I passed a woman on my
early morning walk today
and as I did I said, ‘Morning’.
She looked up from her little dog
who was peeing against a tree and said,
‘Mornin’, then we went our separate ways,
she with her dog and me with my thoughts.

I walked on, over the railway bridge,
past the purple buddleia growing out of
the cracked pointing between the bricks,
I looked down the silver tracks then up to the sky,
it was beautiful, soft and gentle, gold and pink
under light clouds and so peaceful, so very peaceful,
just to walk in that light was healing.

I paused for a moment and felt sorry
that I had missed the opportunity to share
more with the woman and her dog.

As I made my way home
over the iron footbridge
further down the track
to my great good fortune
I met the woman with the dog again,
I wasn’t going to miss my chance
a second time so I nodded to the sky
and said, ‘Beautiful sky this morning’.
A broad smile spread across her face
and she said, ‘And a beautiful moon last night’.

My head feels like a sack full
of brown beer bottles and horseshoes
in the back of a truck on a bumpy road,
there’s just too much movement
and clatter to take aim properly.

There’s nothing I can do about it,
I’m the passenger, not the driver,
the driver is out of his mind on drugs,
foot to the floor and eyes popping with terror
as if driving away from it all will make any difference,
hasn’t anybody told him the world is round?
He’ll just end up back where it began
and we’ll both have to start over again.

But the sun’s going to get us all in the end
and after the vultures have finished with us
our bones will bleach in the desert,
you, me, the driver and everyone else,
what’s left of us will turn to dust and
our children’s children will walk over us
not even knowing that we ever existed.

By that time we will have become
one with the wind, moving through the air,
whipping the oceans into a frenzy
or feeling the clip of an eagle’s wing,
tearing down the old and the sick
to make space for what is to be,
we’ll sing in harmony, with one voice,
a symphony played on telephone wires,
a low moan over the heath, whistling in the eaves,
or howling down the valleys and through the trees,
we’ll play like the organ pipes of the gods
and at last, we’ll know why we came.

What would it be like
to have known the scent
of roses your whole life long
without ever having seen one?

Then how would it be if
one dewy summer morning
towards the end of your years
you found the key to a secret garden,
unlocked the door and there, for the first time,
you saw the blooms, would they come as a shock?
would you be curious or maybe disappointed?

Or would you lean forward, inhale the perfume,
then step back and think to yourself,

 ‘Exactly!’

I was looking through some
old photographs when I came across
the most perfect picture I have ever taken,
if the truth be known it probably took me,
as I looked at it the memories swam back
like a great tanker emerging from the sea mist,
the picture was of a sunset reflected on a wet beach,
deep blues, orange and gold, dark sand and black kelp,
captured on holiday during what was, without a doubt,
the most dreadful and painful period of my life
but as I looked down at it I felt no pain, no regret,
I saw only beauty and all I felt was gratitude.

When I opened
my computer this morning
the screensaver showed a photograph
of American Buffalo grazing in the snow,
at one time they were almost wiped out
by white men with guns, men who knew
nothing of the ways of the people.

When they’d finished with
the Buffalo they started on the native people,
who now live as half-bloods and quarter-bloods
in apartments and graze in the snow themselves.
I am a white man and unless we change our ways pretty soon
I think my brother will be coming for me.

All my life
I’ve lived with failure
and the feeling that I’m not enough,
I have spent hours and hours
with therapists who have told me
that it’s to do with my mother,
my childhood, my family
or growing up
in post war Britain
and I have agreed with them all.

But now I think that they
aren’t enough either,
all tooled up with viable theories
but talking about things
they don’t really understand
any better than I do.

I feel like a failure
because the world is broken and I am part of it,
because people will do anything for money,
because we’ll shoot first and ask questions later,
because we are clever and greedy and ugly,
because drugs are cheaper than education,
because the TV is full of mayhem and violence,
and we are treating this beautiful world
like a landfill site.

I feel like a failure
because I came here to help
and I am at a loss to know how to.