Sonnet

Each morning he wakes me to hear.
To listen like a disciple.
I pray that he opens my ear.
That I can seek to be one of his people.

But honestly, did I, do I turn my back to those who strike me.
Do I like the prophet cover my face against insult.
No I act like so many members of my family have done and act like a Leigh.
I am resentful and don’t act like a mature adult.

Only if the Lord comes to my help and aid.
Will I be untouched by insults.
But I must have prayed.
On my own, I could barely have achieved any results.

During many a long night, I do not hear his voice.
But I will persevere, I have made my choice.

Haiku

During the long nights
I hardly hear his voice at all
But I persevere

Sonnet

He made my mouth a sharp sword.
And hid me in the shadow of His hand.
It is not enough to cry Lord, Lord.
We must wade through doubt as through clinging sand.

Are we really that sharpened arrow.
Concealed in His quiver.
Or is our witness buried deep as in an ancient barrow.
Do we hold truth close to our breast or are determined to deliver.

Do we really see ourselves as his servant.
In whom and only in whom we can be glorified.
Or do we drift in life’s rising and ebbing current.
In what or in whom do we truly take pride.

Can we say hand on heart, my cause was with the Lord.
Or did we just go with the horde.

Haiku

Can I truly say
My main cause was with the Lord
Or went with the crowd

Sonnet

He does not break the crushed reed.
Nor quench the wavering flame.
He answers when we sincerely plead.
He welcomed us when into his arms we came.

Justice he will bring.
His kingdom will be established.
He is our rightful King.
His law is written on an everlasting tablet.

He who created the heavens and spread them out.
Who gave shape to the earth and what comes from it.
He can expel in hearts all doubt.
The whole universe does He knit.

I the Lord have called you to serve the cause of right.
And you Lord are my truth and my light.

Haiku

I the Lord have called
And you are my light and truth
To serve the true cause

Sonnet

So they took branches of palm trees.
And went out to meet Him crying Hosanna.
Singing His glory they were on their knees.
It was as if from heaven had descended manna.

Once in our life will come shouts of acclamation.
Replaced all too soon with cries of criticism.
Turning in fate’s cruel breeze we fear damnation.
And our own fate is scattered as light through a prism.

You have the poor with you always.
And you can do with them what you wish.
We are the poor in spirit he says.
We have to eat from this humble dish.

But from pain and passion comes hope.
Upwards towards the light leads the slope.

Haiku

Then from passion
Comes hope on an upwards slope
Towards a bright light

Sonnet

I am a worm and no man.
Scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
I plead for help, I cannot divine your plan.
Do not stray far off, be on every horizon a holy steeple.

We all can be reborn.
But we do not have the strength to do it alone.
We could all be a royal priesthood to you sworn.
But only with your help can we approach your throne.

I plead with you to give me sanctuary for ever.
Now I wander disconsolate in the desert.
Never permit me this link to sever.
I pray only for doubt into faith to convert.

But it is so hard for this eternal covenant.
To be our constant government.

Haiku

I plead for your help
Do not stray far off I beg
I cannot do it

Sonnet

Is it not written in your law, I said you are Gods.
So the law uses the word Gods.
On this question do we have to be at odds.
Disputing in separate squads.

So scripture refers to us as Gods because it is addressed to all.
And he referred to himself as Son of God.
We grapple with the truth but want to receive the call.
Perhaps we can just stand awed.

With St Fulgentius we grapple with our own Arianism.
Is Christ just a holy man.
I can get lost divining the truth of an ism.
I prefer not to question the divine plan.

But if God was not prepared to come down to earth.
Where does that leave our true worth.

Haiku

If God not prepared
To come down to earth where is
In all this our worth

Sonnet

I am the handmaid of the Lord.
Let what you have said be done to me.
This question in us too is deeply stored.
We too can, if we want, be free.

But like her we have to choose.
We are free to say yes or no.
We have only our fear to loose.
We can be brave or go with the flow.

What if she had out of fear declined.
All history would have stopped.
She went happily into her tragic fate blind.
No she did it out of duty, the only chance not dropped.

Perhaps we should keep on praying she says yes.
asking for the chance hope to bless.

