Inspired by the changing of the seasons, a friend of the Trust shares their latest collection of poetry. May you enjoy the collection and find a moment of calm and inspriration from them.
A city of light
On a good day
I like to spend my time
doing inconsequential things,
quiet things, like grooming the hamster,
eating big, fluffy, pink and white marshmallows
or looking out of the window at the telephone wires,
things that keep me busy and do no harm to anyone else,
it’s amazing how satisfying these activities can be
because they transport me to another realm,
a different city where everything runs on air
and nothing collides with anything else,
a city that longs for me as much as I long for it,
a city of light, not of stone and commerce, a city of pure light.
Something
There’s something inside me,
I can’t say what it is, it has no use for names,
it’s everything and nothing, it’s whatever I want it to be,
something that helps me with whatever it is I want,
and being nothing, it asks nothing in return,
it just is, a state of perpetual harmony,
waiting for me to remember it.
Hermes
Then the congregation were
all gathered and settled
Hermes arrived in priestly robes
(which looked like an uncomfortable fit to me),
he turned to face the congregation and said,
‘Your worship has fallen into disrepair,
you have forgotten what God is,
you have done what you want,
not what you should have done
and made yourselves grotesque,
you have forgotten the Law of Love
and woe betide anyone
who forgets the Law of Love’.
Then he raised his arms
and in a solemn voice said,
‘Let us play’.
The territory of soul
It’s hard for me to let go,
I’m a hoarder, I always have been,
it’s not just things and people,
I hold on to hopes and expectations,
books I’ve read, gifts I’ve been given, habits,
regrets, resentments and shameful memories,
I’ve kept them all, every one,
I’m not organised about it,
I just leave them lying about the place
until I trip over one of them again,
I’ve spent years in therapy trying to resolve them,
let them go or somehow get rid of them
but in the end it was easier just to accept them
and make my peace with them, warts and all,
when all is said and done they may be uncomfortable,
they may be ugly, but they’re the facts of my life,
the chaotic and difficult territory of my Soul.
Separation
Looking back, it seems that
everything that has ever troubled me,
everything that has driven me to seek and search
has had its roots in feelings of separation,
being an un-joined up person
in an un-joined up world,
and everything I have ever done has,
at least in part, been an attempt to overcome
the terrible feelings this separation evokes,
something I think of now as wounds to my soul,
wounds which have ultimately given rise to all my joys
because when I can be still for long enough to let
the disparate fragments of myself re-cohere,
I see they are in truth held together by a beautiful golden light
that once accepted, settles everything without recourse to fear, flight or fight.
Waiting
I am half asleep
in an open boat,
above me the sail is slack
and around me the ocean is calm,
all but for an occasional gentle heave,
there’s something moving down there,
something vast and beautiful
that can’t breathe in the air
and we’re waiting for each other,
waiting for the right moment.
Persecution
You can learn a great deal from being persecuted,
things like forbearance, tolerance, patience and hope,
you can learn about what can be destroyed and what cannot,
you can discover the depths of strength in you and your people,
you can learn how a second can contain eternity and how eternity
belongs to God and God alone.
A memory
I’m waiting for you,
I’ve been waiting for you all my life
and to some extent I still am,
still waiting for you,
and sometimes,
for a few moments,
a few hours or a whole day,
you arrive at my door, I let you in,
we sit down together again
and everything works
as it was meant to work,
properly, beautifully, as it should,
then without my noticing,
you slip away again
and become a memory,
a memory of what has been
and a hope for what may yet be again.
Ennui
Somebody once told me
that at the time of Atlantis
the adepts could regenerate
their bodies using crystals and deep meditation
and some of them lived for over three hundred years,
the problem was that eventually their minds grew weary,
they got tired of life and then they would let go.
I sympathise, I’m only seventy five years old
and sometimes letting go seems to me
like quite an attractive proposition.
Soulful
I went to a conference once
and one of the presenters there,
a young, newly qualified psychoanalyst,
was talking about how she would never, ever
reveal anything about herself to a client,
I found it very depressing and I knew then
that I would never, ever work in that way myself,
all I have ever wanted to be is a normal,
decent, functioning and soulful human being
and I also knew that if I ever achieved it
I wouldn’t be a psychotherapist any more,
I’d be the person I wanted to be
and that would be enough both for
me and the people I speak with.
Inspiration
Inspiration is a thread
as fine as a cobweb,
as strong as the Gods
and easily broken,
it may come as a thought,
an idea, an image or a line,
but if I welcome it
and I am gentle with it,
it will move my fingers
over the keyboard
and before my eyes,
a poem will emerge.
The works of love
My house is on fire
and all I can do is step back,
step back and watch and pray
that it’s only the works of man
that are flammable
and that the work of love
will go on and on into eternity.
Postscript
Libido
Libido is the soul’s business,
a gift, a prize, a terror that leads us
to that which we must learn from,
it’s something that can neither be bought or sold
and it lives by rules that are ours to discover
but are impossible for us to understand.