Sometimes time fades
and the grey minutes
of ordinary days
are lit with a hidden sun
so there is no bleak thought,
no work that is heavy
or humdrum
but all shine
as if love has been let loose
to settle on or in each thing
like snow.
Hot water
Hot water,
hot shower,
warming my skin,
warming my soul
that is holding
my body.
I am bathed
in warmth,
I absorb it
from the water,
together we enjoy
the happiness of heat
on a cold and ordinary
day.
Breaking on the stones
It is the night
before Easter,
the night
of the waiting day.
We are in the body
of the dark sky,
its breath
is cool on our skin.
We are walking
on the earth,
walking on the bones of it,
through the dark dunes,
through the quiet of them
towards the angry surf.
The sea is breaking on the stones,
breaking on the stones
over and over.
The roar of its fall
fills the shell of the sky,
fills the ear of our bodies.
We stand in its call
until we can hold
the force of it,
until it finds an echo
in our silence.
Awake!
Awake, awake, blow wide the curtains of the mind and scoop up scattered thoughts.
Awake, awake, beat furrows in the murkiness and mud and prepare the seed for harvest.
Awake from our houses and fences and safety, awake from our darkness and sleeping and winter, awake now for spring is here. It is bursting through the air from dark clouds, it is budding from the soil in new paint, it is shouting from the trees in green song, it is cutting back the night in fresh dawns.
Awake, awake, there is music if we listen. There’s a fanfare in the hail, there’s a drumbeat in the rain, there’s a trumpet in the wind, there’s a bugle in the sun. Spring is come. The ragged grass and moss are cut, the mud mounds cast by worms are squashed, the branches on the ground are cleared and we are getting ready. We can smell it in the air, we can feel it on our skin, we can hear it in our feet, spring has come and we are ready!
Stripping the silence
The air
held thought like sheep’s wool
on a wire, soft on a
barb, blowing white and blowsy
on a dark thorn.
Gathering it felt like
stripping the silence for my own need
to not be alone,
floating in the bones behind the universe
like a toy balloon used to
bumping and hurrying
along
-the breath of the stars,
the pause of the hours,
the threshold between now
and other, and dreams,
and the scurrying beetles
of thought.