So far

It seemed you lived such a long way from me

So far

That now I have no choice

But to look for you

In the moon and the stars

Who knows what silent sorrow

Your heart privately kept

As you worked away in the garden

I only remember how lonely it was

To be longing to be beheld

But then I realise

A parent can only repeat their past

And as a young man you took yourself

So far from a home

Under threat

Nursing dreams of success (?)

Was it any wonder then

That your death

Led me to do the same

Years later she said to me

Get as far away as you can from ‘that one’

Pointing to my mother

‘Do what you father did’.

Was it that I was then just meant

To unconsciously repeat a tragic lonely past?

And so I ran and crashed

Until the Gods spoke to me in Glastonbury

And said go home

And here

I fell

Into the abyss for five more years

While all around me tidal swells

Threatened the fragile boat

I was trying to build

Shipwreck came

Torn and lacerated on

The jagged  sharp edges of his pain

A tragic refrain

Repeated over and over

Enacted on my tender flesh

Until hardly anything was left of me

But bleeding

So now

Isn’t it a gift

To finally feel myself to be

In full possession of my soul

I can shed tears now

About deep pain and regret

And write poetry about how

Far from me you seemed

Bearing testament to my true reality

Far away from me

So very far

That the only place I could look for you

Was in the moon

In the sun

And in the stars

Love you are an ocean

Love you are an ocean

Reminding me I am connected to every living thing

You remind me that fear is a phantom that came to guard the gates

To the inner palace of our hearts

When love and longing led to betrayal or hurt

You are the soft sore spot that aches

That we so often cover over

With strong shields of defence

But never the less you are always there

Even hidden very deep inside the core of our anxiety

Quivering

You are only transformed

When we develop the capacity to stay

With the building charge

That so badly wants to burst free

And live

But fears that if we do

We will die

But what dies is not us but our shields

Which fall to the ground

And don’t we die a little every day

To what needs to change

When we finally open the door

And let you in?

A home in your heart

You said to me

One of the best feelings

Is finding a home in someone’s heart again

I know only how it feels to open my heart

To that part of me

Who became homeless

When shut out and pushed away

By those

Whose major task

Should have been

Home making

And so I wandered for years

With no ground beneath my feet

Until I learned

The only home I had here

Was at times so empty and lonely

So now if this heart has become your home

Then that is only due to the foundation I worked

To build within

For my true self now lives deep inside this skin

And no one can take it away

But I am willing

To open the door

And welcome you in

Synchronicity

Precious moments

Appear

In those times of synchronicity

When I spy you crossing a crowded street

Jaunty summer hat dipping low

Across your brow

There is an instant when I doubt the recognition

Of you dear friend

But then I call you name and you turn and smile

Bless life and these moments of pure happenstance

That connect us

We talk of so many things

My Mum’s death

The book you just bought

The Camino Way

Jasper lies belly flat

Beneath the table at our feet

And soaks in the peace that surrounds our meeting

This kind of sponatenous joy

Is surely now

What I most live for

Fleeting moments tinged with gold

Evidence that somehow

Somewhere

Those who we are meant to encounter

Often just appear

Out of nowhere

The connections of heart that are there

And life in its awesome wisdom

Often guides us

To the right place

At the right time

When two paths converge

And the union

Conspired by spontaneous meeting

Feeds us joy

Young poets : Nikita Gill : Miracle

I get so excited happening across new poets (new to me, that is!).  I used part of a gift voucher this afternoon to buy Nikita Gill’s collection wild embers : poems of rebellion fire and beauty which I had discovered about six weeks ago.  Check her work out if you can.  I would like to share a few of her poems on my blog…. this one really touched me.

Miracle 

it took 3.8 billion years

of triumphant evolution,

remarkable collision,

an unbelieveable confluence

made by sheer will and influence

of this infinite universe

and all of the stars

to get you here

 

I hope you never doubt again

that even when you are in pain,

that you are a miracle,

that every part of you is incredible.

 

What if?

