tanka
no king is savedby having tall armiesno mighty manby great strength or the powerof a hundred horses you throw bright starsmaking patterns in heavenwhile angels laughand we play with creation,rejoice in your glory
2021
Let’s hear from people with inconvenient views
Don’t get me wrong. I happen to believe that the COVID vaccine is an excellent thing, created in the main by beautiful people with the good of mankind at heart. They have worked hard, often at personal expense, to save…
Safe place
Hills stretch away into the beckoning distanceharsh and unknownintriguing and shapely I wander among themlooking for steep paths,that precise point where land gives wayreluctantly to sky touching the forgiving rocksthat beckon to me I am seduced, gone astray:I feel the…
Read: Safe place
Watch the streets: they could soon be filling up again
If you are, like me, an avid watcher of old movies or a keen gazer at old photographs, you may have been struck by the way 2021 seems in one respect to be heading towards the past. To see the…
Read: Watch the streets: they could soon be filling up again
Offshore
you lead me to pastureacross the soft sands whereI do not want to go where the water is not stillwhere tides flow in and outbut the pathway is right I see the pasture ahead,the island shaped just for mebeyond the…
Read: Offshore
Why don’t they do it in the Rosary?
I may have mentioned the Rosary cemetery. When I “took my exercise” there during the first lockdown, it was almost always deserted. Now, word seems to have got round, and I’m pretty sure it’s not because thousands of people are…
Supreme
(for Mary Wilson) Out in the snowI hear Mary singing, keeping everything together as always –multiplying by three,then dividingwhile misty men threw ice balls from on high –so white, so dark So long ago, too,juggling in the far north, those cold, cold…
Read: Supreme
What really worries me about getting overwhelmed
During the first lockdown of my life, last year, everywhere seemed empty. When I took the car to the chemist’s to pick up a prescription, there was almost nothing on the road, and hardly anyone walking either. It was weird,…
Beyond
Bodies make strangers of us as we age:we stoop, whisper, stumble and grow impatient quicklybut in our eyes the real soul lurks:unexpected snowflakes of wit Each one different, though:in my aunt’s face – unseen for years –suddenly my mother lives She…
Read: Beyond
Why can’t we be more like Golgafrincham?
The other day I happened on a TV documentary from 1957, shown by the ever-delightful Talking Pictures channel, which ran through what happened at Covent Garden from midnight till mid-morning the next day. Sound enthralling? Surprisingly, it was. But what…