Haiku

Pray she does say yes
All history would now change
If she does say no

Sonnet

You will know the truth.
And the truth will set your free.
To discover the truth do we have to be a sleuth.
And do we have to bend the knee.

For me it’s not just about having faith.
Or following a man made rule.
It is joy, that insubstantial part of my dreams that appears like a wraith.
This is a tantalising jewel.

It comes often early on a spiritual journey.
And then is replaced with a long hard slog.
We fear our efforts do not concern he.
We still seek our destination, that sweet acceptance wrapped in fog.

Bu at the end there always will be joy.
From faith and prayer, the very sweetest alloy.

Haiku

Destination
Faith and prayer the very
Sweetest true alloy

Sonnet

Make a fiery serpent.
And put it on a standard.
We are given a gentle message to repent.
But we will not acknowledge our faults, we find it so hard.

Here we are a year into lockdown, a global pandemic.
At the chemist we still see the sign of the serpent on the standard.
We ignore the lessons of the past and become sick.
It faces face down, fate’s card.

But the wise trust to science too.
They put their faith in vaccines.
They take precautions, they clean through and through.
About lockdown they don’t make scenes.

But we are still overcome with hubris.
We never think this will happen to us and nothing rhymes with hubris.

Haiku

Nothing rhythms hubris
Yes we are overcome with
Hubris all the time

Sonnet

You are there with your crook and your staff.
With these you give me comfort.
All through life it’s best to have a little cry and a good laugh.
Assume you will emerge triumphant from all discomfort.

I don’t know if I will have life eternal.
I don’t even know for certain if I exist.
I may assemble from and dissolve into any kernel.
We peer through an impenetrable unknown mist.

We hope justice will be given fairly as to Susannah’s accusers.
We trust in our innocence.
We may however end up winners or losers.
But of our fate we may in the end make no sense.

But as we look back it was a good life, if sometimes rough.
A modest home, a job, a loving family, that was enough.

Haiku

It was a good life
job home loving family
That was then enough

Sonnet

Anyone who loves his life will lose it.
Anyone who hates his life will keep it for the eternal life.
Where do we find a ladder to climb out of this pit.
Why is fear and regret so rife.

We, all of us have one great disappointment when we survey our span.
Always at the decisive moment we lacked courage.
Our soul is troubled, it is the fate of man.
Once when given a vital choice we were discouraged.

We forgot that a grain of wheat has to die.
To yield a rich harvest.
We were afraid to take a risk, to break a tie.
So we never obeyed our destiny and went our farthest.

Once as we came to a precipice, we were afraid to do more than creep.
Glory we rejected because we did not leap .

Haiku

Once at precipice
We were afraid then to leap
Glory rejected

Sonnet

The waves of death rose about me.
The pains of the netherworld surrounded me.
To the far horizon stretches an implacable sea.
As far as I can see.

But that at least is in this world.
Below the horizon lies something even more fearful.
It is death, my sail finally furled.
I cannot avoid it however careful.

The young fear disappointment in love or career.
We older ones do not not lament.
We know anyway the end is near.
Soon we will take down our threadbare tent.

But as just below the real horizon is the rest of the world we cannot see.
So after death will come the calm after this turbulent sea.

Haiku

Below horizon
No world but death is waiting
And perhaps some calm

Sonnet

When your days are ended and you are laid to rest with your ancestors.
I will preserve the offspring of your body after you.
Our own predecessors were our investors.
And at our end we will be too.

I was looking at the old White Mulberry Tree in St James Park.
Its ancient trunk potted with crown gall disease and held up with a stake.
Tired and gnarled was its bark.
How long had it stared placidly at the lake.

Impervious to all the great history it had witnessed.
The Kings and Queens walking by.
By time only and not by regret or ambition was it stressed.
Held by no man in any subservient tie.

Yes it is only a tree.
But it is free.

Haiku

The Mulberry Tree
Ancient placid and free
tree but what am I

Sonnet

They forgot the God who was their saviour.
Who had done such great things in Egypt.
All eyes were on the idol’s grandeur.
Their attention to truth was not gripped.

