We should brighten up,
move forward, give up
what’s dead and past
except what’s dead isn’t past,
their stories like buried stars
within the darkened earth.
When we dig that ground
up come vampires, saints,
martyrs and their killers
as we unravel their knots,
sort their tangled skeins into smooth threads
to weave our coats for the winters to come
while stars beneath the earth
shine on in silent glory.

Across the channel
wind driven waves
push against flood tide
under dark cloud
and threat of rain.
Snow covers the highlands
holding back the summer,
kin to the ice within
hardened and unmoving.
I feel you across the water,
grey wave, darkened depth
and the cold a wall between us
refusing to be breached.
More to this than temperature,
the story written on a headstone
cut and shaped by all we lost.
Sympathy reaches out
before the wall can stop it,
the warmth of forgiveness
passing through the barrier
with a gentleness forgotten.
Thick cloud and cold water
layer above and below
yet in the garden of memory
the ground begins to yield.

photograph by Rebecca Hynes

Center of the Wheel

Strength of cloud,
brilliant dawn,
weight of planets
held like a leaf.
Rising with light,
returning to dark
and the center of the wheel
only turning.

***

Bathed in a Miracle

The green rush is on the land
bursting to breathe
the warm air of freedom.
We bathe in a miracle
pale green and perfect as a baby,
reaching out from the unspoken
into the daylight becoming.

***

Sound of the World

The river of traffic
roars with a flood.
Fast paced, frenzied,
the sound of the world
while bird-less trees
wave in the morning.
Light cracks over the east
and the planet turns
with the effortless grace
of a ballerina, lifted
from the weight of time
in the arms of the eternal.

Healing the heart
takes heart medicine;
sound or touch, yes,
but what closes the wound
and brings peace rests within.
There are horrors in this life
breaking more than bones,
isolation that blights the soul
yet there is a well, cold and full
that feeds us with beginnings,
timeless beyond death.
Rest here in the silence;
we have far to travel.