
I have waited at school gates,
teachers desks, stage sets, first dates,
waited at bus stops and train stations,
for your safety.
I have waited for the laughter to break out,
waited for the relief of being loved and forgiven,
Waited for the knowing of being known again.
I have waited for the I love you's,
Happy hello's and wistful goodbyes,
I have waited in doctors waiting rooms, hospital corridors,
Waited beside you as you left this place for the next
I have waited in your presence Lord.
Waited for God's doors to open
into richer wider expanses of satisfying rest and peace.
GRACE
Undeserved,
Not earned,
Not bought,
Priceless,
No strings attached,
Not manipulated,
Costly but free,
Kindness
Gift,
Love personified.
SPACES
The time between times,
the moments before you dive into living,
reframing the essential,
offsetting the jewel
with purpose for the beauty of life.
Spaces for myself, spaces for dreaming,
spaces for thinking,
for creating,
For just being,
Spaces for rest.
OPEN BOAT
Peace on the boat, peace rocking on silken waves,
Drifting, drifting,
the current floats me to a safer shore,
The sky is blue splattered with clouds,
white,
the sea lifts me up and lands me in a safe harbour,
Where time stops and life rests.
NIGHT OUT.
Night out, couples sitting flirting across tables,
Hands held beneath
Love singles chancing their arm,
Looking their cool
In the local on Karaoke night,
Warm breath, warm beer, women dressed to the nine's in killer heels,
Men half drunk with anticipation,
Supping liquid hops through a straw,
Will it be glass half full or half empty tonight.
Lonely people loose themselves in others,
hide in the laughter and enjoy the overflow
of beer and wine and hugging, kissing,
Music belches out of key and time,
except when she sings and the room quietens
and the sound of listening echoes as the notes.
jam and jazz
I saw them, she dancing breathless to keep up with him
as he moves, silky smooth,
duet rehearsed over years,
They meld together through the poses,
liquid gold
And then he drops to his knees.
Like a man lost in fervent worship,
again and again he is lost in sharing his dance, his life
My woman is too amazing for me.
With my body I worship you.
MY FACE
So strained, taut skin over aging bones,
the beauty is still there if you look, closely
but overlaid with creases
laughter yes but if you look
without imposing on my field of vision
creases of sorrow a memory of life's
hard fought lessons,
Some could have been avoided if I had listened to you Lord
Still the lines and creases grow in beauty
Like the deepening of the shadows which highlight
the softness of the skin.
I choose to laugh even when it hurts even when the pain stabs
and I forgive again
Hard fought lessons or what we call experience
shape me mould me, impress on me
Until I am deeply compassionate to others
For what else would they be for
Time to forgive myself to let myself off the hook
to laugh again so that the lines
turn upwards once more.
Will you kiss my face and erase the creases.
with tender kisses and kind caresses
Will you.
Loved by you makes me young removes the lines of grief and sadness.
.