Thursday, May 20, 2010

Prayer before dawn

In the early hours,
long before the stars dim,
long before the light brings colour to the shadowed earth
I lie awake trying to pray.

Thoughts swirl like pillars of mosquitoes
goading the silence of the heart but thoughts are not prayer.

I muster memories to milk emotion's energy and strength
remembering with joy your passionate embrace of life that often left me wishing I was more like you;
I let my indignation rise at cancer's bold audacity
to trespass where it will
but neither love nor anger constitute a prayer.
So I wait in quiet impotence,
staring in the darkness
without words to shape the wishes,
or strength to shape the will;
waiting as the last mosquito settles for the night
and peace unbidden creeps like mist across the pre-dawn dark.

I remember
that the birds will shortly sing,
the sun will rise,
the daily miracle of life will ring with random and chaotic joy
and every cell we own
will hum with life today.

And maybe that's a kind of prayer
to pray.

(c) A McN

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Tree snakes
















(c) A McN

Gentle to them

I study their carefree faces, frozen mid smile
with the air teasing the hair around their head.

In the thin light of a Californian summer smog they
cast no shadows but faint reflections dance on the wet sand
like the light that dances in their eyes.

They are young and beautiful with the playfulness of youth
and the confidence of early adulthood when life stretches to infinity.

Strange to think they were already pensioners
when I was a child four thousand miles away.
Strange to wonder if this cheerful company
laughing on the wall from a hundred years ago
ever found the dreams for which they yearned.

I hope life might have been gentle to them;
especially the girl with the kindly eyes and
the diffident young man to whom she smiles.

(c) A McN

An old photograph on the wall of my hotel room captured a group of young people I could never have known. They had yet to live through two world wars and a great depression. I felt a strange and fatherly affection for these youngsters; older than my grandparents yet as young as I still feel inside.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Shropshire rain

Coming from the west in
grey black curtains, the colour of slate
it drums on the roof
with the sing-song cadences of Wales.

But this is Shropshire rain
running thinly down the
brown stemmed bracken,
dropping from the dripping sheep
to the short shorn grass and the
deep dark soil of centuries.

This is the rain of misted hills,
wraiths wreathing scarp and vale;
pale woods dissolve and crystallise again
and I tramp damp and drizzle drenched
across the misty heights...songs bubbling unexpectedly
like shafts of light.

(c) A Mc N

The most miserable weather often evokes unexpected emotions. Its very rawness gives us the sensory shake-up that makes us more alive.