Sonnet

Having nominated two candidates Joseph known as Barnabbas.
And Matthias they prayed.
Poor Barnabbas a follower never prayed to in the mass.
For all time left in the shade.

For most of us that is our fate.
We must trust in our destiny.
We will find the right gate.
There is a goal mapped out for us, however tiny.

We rely totally on eye, nose and ear.
But listening to mass today, I felt strangely detached.
This is the future, one free from fear.
The door to eternity is not closed only latched.

But enjoy life, we shelter under roof and tile.
We are going to have to wait awhile.

Haiku

He does not belong
To the world anymore than
Us, conserve the truth

Sonnet

Proclaim his mighty works.
That called you out of darkness.
Somewhere in my mind fear of the future lurks.
It is rainy here now, all is not unalloyed brightness.

I was day dreaming sitting in my cottage conservatory.
Suddenly I was returning here in one hundred years.
All my precious things gone with the loss of my story.
Every piece of furniture, books, photos gone with my cares.

Outside there was a blinding cloudless blue sky.
My chaotic cottage garden now filled with neat Mediterranean plants.
Everything I loved severed by times remorseless tie.
No echo of my family survived here in ghostly chants.

I walked through where there had been a door, by a stranger talking to another.
He was oblivious to me, but as I passed by, he gave a shudder.

Haiku

We pass future time
But our time leaves no shadow
We are only here

Sonnet

They then drew lots.
And the lot fell to Matthias.
We wonder how we can unravel life’s knots.
It’s not necessarily about being pious.

Why do we think we are the best candidate.
We may think it’s ours to requisition.
Success may come not to the early but to the late.
Fate may hold good for obtaining any position.

With chance is it really just chance.
Or does God have a role.
We certainly move to God’s dance.
We may end up on top or down a hole.

Any success we have we should attribute to luck.
And give to pride what it deserves, the chuck.

Haiku

Success is not ours
It is what is given us
By chance or by God

Sonnet

Why are you men from Galilee.
Standing here looking into the sky.
No more than them can we see.
Nor now can we lie.

He has gone before us around the turn.
We cannot see him now.
But one day we hope he will return.
And we must return to the plough.

He disappeared into a cloud.
And our vision is hazy.
But there is so much of which to be proud.
It is our thinking which is lazy.

So we will keep trying.
Even though it’s all quite trying.

Haiku

It comes to belief.
Yes it it is all quite trying.
But I keep trying.

Sonnet

Praise Him all His angels.
Praise Him all His host.
They laugh at the bottom of the picture, His cherubic angels.
But here also is a ghost.

The Madonna stares not adoringly.
At the infant Son after birth.
But with Him towards us sadly.
They look at His death.

They are not in the clouds.
But under a curtain rail.
They are rooted here among us crowds.
Bound by the anguish of the nail.

They stare not at the congregation.
But at the crucifixion.

Haiku

They stare not at us
But at the crucifixion
As we should also

Sonnet

You stretch out your hand and save me.
Your hand will do all things for me.
I dream I am surrounded by the deep dark sea.
Underwater I know even if I cannot see.

The Serpentine is bathed with light.
Sheltering us from a city of ten million.
I am swimming as the swan comes into sight.
Here is delight, all light cast into vermilion.

You plunge deep into the dark lake.
weightless and utterly free.
You do it for no one’s sake.
The sun glints, envelopes as far as I can see.

But on a winter’s day, I don’t need to be told.
It is oh, so horribly cold.

Haiku

You stretch out your hand
Your hand will do all for me
But first I must swim

Sonnet

I have told you all this.
That your faith may not be shaken.
There is somewhere a truth which I must not miss.
My efforts to find it must not slacken.

How can I equate science with faith.
The Universe is thirteen billion years old.
At first it was dark with scattered hydrogen atoms, like a wraith.
All was utterly dead and cold.

If one atom was the size of a ping pong ball.
The next would half way to the moon.
They were finally pulled together by gravity’s call.
Five hundred million years to create the first star was none too soon.

Was it nuclear fusion that gave the first light.
Or did God say Let There Be Light.

Haiku

Did the first light come
From nuclear fusion
And did God give light

Sonnet

God does not have favourites.
But anyone of any nationality is acceptable to Him.
Love is the wind of dancing kites.
It flows from Him, to us, and to others according to His whim.

I dreamt last night I was in Poland in the war.
Witnessing in vivid detail untold brutality.
It clearly brought home the evil that we must not ignore.
Of a bullying cruel fascistic mentality.

You have to love one another.
Love has an eternal source.
Because binding us all in spiritual tether.
Love has only an ever onward course.

So last night before I put down that book on Poland’s history.
I was being taken along the path of sublime mystery.

Haiku

Love one another
Easy to say hard to do
But it is the truth

Sonnet

Almighty God who through baptism.
Has been pleased to confer on us eternal life.
Truly this is our charism.
One day we will be free from strife.