But his love for us has no pre-conditions.
His forgiveness is unconditional.
We do not need to repent or make admissions.
We can be the ever returning prodigal.

Forgiveness is not just about justice.
The forgiven may not even know that this ends this part of their history.
But forgiveness releases, it just says trust us.
It breaks the chain of misery.

But why then do I find it so hard to forgive another’s sin.
Because I am not a father to all, only my own children, but he is, to all he is kin.

Haiku

Forgive others is
hard I am not their father
But he is to all

Sonnet

The harvest is rich.
But the labourers are few.
How can we search out our niche.
How do we find our due.

In Spitzweg’s painting the sky is without feature, vast, taking over half the canvass.
These are like the Eastern flat lands I know so well.
Yet here is a church rising from the plain not some pylon mast.
You can almost hear the toiling Angelus bell.

Here is a calm procession of nuns and children.
A soldier and his love, Farmers resting by the side of the road.
No hectic movement, here you can only have walked or ridden.
Yet a rich harvest is bestowed.

Is the message that hope can come in slowness.
And not necessarily in hastiness.

Haiku

Hope comes in slowness
Not always in hastiness
And harvest comes in

Sonnet

Do you want to be well again.
While I am still on the way , someone else gets there before me.
Do we really want to cast off our binding chain.
Our own will is the key.

Our own pool of Bethzatha is never far away.
Why do we always wait for someone else to put us in.
Why do we make excuses, we could make the effort, why don’t we say.
No one else stops us, it is only our own will and sin.

We are paralysed not physically but with inner fear.
It is our mind not our body that is blind and lame.
Others are to blame, thus we cast a lonely tear.
We are not at fault, look at those others, we are not the same.

We could get up and walk now with our metaphorical bag for sleeping.
But we end up not walking towards the light but sideways creeping.

Haiku

Our goal is not far
We could get up and walk there
Our own fear stops us

Sonnet

To die at the age of a hundred will be to die young.
Not to live to be a hundred will be a sign of the curse.
What comes most often to our tongue.
Ourselves, our possessions, our hopes, but they all end up in a hearse.

I was day dreaming about what we wanted, as well as to be somebody.
We like to think we will live on and on to a very great age.
But to most, this is loneliness and extreme frailty in mind and body.
And wisdom, what does it really achieve to be an all-too-temporary sage.

And possessions.
What is a delightful buy is often a grateful sell.
Accomplishments are just passing, often mediocre impressions.
So what from all this can we tell.

That the greatest pleasure is both free and the simplest.
It is to hold your granddaughter’s hand in yours, not much else stands the test.

Haiku

The Greatest pleasure
To hold your granddaughter’s hand
In your own old hand

Sonnet

Men have shown they prefer darkness.
To the light.
I was overwhelmed with tiredness.
I dreamt and something new was opened to my sight.

I was a passenger in a car, the past dismissed, and from it came no survivor.
Absorbed in my own thoughts, a long dreary list.
Only at the end, when it was too late did I recognise that here was no cab driver.
Dead for 26 years yet every detail of his dear face so clear, it was my father so missed.

Full of regret and still dreaming, I came to a bookshop.
Strangely open in lockdown, piled high inside and out with every kind of book.
There was an old lady there who showed me two wartime ID cards, I let them drop.
The writing was faded, only photos remained, I didn’t even bother to look.

The past is a bottomless ocean of regrets.
Do not let it go, these are holy assets.

Haiku

The past is truly
An ocean of regrets
Do not let it go

Sonnet

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.
But the man who humbles himself will be exalted.
In the end our false humility, Latin humus, is always rumbled.
Into pride’s yeast malted.

Homo, man comes from the Latin, humus, earth.
Homo sapiens is earth that knows it it is alive and sound.
To be humble is to be down to earth.
Adam, the first man is made out of Admah, Hebrew for ground.

I was earth.
When I was born, I became earth that knew.
When we die, we will be earth that is exalted and in a safe berth.
Thus from dust we came and to dust we will return, but we grew.

Whatever we think, we will always will and should be humble, humus.
It is and always was thus.

