​Grey stone dusk

I am born inside
To the sight of the moon
Mother moon
In this misty night
Of bats and trousers
And baptised
By settling dew

It is the night of grief

Eyes my father
Sentenced to be joined forever
In depth of sight
Twin spheres in their own right
Are only their own
And dying

My children
Are mere sparks in the night

To the sky there is return
We know
The dead will tell
New light opens further

Grief is yet the beginning…

There
Where swallows swoop for souls
Beneath pewter cloud
Where grey stone fills
Death is woven
As softly as slippers
And white mist
Is spirit lost
Lifting into the last warmth of dusk

As colour fades
I see nothing remaining
Over or under the tombstone
Of the mind

There had been anyway only little
Until tomorrow’s
Vast blue was remembered
And after yesterday’s
Crystal blue had been forgotten

And until in the greater sense
Of the migrant swallow
Unweaving through direction only
Through love alone and lonely
There was heavenly home
For souls above

Home
Here where grey stone empties
And is in turn emptied

Where words of remembrance
Fade to the wind and rain
Of centuries

For higher
Was the heart
And higher the home
For those remembering above
And forgetting below
Between grey rocks…

The past is here
And not before
And welcomed
In fabric densely woven
Is the richness
To my soil
Of a heart well traveled
And as easy as old shoe
The body as such
The most intimate clothing
In this garden of history

There is a richness
Too to my air
Where I may be found
Even in the times most lost
By the scent
Of mother
And father
In the covering
Of blankets

Such is the memory
Just of presence

There is here also many a name
And many a story which stays
Through the ancestral line
To call the meaning
Without a word being spoken

The ships
Built for the voyage
Tell the story of the journey

So there shall be fruit
In the fullness of time
Even in the silence
And here is the past secured
In the greater ground
Of greater truths
Before the dawn of new life…

His rhythm was present in the given heart beat
In the taken respiration
Fading from his thankfulness in empty repetition
His rhythm noticed in the wonky gait
Of the winter morning

His theme was present in the echo of the autumn woodcutting
In the scent of the ripening fruit returning

His melody was as present in garlands of hope
As in wreaths of sorrow

And as the music of life is played
And as we are played by the music
How can we look to know the whole?

Looking from the inside
He was present in the music of the world
Looking from the outside
The music was present in him

And the meeting of inside and outside
Was forever out of sight
Until conscious movement
Gathered intuition

Marking a time
Not our time
There from the very beginning…

In the little town
Their eyes followed the spire upward
In love and hope
Through times of toil
And this gaze was duly honoured
In the heavens

Yet as clouds of love blossomed in the blue
Their cherry tree hearts
Were still tippy-toeing in the garden

Their hearts were rather small
But had at least been made so
And seen so by heaven
And having been humbled
They better they knew their duties
Of watering and weeding

And so delicate were their feet
Of soft pink petals
As the sky distilled a mirror
To reflect