Sunday, January 30, 2005

Watching the mist (image)


(c) A McN

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Participant

Watching the mist
competing with the darkness
to dissolve trees.


Watching the cinders of sunset
pale into monochrome. Only the curl of distant cloud tops ink fine etchings on watery sky.

Beauty seeps into dull consciousness.
Art arranges from random conjunctions.

Despite the deep tragedies of humanity, our wasted divinities, the shallow emptiness of our indulgences,

We are forgiven enough to be lavished with beauties,
wooed with mysteries, courted with miracles.

In this wonder of life
Let me be glad participant.


(c) A McN

Celtic folklore regarded sunset and sunrise as times when "the curtains between the worlds" were thinnest. Whether they were right or wrong, the slender moments between the day world and the night world is often a time for reflection and an unusual inner stillness.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Cost you dearly

My affection comes cheaply,
Touch is frequent,
Hugs are free
But more intimate than that
will cost you dear.

I will require nothing less
Than lifetime love and
lifetime loyalty.

But do not fear to make your choice.
The oasis in the desert
Is a place of desire
Not entrapment.

And I will pay no less for you and
All my life regard you

As a treasure fit for kings.

(c) A McN

We are designed to be more than animals with appetites. The measure of our humanity is best articulated in love, loyalty, respect and faithfulness; qualities requiring elements of self sacrifice. A culture of casual sex undermines relationships and corrodes true soul-mate intimacy. "Freedom from" is a bigger freedom than "freedom to".

Sunday, January 23, 2005


Misty morning at Longdown (c)

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Walking in winter

Walking in the winter dark I watched
black tree bones
sift bright stars through skeleton fingers.
Oh, how the hydrogen sang
in the silent star-foundries,
ripping and curling continents of flame through oceans of space.
But in the cobwebbed net of branches
sap lies dormant for the
winter tide is yet to turn
And frost still crystallises earth
Though heavens burn.


(c) A McN


Different perspectives can lead to such different perceptions! It is remarkable that life clings so relientlyin a universe of wild extremes.

Now and then

Now and then the chemistry combines and spirits meet beyond the clumsy incarnations of our speech.

It is the sparkle in the eye, the touch, the timbre in the voice.
It is trust made tangible.
I never understand the cause or circumstance.

Sometimes humour, sometimes depth, sometimes sorrow shared
but often nothing other than the ache of life's deep longing for itself
and the soul's deep need
for company in kind.

Oh to savour all such times
in innocence without the need
to gratify my ego
or satisfy my need for praise.

I almost want to offer my apologies,
but where is love if mind is
ever mindful of it's motives?
Where is friendship when I fret
for what I am?

So I accept a little foolishness in me.
And forgive a little foolishness in you.
Every person is a fool, but
none so foolish than the ones whose clockwork hearts
deny both joy and pain.

Now and then we will regain
the spark of life that leaps across the chasms of our isolated lives.
But when we do, take care
for we are frighteningly alive
and dangerously frail.

I have been clumsy with the hearts of others.
I have tried to own affection for the purpose of my pride.
Forgive me in advance if this should be.

But still I crave simplicity
and child-like love
to let me love a thousand times without a stain.
For that might mean God's
hibernating grace had come to life again.



(c) A McN


Love, affection and intimacy remain the greatest counterbalances to the loneliness of self awareness. Yet the delight in awareness of another is so easily tainted with the self that wants to own or use. True freedom is surely being free from the petty tyrannies of our own egos.
One day, maybe.....

Insomnia

I hear the clock's sprung heart split time as neatly
as the numbers on the face
impose precision and division
on the circle's endless run.

Incessant ticks drip from time's
leaking tap
wearing away the silence
like a stone.

I toss in sleeplessness,
Thoughts are chasing tails across synapses
In the all-too-wakeful brain.

But dreams are brewing in the mind's dark cauldron
as the day's dim ghosts replay.

I live to sleep.
Another day.

(c) A McN

Sleep is evasive, especially when chased.
Writing is one of the few ways I know of fighting insomnia.




In a summer season

In a summer season
On an outstretched hand
A butterfly alights.

Wings warmed by sunlight
fan the air,
delicate semaphores of meaning.

Time is elastic when the
heart is warmed.
Round the axis of a moment memories revolve.

Then there is the loss.
The whispered air,
A weightlessness upon the palm,
Bright confetti weaving long, live stitches in the air,
receding fast between the
petalled nectaries.

I return to who and what I am,
no more a resting place
for metamorphing beauty.

Poorer for the loss am I,
But richer for the day.



(c) A McN



Friendships come unexpectedly and sometimes go unexpectedly too. Delight in the pleasure friendships bring and yet hold them gently. We never own friends, we only borrow the complex and unpredictable privilege of sharing in another's life for a time.