Somewhere in the distance
I hear the howl of a motorcycle
weaving through the city streets
and immediately I am transported to the moors,
listening to the wind howling through the heather.

Will you dance for me?
Will you rise up and show me your beauty
so that I can see it and feel it and know it in myself?

People say that God is unfathomable
but its works are not and we are it’s finest work,
blessed with short memories and dull minds
to save us from seeing, save us from feeling
so we can bear what we have done,
but the wind and the trees,
they remember everything,
every detail.

Listen beloved ones,
it’s time you listened.

DF. 5-2-2021 1456

I live in a forest,
my senses are attuned to trees
but that doesn’t mean I don’t wonder at the sky
or at the sunlight that pierces through the leaves,
sometimes I even soar above the canopy
but for now this is where I live
this is what I come home to
and this is what I love.

DF. 5-2-2021 1456

There’s always a moment
when, for some reason I cannot fathom,
what was impossible becomes possible,
when a thousand tiny doors open,
space and light flood in and all my problems
dissolve into possibilities.

It happened this morning
as I was plodding round the park,
my feet keeping time with my pedestrian thoughts,
when a tiny speck of starlight took pity on me,
fell gently though the darkness into my mind,
enfolded everything, released me from the labyrinth
then lit the way to love’s sweet meadows.

DF. 3-2-2021 1455

Who can know
the heart of another,
the secret trials that we must bear;
the love that never sees the light of day
the piercing hurts and the hidden wounds,
all clanking and chafing together as we walk?

Only one truly knows,
one precious companion
who walks beside you as well as me
who knows me as intimately as He knows you
who loves you as much as He loves me
and when we speak from our hearts
He can hear you through me
and me through you.

DF. 3-2-2021 1454

You lifted me up like a
tiny bird with a broken wing,
I weighed nothing in your hands
and when you leaned forward to whisper
your healing words I could see
the pleasure in your eyes,
I could see that that I have never been
anything other than you would have me be.

DF. 3-2-2021 1453

It’s so quiet out here
in the small hours,
just the song of robins, the larks
and the sound of my feet on the wet
pavement for company,
it’s so very English.

I love this city,
for all its problems
and all its iniquities
London is my home,
maybe if I had ever lived anywhere else
I wouldn’t think of it in that way
but I haven’t, so I do.

I think of this big, generous city
like a big, generous person,
busy, complex. changing,
one who makes room for
everyone and everything;
every race, every creed,
every torment and every joy
and then sleeps peacefully
with the gods at night.

DF. 2-2-2021 1452

I stopped to watch a train
passing under the bridge this morning,
a speeding promise that weighed
over a hundred and eighty tons
hurtling through the wet night
on its way to somewhere,
I watched the signal lights
reflected on the carriages
as the train passed them,
red one way, green the other,
flash, flash, flash
green then red, green then red,
no return, no return.

As the train disappeared down the track
I imagined myself on board, a passenger
sitting in the last seat in the last carriage,
all this behind me, on my way to a different place
to be a different person, and though the train was
travelling fast, I was perfectly still.

DF. 1-2-2021 1451

I have come to love
being outdoors at night,
I love the solitude, space and anonymity,
I love the freedom to be myself
and the absence of expectations
from anybody else.

In the darkness
things become visible that
you just don’t see in the light of day,
an entrance hall to some flats filled
with fluorescent light,
a solitary lit window high up
on the side of a dark building,
a security light illuminating a side alley,
when I am alone in the night they all
become thresholds
to a world of wonder.

DF. 29-1-2021 1450

I have worked as a
psychotherapist for nearly forty years now
and though I have never met one in the course of my work
I have heard and read about people who are enlightened,
when I was younger I hoped that one day
I might count myself among them.

I thought that if I could achieve
an enlightened state I would no longer have to suffer,
but now I believe that the difference between somebody
who is enlightened and an ordinary person
is that the enlightened person has found
something inside that helps them to
bear their suffering without blame
and turn it into compassion.

It’s the same source that
enables trees to fall without complaint,
helps soldiers find peace on the battlefield
and compels me to write these poems as I walk.

DF. 27-1-2021 1448

4.00am and the streets are deserted,
nothing but hard frost on the pavement
sparkling in the lamplight.

Somewhere behind me I hear a car,
the petrol engine murmuring and then the sound of
the tyres on the road, disappearing into the distance.

A fox crosses the pavement right in front of me
intent on some purpose that has consumed her fear,
quite unconcerned by my presence.

As I step through the park gates
a passenger jet passes overhead in a self-important
clamour of flashing lights and screaming engines.

I walk past the three plastic ducks set on car springs
in the playground, past the monument to Olaudah Equiano,
across the bridge over the ponds and up the steep path to the exit
past an open suitcase lying empty on the compacted snow.

I start to think about how much longer I will be able to walk
in the mornings like this, my knees aren’t what they used to be
and I’ll miss it when I’m unable to come out anymore,
then I hear beauty’s lovely voice whispering
and I know that all that matters is now.

DF. 25-1-2021 1447