But what of Monti.
Will his soul live on.
He loves, he can see.
And he is loved, will he see the dawn.

He does not belong to our world.
Yet no one hates him.
He just lies happy curled.
And he isn’t so dim.

But anyway he is surely in heaven already.
He lives entirely in the present, no regrets or fears, just steady.

Haiku

You are in heaven
If you live in the present
No regrets or fears

Sonnet

Love one another.
As I have loved you.
It’s all such a bother.
It really is too.

I was trying to pray, amen.
Nothing, then in my mind I just thought.
Of St Joseph and one of my children.
I saw them together, then I was caught.

There’s no need for words, too.
I felt a communication.
I was being talked to anew.
Here was inspiration.

You don’t have to do, it’s really very simple.
You don’t have to set an example.

Haiku

You don’t need these words
You just need an open heart
Then there is echo

Sonnet

God so kindled the fire of charity in St George.
That he bore witness to the risen Lord.
Riding through the gorge.
He slew the dragon with lance and sword.

Christ is Risen, Воистину Воскрес! He is risen indeed.
Was the cry we heard in the Russian church today.
Христос воскресе. He is risen indeed.
Is there anymore we need say.

We know so little about Saint George save he was martyred.
Much is legend including the dragon.
But that is is faith, little is chartered.
Truth is halved then quartered.

But what the matter at the finish.
He is the patron saint of the English.

Haiku

Christ is risen now
He is risen indeed now
What else matters now

Sonnet

As a branch cannot bear fruit by itself.
Neither can you unless you remain in me.
We fear being left un-watered on the greenhouse shelf.
Ignored even by the searching worker bee.

Why are my dreams so lonely and sad.
Is it because I forget to pray at night.
We really aren’t that alone or so bad.
We are just to frail and prone to fright.

If only I could remember I am part of the vine.
I am a branch on a healthy plant.
Look for the multicoloured sign.
It is there, beautiful, ignore the can’t.

We will never be cut away and thrown into the fire.
For lifting us from the mire , he plays us gently on his lyre.

Haiku

Never cut away
We remain in the true vine
Not thrown in the fire

Sonnet

Let your face shine upon your servant.
You hide them in the shelter of your presence.
Is life reserved for the observant.
How do we come into your omnipresence.

What happens to the soul after death.
Are these near death experiences proof.
What happens in the hours after our last breath.
Away from our body does our soul see, hear and stand aloof.

I doubt all these experiences, are they truly undeniable.
They all seem to talk of earthly beauties and cities.
Surely heaven is infinite, indescribable.
Utterly separate from earth’s cares and duties.

I prefer to put my trust in one who was dead for three days.
Then many witnesses testified he was alive, as bright as the sun’s rays.

Haiku

The soul after death
Does it live on conscious
We know there was one who did

Sonnet

Lord let us see the Father.
And then we shall be satisfied.
We always demand to see further.
We suspect someone has lied.

He has been here all this time.
And we still do not know Him.
We do not recognise the sublime.
He is here and He is his limb.

If we ask for anything in His name.
He will do it.
This is truth and no mere claim.
We only have to ask for His permit.

But we’re like Philip, as he did so doubtfully say.
We don’t recognise the truth, the life and the way.

Haiku

If only we knew
The way, the truth, and the life
But the truth is there

Sonnet

Every branch in me that bears no fruit.
He cuts away.
He discards it if there is no fruit.
But all our worries He thus does lay.

My old apple tree sprouts in summer.
Too seldom do I prune it.
Few are its fruit before winter.
And they are not by sweetness lit.

But there is the great vine at Hampton Court.
Over 250 years old.
Time is in its passing wrought.
Its story many times told.

We must prune and give.
And not keep if we are to live.

Haiku

Prune the tree often
If it is to give some fruit
By cutting we give

Sonnet

Proclaim the mighty works of him.
Who called you into his wonderful light.
The child sits just beyond the candle light’s rim.
But clearly in our sight.

This is a picture of the dignity of the worker.
Entitled to fair treatment.
True work is not for the materialist shirker.
For it is a part of God’s work defying mistreatment.

The worker is lit by light.
He must not be oppressed.
For the same light illumines the night.
And bathes in gentle white and yellow the blessed.

We see the light through his hands.
And we know where truth stands.

Haiku

Light behind the hands
Illumines them in fair glow
Like all the true light

Sonnet

Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God still and trust in me.
Can our hopes and fears be stilled.
Can we our fate see.

We are always so restless.
When young worrying about the future.
When old regretting life’s mess.
Always resentment is the lure.

Left to our own we are never happy.
No toy of our delight can last.
We wander trying every new fancy.
We make an endless cast.

But there is one who has many a room opening.
In his restful mansion welcoming.