What if all I see through these eyes is not you

But only my

Projection of you

What if there is love in your heart

That I cannot feel

That hides behind a wall of doubt

Or fear

Or defences

You had to build

In order to keep a part of you alive

Or deny another part was dead

Or is dying?

What if my longing for you

Stops me seeing the ache inside your own heart

What if I am the empty hungry one

Always complaining

I am not seen

What if I have it wrong?

What if things are really not what they seem

And the truth is

Appearances are deceiving

What if there really is enough love here

On this earth

In this universe

In the moon

The sunshine and the stars

To light up

The darkest of nights

And reveal the hidden truth

That we are all just disparate sparks of the Godhead

Splintered into present time

Destined once again

Like iron filings of a magnet

To reunite once again

And return

To oneness

Dispelling for ever

The optical illuison

Of our separateness

Many winters

It seems to me

That these sad eyes have looked

Into the dark heart of so many winters

When flesh was torn from bone

In a metaphorical sense

By a pack of young jackals

Leaving that young tender heart

Faltering on a precipice of becoming

That seemed entirely

Insurmountable

So now

All these years hence

Those memories

Summoned up by the encroach of autumn

Can only be carried silently

Like an untellable truth

Whose meaning would be lost

On those who never endured such difficulty

No way really to tell

Of all the heart endured

Of the emptiness and pain

That she tried to cover over

So inefficiently

Now there seems no longer any escape

So she must learn to live with all of this

Finding a way to make of it

Some form of art

For there really is no forgetting

And the emptiness that streches before her like an ocean

Seems to threaten a drowning

So all she can do is try to find

A way to breathe

Under water

In the midst of

Encroaching winter

Waiting : when love seems absent

When love seems absent

Only a cold wind blows

As doubts grow

Haunting the edges of my mind

With thoughts of what you believe of me

Never positive

It seems

But how can I know

When there is only silence

Withholding

In the empty place

Where connection and sharing should be

I fill a void with worry and doubt

It was like this on the lonely afternoons

I waited for you to come home

All alone

As my mother waited

I waited also to be born

As I waited trapped in a crushed car

For them to cut me out

At the tender age of 17

It seems I have lived a life time in waiting

And so now

When you leave me here all alone

With only silence for company

It feels like an agony

But then there lives inside this breast

A silent witness

Who sees and knows how much my heart aches

And finally accepts

For when

Love

Connection

Attention is absent

Then I can only attend to me

And although my heart aches

I can only weep

How do I know what secrets you wish to keep

By staying silent

The truth is I cannot know

But my heart still longs for you

And misses you

With a waiting

A longing and an aching

So very familiar to me

Coals

This loss will burn inside me like a fever

When the knowing that you are

Torn from me

Taken away from life

Awakens here

I feel as though I am a sleepwalker in a dream

Only thing is

This dream is a night mare

I will not awaken from

How do we keep loving

When forces of darkness

Threaten to steal from us

All that is good noble and pure

Will our souls be marked with hatred too

For acts of such meaningless vengeance

Can we keep breathing through this loss

So much like drowning

As lungs fill with unshed tears

And a silent scream of pain

Too intense to ever be

Fully expressed

We can only hope for love

To win through

As we walk across these coals of fire

That lead us across

A seemingly unfathomable

Abyss of loss

 

(This poem is inspired by the story of Antoine Leiris who lost his wife Helene in the Parisian terrorist attacks.   You can read his journey in his memoire You Will Not Have My Hate,   let us remember to cherish those  around us who can so easily and quickly be taken and remember how little of love can live within vengeance and hate.)

Beautiful soul

Beautiful soul

I wish you could see the light in you

I wish that you could know that you are

Worthy of love

Please remember that

Just because you are alone

And struggle on days

That does not mean you are a failure

There is so much

A single soul

Lives through in any life

And so often when we needed someone there

To hold our hand

We found ourselves alone

And we may have been told

That it was something that we did

That made everyone go away

But we also forget

That what is truly for us

Will not go past us

If we open our heart in love

To another loving soul

So don’t let your inner voices

Make you feel small or feel ashamed

Or if you do

Just be tender to that inner self who suffers

Who longs so deeply for the comfort and caress

Of your soothing embrace