A elder of the Psychosynthesis Trust community shares their latest poetry collection. The collection is inspired by the changing of seasons in 2025, from Spring to Summer. All images were taken by the same soulful creator. By reading this, may you find inspiration, harmony and opportunities for reflection.
I have been through
some difficult days
and some terrible nights
but today, in this moment
I have been consumed by glory,
the sunlight, the pattern of the clouds,
the song of the meadowlark
and the gentle hills all around me
have conspired to kidnap my soul,
for this moment I am helpless to joy.
Opening
Open to spirit
as if your mind is a flower
blooming in the warm sunlight
and the things that concern you will melt away,
to us you will become soft, empty
and as still as a mountain lake,
a perfect mirror reflecting the sky,
then we can reach down and trouble the surface,
tracing ripples and patterns in the water with our fingertips
so your soul can read them and you can speak your understanding
in the language of your time and your people.
The created
I am a human being,
the created, not the creator,
but there’s something hidden deep within me
that belongs to the creator, some people call it a spark,
I call it my Soul, and like the creator it lives on,
through war and peace, famine and excess,
love and loss, sickness and health,
just as I will live on, until I can
claim my Soul as myself.
Old age and death
I have been thinking a lot
about old age and death recently,
about how time is running out for me
and my life is coming
to an end,
I think it’s true,
but on the other hand
the me that is you
knows nothing of death,
so maybe it’s just the you in me that’s being born.
Wounded
We are all wounded,
some by violence, some by abuse,
some by too much attention,
some by not enough
and some by cruel words,
but it’s no good wishing it weren’t so,
it’s what we came here for,
so we can find out at first hand
that love is greater than fear and pain.
Lullaby
You were beside yourself,
you’d come to stay with your mum and dad
and they’d decided to take the opportunity
to go out and meet a friend for a couple of hours,
they were sitting on your bed and you were sobbing inconsolably,
so I talked them into leaving and said I would look after you,
even though I didn’t know if I could be any more help than them,
it was over 40 years since I’d had to soothe your dad to sleep,
but I got down on my old knees by the side of your bed anyway,
stroked your hair and sang a Woody Guthrie song to you;
Go to sleep you weary hobo
let the towns slip slowly by,
listen to the steel rails hummin’
that’s a hobo’s lullaby.
Thanks to Woody you calmed down,
I watched you as you fought off the sleep,
watched until eventually it got the better of you
and your breathing became deep and even,
I didn’t want to leave you any more
than I suppose you wanted me to go,
so I just stayed there
looking at your beautiful face,
filled with light in the darkness.
Desire
My soul doesn’t
sweep me up in its arms
and make me feel special,
in fact it’s almost entirely libidinous,
it speaks through what attracts and repels me
and cares little for my comforts, it wants what it wants,
even if it means I must suffer the loss of what I want,
my soul sees a different picture to me, one in which
the most is the least, the least is the most
and wrong becomes right when
it’s touched by light.
Transition
I have worked hard
as a psychotherapist
for the last forty two years
and now I am in my seventy fifth year
I have started to slow down a bit, which
leaves me with time and space on my hands.
When I work in a group
or I sit in front of somebody
who is lonely, angry, in despair or distress
at some point a hatch opens somewhere between us
and the gods come out to help, some are filled with light,
some with darkness, some with indifference
and some know exactly where the wounds are,
it’s the most wonderful, dangerous
and frightening thing
to participate in.
The problem is that when I am alone,
more often than not the hatch stays closed,
and I end up spending my precious time
worrying about what’s for tea today …
… and that can’t hold a candle
to witnessing creation repair itself.
An interview with God
Everything I have ever done,
be it saintly, indifferent or heinous,
all sits on a shelf somewhere deep inside me
and one day I will have to visit that library,
sit down, open the books one by one
and make peace with what I find there by
understanding, loving and forgiving myself
and when I have eaten all the shadows the sunlight cast
I will be ready for my interview with God.
By joy or by pain
You may not have
achieved all you hoped for,
you may even think
of your life as a failure
but it doesn’t matter,
your journey doesn’t stop
at the end of one life
and all you have learned,
whether it be by joy or by pain,
will turn to gold in the harbour of your soul
and make it stronger, deeper and wiser
so it can speed the steps of all of us.
Graffiti
There’s a light now,
an unobtrusive light that,
save for occasional glimpses,
has for much of my life been occluded by
the way I’ve felt about myself,
this is the same light I knew as a child
but never questioned, never had to search for,
never spoke about and never once missed,
now it’s shining through my life as if it were a long road
covered in graffiti and it’s gracing each image with
tenderness and understanding as it does
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy isn’t a collection of techniques,
a set of rules or a moral veneer to stick over the fault lines,
Psychotherapy is nothing if not the work of the Soul,
the quiet mutineer that destroys wrong to make things right,
not with violence but with love, because it’s love alone that can heal,
a love as ruthless as a bullet to the heart, as serious as a tomb in the night,
as beautiful as the dawn in springtime and as free as the air that fills your lungs.
Postscript
Rhyming
At this time we seem to have
become a poem that no longer rhymes,
but the great muse, whose other name is love,
still wants us to, so each time one of us reaches out
to another in love we make a couplet which becomes
part of the soul-poem we are collectively trying to write,
these are the true joys that puncture our darkness
and each one is invariably a consequence of love.