Haiku

There are many rooms
In his father’s mansion
Always welcoming

Sonnet

If we say we have no sin in us.
We are deceiving ourselves.
Self awareness is something about which we should make a fuss.
We are not honest about ourselves only themselves.

I bless you Lord from hiding these things from the learned and the clever.
And revealing them to mere children.
Catherine of Siena’s words live for ever.
Her burning heart of love could not be hidden.

Yet she only learned to write in her last three years.
And now she is one of the churches doctors.
Her dictated writings brush away our tears.
She resolved the churches schism better than any lawyers.

We wish we had true simplicity.
We might then have more felicity.

Haiku

True simplicity
Brings much more felicity
We wish we had it

Sonnet

I the light have come into the world.
So that whoever believes in me may not stay in the dark anymore.
I was in a dreamworld.
Perhaps here and there a little snore.

Against trouble, I was asking for an intercession.
And by chance I turned to St Alphege’s interception.
Dead for a thousand years, could I ask him the question.
Strangely I felt a reception.

I felt I was being listened to.
And there was an atmosphere of contentment.
Maybe it was just a dream too.
But maybe here was some kind of presentment.

You never know when to a saint you pray.
What if anything they will say.

Haiku

You pray to a saint
You may not know they hear
There is an echo

Sonnet

On the holy mountain.
Is His city cherished by the Lord.
This is hope’s flowing fountain.
To which we inch painfully toward.

He had told us, despite our unfitness.
But we did not believe.
Are not His works witness.
In acceptance we will receive.

If we were His sheep.
We would listen to His voice.
He knows us, His reward to keep.
But do we know Him, we cannot rejoic.

If only we understood.
He is eternal life, the greatest force for good.

Haiku

If we understood
He is the true eternal life
And the force for good

Sonnet

I am the gate of the sheepfold
Anyone who enters through me will be safe.
The truth is as it is told.
Following him we need not chafe.

I was in the village church, alone.
Suddenly I felt a presence.
I was not alone.
I cannot explain this sense.

But I felt contentment.
As if watched by the loyal shepherd.
Dispelled was all resentment.
It was as if my fears were heard.

We do not know the path to avoid mortality’s fate.
But surely it is through his gate.

Haiku

We do not know yet
How to end mortality
Except through his gate

Sonnet

This is the stone rejected by you the builders.
But which has proved to be the cornerstone.
We all feel rejected at times, we are no pillars.
But somewhere within all of us is one small worn useful stone.

Our lives may be one of deepest obscurity.
Our value may not be revealed.
We may be despised and have no security.
Yet our hope in him is forever sealed.

We are wandering sheep.
Our life short and lonely.
But the shepherd awaits to hold us in his kindly keep.
He will always come to our aid all and one and only.

We think we are secure in our individuality but Christianos.
Hope lies in spirituality, alter Christos.

Haiku

Individual
Or hoping in the shepherd
That is our true choice

Sonnet

It is the spirit that gives life and freedom from care
The flesh is of no avail.
But how often is the spirit in a spond of despair.
We walk sometimes in a depressed shadowed vale.

But there is a loving spirit, a holy salve.
We feel it on a wind from our parents, a mere essence.
They are beyond beyond the grave.
But we feel their presence.

Sorrows and death may encompass our space.
But we can always make a prayer.
And our soul can travel to a better place.
A place where no ills can wander.

It is not certainty that is required.
Just an honest attempt made and inquired.

Haiku

The loving spirit
By generation passed
It does liveth on

Sonnet

I read that through faith we are judged righteous.
Since it is by faith that we have entered this state of grace.
And so I ask what then of being meritorious.
What of doubt’s ever nagging trace.

Intellectually I struggle with faith’s happy grace.
Rationally I fear I am a passing speck in an unconscious universe.
But I was thinking this sitting alone in the vast cathedral space.
Unable with prayer or God or happiness to converse.

Then high up a ray of light pierced the window.
Blinding me for an instant, intently.
What calm joy and fears laid low.
A peace enveloping, gently reverently.

Such is the call, it cannot be analysed.
Or indeed in any way surmised.

Haiku

Light, such is the call
It cannot be analysed
Or indeed surmised

Haiku for Saint George

Christopher is the
Saint of Christmas and George is
The saint of Easter

Sonnet

It is written in the prophets.
They will all be taught by God.
Sound the glorious trumpets.
Let the chariots horses be shod.

Philip met the Ethiopian on the road.
As he read Isaiah in his chariot.
Soon his head in baptism was bowed.
And forewarned of the fate of Judas Iscariot.

Why do we spend so much thinking about number one.
And too little about others save in resentment.
And even less about the one.
But we know that to help others is the only road to contentment.

Perhaps one day I might meet a Philip on the road.
And appreciate how much he is owed.

Haiku

Philip on the road
Explains Isaiah to us
He is always there