A PRAYER
Thank you for our health, wealth, strength, and for these
Days together, loving, beloved. Please,
Lead us oft into temptations and oft
Through to their fulfilment. Help us stay soft-
Hearted, compassionate to those less blessed
By fortune or by human failing, lest
We grow too stupid and too grand.
Uphold our faith in the universe and
Its benign, buoyant forces. Whatever
Comes to pass, let our every endeavour
Turn out easy, beautiful and worthwhile.
Give us patience, resolve, a ready smile,
And courage to be true. And then, suspend
Our hasty judgement till the very end.
Amen.
BLIND POET
I can’t see myself as you do
And your face is but a thought,
Perfect as all ideas before caught
In self-reflection. Yours is the face who
I love best, most beautiful and sought-
After. If in time I could be taught
To see myself in you, then we two
Facing each other may in due
Course, like old couples, be brought
Into semblance. Then through the glass the true
Vision of you, who I love, will be in full view.
For the beloved’s face is never still, but wrought
Of the love within. So in our single
Aspect, our twin love can intermingle.
UNTITLED
There are words that come unbidden, unsought
And make you lose your place, dreading
That spirit that threading
Through the weft of your being, is caught
And held by a thought that was wrought
Long ago for you to knot into words. When,
Wondering at the work of your hand and pen
And the long hours you have fought,
You see the spirit’s tangled taut,
Then leave your work, and let it be,
Stretch out your arms and come find me.
And all will be as it ought.
I’ll give you a new clue,
The rest with time will pull you through.
LOVE NOTES ALL
I felt you knew my yearning, but held back,
Built a wall, and whispered promises through
The crack: who I would be, and what I could do
If I knew you. Line by line, breath and slack,
I hit upon this cold, terse, cul-de-sac
That slit me from what I lack. Be it
Ever barred by some impervious spirit
And stacked tall and too hard to hack,
I will fall back upon my word. I will
Hear the voice in the wall that claims, ‘not all,’
And calls me on to higher aims… to thrall
Or thrill, though I never have the skill,
Still I love the wall, for it seeks to hide
That there is no one on the other side.
PLAY ACT / ENTR’ACTE
Bring me flowers when I’m sad. Fill my life
With scents. I won’t mind. First, for a while
I’ll pretend to refrain. In secret, I’ll file
Away my fury, make you wait in strife.
But bring me flowers anyway. A smile,
A hesitant sonnet to distract
The thought separated from the act.
Feed me some new line, make sweet some vial.
Lie, if you will. You know how to attract
Me back to the same prompt, the same page.
Remind me of your love, stage by stage,
Until I claim what I never lacked.
It’s not the flowers that mend the part,
But you, and I, and a little art.
AUTHORITY
I thought I saw you but it may have been
That long-ago I read it in a book –
A hero I recognised from a single look
And fell in love with scene by scene.
You were vaguer then, almost unseen
You could have been anybody I mistook
For fool or foil from the initial hook.
But I knew as well as if I had foreseen
The descent of the little god from the machine,
That we would meet, and undertook
To manoeuvre you into a private nook
And make you part of my daily routine.
I am the author, you see, and I tend
To make it all work out in the end.
