Sometimes things
only happen at the very end,
things like this poem, which came to me
as I was pushing open my front door
having returned from my morning walk.

Even things like hope for the future
can come at the end, weathered by time,
grown lean and fit through a long life
of trying and failing.

Then the hopes that remain are true hopes,
a collaboration between life experience,
trust and belief, not based on selfishness,
fantasy or denial, they aren’t even something
you can benefit from yourself, but still,
they’re a beautiful gift for your grandchildren.

DF. 18-2-2021 1465

There it is again, infinitely vulnerable,
infinitely strong, beautiful and gentle,
something that heals and coheres without recourse
to pressure, explanations, structures and rules.

Love makes whole all that is broken
and because creation is the effect of love
so is re-creation, it’s not the other way around
and I hope I don’t think I am so special that I am
beyond hope of it ever affecting me.

DF. 17-2-2021 1464

Poetry is the art of writing forbidden words,
words that coil like a ropes across the page
binding light into sentences that can be
debated, interpreted and changed,
beware of poets, they have a way
of jailing what they liberate.

DF. 16-2-2021 1463

There’s another way,
one that doesn’t lead to more or less,
to the past or the future or sickness or health,
it’s a path that goes in, in to where everything already exists,
all of Creation already within, nothing left out,
not even me.

DF. 16-2-2021 1462

I can’t show you the way
or tell you how to find Him
but by the light in your eyes
and by the radiance of your face
I can see when He’s moving within you.

DF. 15-2-2021 1461

I’m not afraid of the dark,
in fact for much of my life I have sought it out
because I knew that if I stayed there long enough
you would eventually come for me.

But now, in the darkness behind my eyes,
I have found a new path to your door,
which unlike mine is always open,
beyond the reach of time or tide,
the light inside it ever changing
but never moving.

DF. 14-2-2021 1460

Do you remember
when I cried out in the night,
when I called your name
and asked for help?

Your answer came
as if from an ocean of peace
in which everything had its place,
and in less than a heartbeat
everything was as it should be again.

DF. 13-2-2021 1459

Love holds all the things
we cannot bear until we are
ready to carry them ourselves
and when we do the love that has borne
them for us becomes part of our lives.

When I share my doubts and misgivings with you
it’s not because I want you to teach me, fix me
or quote me some wisdom you’ve read,
it’s because my doubts and misgivings
are His territory, the space in which He moves
and when I share my doubts with you
and you share yours with me

He can dance between us
as well as within us.

DF. 10-2-2021 1458

We all knew it had to happen,
we’d been looking over our shoulders
waiting for it to catch up with us for a long time
and even though nobody knew exactly what it would be
we all knew it wouldn’t be long.

We were out of control and we knew it,
we knew it would take something big to stop us,
we’d tried profit and that just made some rich and others poor,
we tried warfare which just hurt people and killed children
and you can’t hurt people without hurting yourself
so that didn’t work, it was like poisoning our own hands.

Now it’s on us, maybe it will take man-made
medicines to cure man-made diseases but they
won’t touch the causes, so if this isn’t to turn into
just another quick fix we’ll need to start treating
each other with more than just vaccines.

DF. 7-2-2021 14