So what happened to you

I wrote this poem as 2012 began...I feel a little less afraide

Je m'effraye

I frighten myself!

This week's fear

is that

I have not resolved

my youth.

The guilt I should have

left behind

on the beds of private concupiscence

seems ever with me as if I was sixteen.

The shame I have

is that I have not made

proper decisions

about my life.

that professing faith

I have been

faithless

that claiming love

I have been so often

loveless

it should be better

(could be worse)

I frighten myself!

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And I'd written this one a little earlier for two friends I married

The handclasp

It takes a little while

to realise

that when I am taking

someone else's hand

I am not taking hold of them

but letting them take hold

of me.

It takes a little while

to realise this

and sometimes,

amidst the grasping,

it may never happen.

but today

as man holds wife

and woman holds husband

there is a profound hope;

that you will let yourself

be held

for E & A as they got married 

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There was the saga of a boy cast out of home midwinter which reminded me about the day Tillie died

A homeless boy and a dead dog

Thinking about a homeless boy and a dead dog

Far-fall soft
leaves of autumn
tipping winter's balance

All too soon
it is weighted
thick fogs, rain and chill'
Tilting scales
so that no remedy
yet
can tip it back.
That will come with time
and time alone.

On such a day as this
the dog died.
She, too, tipped far
into an abyss
from which
she could not even stand
to escape from.
And so, I dragged
her heavy body
(she was not lifeless
even, though dead,
her body
carried so much of
my life
that she will never be
lifeless.
Still through the hawthorn
blows the cold wind)

Now today
plenty of tipping
and there is
an invincible boy
who thinks he is fine,
yet sinking fast.
out in the cold and wet
two girls
giggling at the adventure
do not begin to realise
what danger
winter is

Here, amidst all is beauty
winter threatens.
Lest we forget
your tyranny
-- there was a dead dog

let there not be a boy 

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The eternal gift

I wrote this poem some years ago to mark the festival of Christ the King

Lots of things to to think about this year

Aeterni Christi Munera

The eternal gift of Christ our king
invites me to tie my child’s sandal
and to encourage her
to leap small buildings

The eternal gift of Christ our king
invites me to dare to love
badly
but to dare to do it any way

The eternal gift of Christ our king
invites me to step into the traffic
with a body of one my friends
following in a hearse

The eternal gift of Christ our king
invites me to accept myself with love
not with indulgence
but with love, and perhaps a little care
Such is the eternal gift of Christ
who doesn’t seem to think of himself

as a king