Tears of Love

Of your charity, 

oh my Lord, 

let me weep.

For tears touched 

by the magic of sunlight 

become diamonds,

and golden memories

light up my dark road.

In your compassion, 

oh my Lady,

let me flourish 

like a Chinese plum tree

that blooms in winter,

flowers of pink and red,

bright with bitter ice

melting into love. 

I offer you thanks,

oh my Father,

for your sweet angel

who led me away

from self destruction

to a great high plain,

where the circle whirls

and life has no ending.

My spirit may rest now,

your heart in mine,

and mine in yours.

Washed by soft tears,

my eyes will no more

recognise deep despair,

for here is the place

of everlasting love.

                                     Naomi

The Blood-Sweeten'd Beverage

The Blood-Sweeten’d Beverage

Bristol Tea Parties 1778

So many words desperate and tumbling

but failing to achieve any clear meaning

in a city of slaves and of teatime protesting

telling the horrors of of savage dogs hunting.

Rust sailed galleys and black hearts pounding,

shackles clanking and brain shattered yearning

for freedom ebbing away on the tide lapping

on shingle and shell and never returning.

Gown black preacher earnestly preaching

pleading for freedom but the wrack is turning

its iron cold hands in the ache of an evening

to smother the shame of a master’s objecting.

But still the tea party’s challenge is thriving

in the cold dark of a city’s feigned weeping. 

                                                                                    Naomi

Bristol traders were at the heart of the C18 slave-trade, 

as were the many fierce Bristol objectors to the hated trade.  

In 1778 Hannah Moore a Bristol teacher and passionate anti slaver, 

a friend of both William Wilberforce and  Thomas Clarkson, 

joined  the organised boycott of slave-produced West Indian sugar, 

thus avoiding any contact with what the poet Robert Southey 

later described as “…the blood-sweeten’d beverage…”