The sky is clear and dark,
the air is cool and I am here,
waiting in the garden
for the earth to turn.

Waiting for the light of the sun
to creep across the oceans,
over the farms and the fields
and through the buildings of this city,
waiting for it to turn the clouds pink
and fill the tree above me
with golden light.

I know of no other thing
that I can rely on as much
as the turning of the world.

As usual I woke up
feeling sad this morning,
now I am in the garden,
it’s 5.30am, dark, windy and balmy,
and I have thirty delicious
minutes all to myself,
here in nature, here with God,
the only one who knows me
well enough to heal me.

But it’s not really a healing is it?
It’s just that in the sound of the wind
rushing through trees and in the stillness beneath it,
I remember, just for a few moments, who I am.

Not the wounded man, broken by life,
caught between the impossible and the implacable,
depressed and angry at the wrongs meted out to him
and waiting for the sweet release of death,
but a man for whom life and death are unimportant
because they are secondary to love.

It’s stronger in the night,
in the day something else takes over,
something more reasonable
that knows what must be done
for everything and everyone else,
but not for me.

When I sleep I am newborn,
powerless to my Soul,
and though ravished
and ravaged by turn,
my heart knows no fear.

A family of pigeons
have made their home on our roof.
I watch them from the garden
as they fly off in great arcs and return.
Somewhere deep down inside
I know how to do that, how to fly.
I don’t mean that I can imagine it,
I mean that I remember it,
it’s stored somewhere
deep in the marrow of my bones;
the shape of my wings,
how it feels to be lifted by the air,
how to bank, turn and stall.
I know beyond doubt,
I once had a body
that could fly.

Yesterday was hot,
in the evening the sunset
was the most spectacular
I have ever seen around here
and this morning the dawn was beautiful.
They say that today is going to be even hotter.
Inside my breathing is slow and easy
and the ocean is calm.
The breeze doesn’t stop at my face,
it moves through me and on to a shoreline far away.
I am in a London garden, watching gulls fly overhead
but my soul, my soul is lost at sea, waiting for night to fall
so it can navigate by the stars.

  

I thought that after
I had forgiven myself
I would fill with love,
light or compassion
but I didn’t, I filled
with emptiness,
and all I saw was a hand
smoothing a blank
sheet of paper on which
I could write anew.

It was so quiet
in the garden this morning,
then the silence was broken by
the distant sound of someone
gunning a powerful motorcycle
through the empty streets.

I know how good that feels,
I used to be a biker myself,
but this morning
it sounded like the howl
of a dying planet.

One day
all this will be gone,
you, me, the buildings,
the bridges, the paintings,
the books and the poetry,
it will all be just another
seam, compressed
deep down in the
earth’s crust.

Whatever
beautiful life forms
inhabit the planet then
will have long since adapted
to whatever we have
left behind.

As for us,
we’ll be somewhere else,
an energy or a whisper of light,
still reflecting on what we did
and how we did it.

In how many
footsteps do I follow?

This path,
this human path
is worn so deep
you would think
it impossible to stray
but so many of us do.

I for one.

Perhaps by
doing so we make
the path a little wider
for those who come after,
or perhaps we are just fools.

The path itself may be ancient
but each soul who walks it
walks it anew.

 

They reflect light too,
moonlight, starlight and
the light of the rising sun.

Each spring the light
of the late afternoon sun
catches the window of a house
some two hundred metres away.

For those few minutes
my house isn’t a house anymore,
it’s part of a great stone circle.