Haiku

We came from just earth
Man is humus, aware earth
Homo Sapiens

(Thanks to Abbot Christopher Jamison in his book ‘Finding Sanctuary’ for some of the ideas that inspired this.)

Sonnet

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul.
And, found in the New not Old Testament, with all your mind.
We ask ourselves what is the essence of all this toil.
Is it to have faith, to understand or just be kind.

But remember that it is the mind that must be used, look around.
Our brain, that amazing creation of one hundred billion neurone cells.
As many as the stars in all the Milky Way that can be found.
So accept this abundant creation, follow science and ring out the bells.

I never have got my head around this.
How can God, one intelligence create all these wonders now and then.
I suppose the answer is not to worry, just accept bliss.
It’s beyond our Ken.

But one thing is certain, be rational.
Accept science as well as faith and why not be a little international.

Haiku

Be rational
Accept science with faith too
And also the world

Sonnet

O that today you would listen to his voice.
Harden not your hearts.
Everything is our choice.
We can avoid worrying about stings and darts.

I dreamt that I saw my ego as a great pile of detritus .
I could see it physically mounting up.
Money, property, memories, exciting and tedious.
Loves, family, dislikes, ambition, hopes, and fears filling my cup.

In the dream this pile got bigger and bigger.
Then I saw it for what it really was.
Microscopic neurones getting smaller and smaller.
Sucked into death’s relentless jaws.

The ego in reality is nothing.
Chemical signals and electrical impulses, not even something.

Haiku

Ego is nothing
A few neurones come and gone
Barely then something

Sonnet

Schooled through Lenten observance.
And nourished by your word.
How to follow this ordinance.
Was ever something stirred.

How I fail in restraint and fall into fault.
I don’t really want to give anything up.
Alcohol, not being cross, all too difficult.
Not even something modest to sup.

How about trying to do something positive.
A bit of alms giving perhaps.
Or trying not to be negative.
And then after a day I lapse.

Perhaps a thought is enough.
It’s all a bit ready and a bit rough.

Haiku

What to give up now
Or better to do something
I do so little

Sonnet

Not seven times I tell you.
But seventy-seven times.
Forgiveness is the one thing we fear to pursue.
These are not our natural lines.

It’s worse if you try and do it; it certainly doesn’t come lightly to the touch.
It reminds you of what the person did to you.
But we ourselves have been forgiven so much.
Better maybe to dwell on that gift too.

In Carl Spitzweg’s painting, the poor poet sits alone, seemingly lame.
Disconsolate unread.
Not for him, written on the book’s binding, gradus ad parnassum, the height of fame.
Nothing much of him can be said.

But perhaps one thing, he forgives and does not resent the fire’s and his dying flame.
Because the pleasure is in creation and writing not in fame.

Haiku

Forgiving matters
The pleasure is creating
Not then in just fame

Sonnet

Send forth your light.
And your truth.
Open my eyes to my inward sight.
Return me to the certainties of my youth.

I stood in our kitchen watching her pottering outside.
Weeding, talking to herself and leaf brushing.
Suddenly resistant to fortune’s tide.
My whole heart was with love bursting.

I am reading Lampedusa’s The Leopard.
How I relate to its mournful regrets at time passing.
To be conservatively inclined is perhaps just to be a mournful retard.
We mourn all that is lost with age advancing.

But one thing need not pass with a little help from above.
And that is love.

Haiku

One thing passes not
With some help from up above
And that is true love

Sonnet

The sparrow finds a home.
And the swallow a nest for her young.
All wisdom is contained in nature’s tome.
Unconscious goodness in the throat of a bird is sung.

The tractor was ploughing and drilling the field.
All was in order with straight lines marked.
But a great disorderly flock of gulls followed and wheeled.
All careful efforts of man unmarked.

Could our intelligence be less than an ant’s; we worship our ego and our life.
But minutes after we die, all electrical currents in the brain cease.
All memories, all hope and fears, cut away utterly with bloodless knife.
No freehold for us, only an all too temporary non renewable lease.

But hopefully our crumbling temple though destroyed.
Will after a few days, in glory and in other form, be restored.

Haiku

Our temple destroyed
Then after three days restored
In greater glory