The Mystery that is Love

The Face of God

We may not see the face of God nor hear his voice,

but we can delight in the wonders of this our world,

our living mirror of a sacred beauty that alone is his.

His voice is heard in the song of ten thousand birds 

and in a roaring waterfall; silent he moves in a breeze 

that riffles through the beach tree’s bronzed leaves.

In his almighty power he rides the skies in the eye

of the storm, yet like new kittens lying secure within

the circle of their mother’s paws, we may safely rest 

in the promise of his tenderness and silken strength.

God’s face invisible, God’s voice unknown, but 

Jesus becomes our paradigm of the loving God,

his teachings marking out our path to paradise,

for he brought to us God’s great commandment:

that we love Him and our neighbour as ourselves.

Tonight the magical stillness of a summer evening 

is broken only by the whispering of lazy waves

and the distant high pitched hoot of a tawny owl. 

Above the bay the full moon hangs softly bright

spreading a delicate path of silver across smoke

blue water, inviting us to look into a far horizon

which, with  Jesus as our guide, will some day 

be the end of our journey.  There, face to face 

at last with God, we may recognise the glorious 

ineffable Mystery that is the essence of his Love.

Naomi                                                   

My Friend Bill

Come, my friend, though you be lost

from my sight, walk now and talk with me. 

My mind’s eye sees you and my heart’s 

ear listens to you, as the same sea 

we both once watched caresses the sand 

at the edge of the Bay, while crying gulls

fly deep again into the copper bright horizon, 

to be absorbed like tendrils  of thin smoke 

disappeared into the kindly dark of evening.

Any man’s death, it was said, diminishes me;

but I know the spirit that lives in every good man

will enrich the lives of of all whom it touches.

My friend Bill was indeed a very good man,

a loyal and loving man whose pleasure

it was to build a raft of quiet friendship

upon which we all may safely sit 

until, we too set free, shall fly into those gentle

welcoming shadows and meet with God. 

Naomi

February Rain

February rain - 2014

I like the soft rain that gently bathes 

my tired skin with liquid silk.

I like the full blown lazy rain softly emptying

its wide spaced drops into the pool

where six humped golden orfe wheel and play, 

timid tadpoles hide amongst the reeds

and pale water lilies shimmer in the gentle shower.

I like the tough regimented squalls that beat

a brisk reveille on rusting tin roofs

of old allotment huts, summoning their owners away

to the comfort of the pub and their noon day pint.

I like the anxious hurrying rain

sweeping undeterred across the high moor, 

flattening the purple heather into a deep carpet,

replenishing warm languorous streams

who sing through the summer 

in an unique rustic chorus with the the watery trill    

of the chic white and black ring ouzel,

and the elegant grey merlin’s imperious screech.

I like the fine mizzle and the silent mists of October

that caress the Fluted White camellia, 

cloak with liquid lace the purple Autumn crocus

and weave a glistening crown around a dark red rose.

But … 

The meandering Jet Stream has plunged deep south, 

and sharply swung north again, like a great cosmic ribbon

swirling madly above the ocean, bundling together

unending storms of bitter rain and cruel gales.

Today’s icy downpour stings skin and eyes,

scythes through the sunshine gold japonica,

shatters the simple beauty of the gentle hellebore,

and pulps the last head of the blue hydrangea.

It brings flood and devastation to land and coast,

houses inundated, winter crops laid waste,

pastures six feet under water, stock drowned.

As rivers undredged burst through their crumbling banks

and old sea walls are swept away by wind and tide, 

power lines fall victims to unremitting storms,

and thousands endure long cold and cheerless days.

While politicians and public servants wrangle,

men and women count the terrible cost

of homes destroyed, livelihoods and lives 

lost to the inevitable coming of this

festival of unholy ruin.

And I begin to see how powerless 

we have become in the face of this, our world’s chaos 

which we ourselves have done so much to cause.

May God and our children forgive us.

Naomi

Where now is the glory?

Kent 2014 - Where now is the glory?    

There is a green place high on the cliff above 

the menacing Goodwins and the sheltering Downs,

a log cabined park, clipped and trim,

but which has still the wild touch

as pale green wild liquorice spreads around

the gardener’s stately hollyhock,

while pungent wild garlic and narrow leaves

of meadow sage line the banks

of a stream which sings softly as it meanders

relaxed through the quiet wood.

There is a copse near the wood’s edge,

which encloses a ragged circle of bright space 

where the morning sun gilds a clump

of late primroses and bathes the flowers

of the tall cow parsley with a dappled radiance.

In the centre of this oasis of light grows

a spear thistle, three feet high, elegant 

in its new budding touched with Tyrian purple 

and long leaves tipped with vicious spines,

a formidable green emperor preparing for war.

Along these same quiet coastal paths, in these same woods

 a hundred years ago through the hot summer of 1914 

came men to survey, to plan, to dig, to build.

Where now the wild liquorice grows, 

are mounds and hollows, slabs of dressed stone.

Was there here a shelter, a trench, 

an emplacement for a gun?

Did the gallant men of the 6th Cyclist Battalion

with rifles and ammunition slung across their backs

patrol these sweet green places?

Stand today beside the handsome barbed warrior, 

turn to the North and let your imagination

listen to the stuttering rattle of a rotary engine,

a limping Sopwith Camel coming into land.

Turn to the South and feel through every part of you

the unceasing shudder of the guns 

merciless bombardment of the green fields 

of France, where the bloodstained earth  turns red, 

and the land itself cries out ‘Here is no glory,

 these are the Plains of Death.’

From the corners of the world they came 

and from this village too, among them

boys too young and men too old to contend 

with the pain, the loss, the mud and the over arching fear. 

In the trenches there was courage and a bleak humour,

compassion and care for the wounded and the weak,

but in No Man’s Land men abandoned, crucified

on the wire, screamed throughout the night,

and in the grey morning dead eyes 

silently yearned for the green fields of Kent. 

Little was gained from four bitter years of battle,

seven million civilians and ten million fighting men died,

twenty million wounded took home little but their wounds.

Widows made destitute pawned their wedding rings 

while crippled soldiers begged in our city streets, 

and the sad hungry orphans of Germany

wept for fathers never returned.

What is there now to celebrate when both victim

and victor were the casualties of this war,

except perhaps its eventual ending?

Very little to glorify, but much to remember,

to respect, to regret, and to learn.

Half a dozen new poems

Listen to the heart beats

Click-clack. Click-clack. The rhythmic sound

of stays flapping against the cold bare masts

of small boats sailing the black tarmacked 

dinghy park, metallic heart beats in the wind.

Fishing boats, rescue boats, pleasure boats,

all sharing the heart beat of river and ocean.

Thud.  Boom.  Echoing like rocks revolving 

in a great steel drum, proud waves declare

their might, their heart beats fuel an ocean

and reorder the contours of land and shore.

The tide’s rhythm is ordered by the moon,

thus hearts of moon and waves beat as one. 

Above the arid heat of a fading landscape

the stuttering heart beat of thunder rises up,

like a patient shocked upon a white table that

life might return to that which once had died.

Rain falls, a soft drumroll on leaf and field,

and the heart beat of the land is revived.

The susurration of a gentle summer breeze 

in the evening forest, discrete heart beats

of a hidden place unostentatious and shy,

echoes the soft cooings of a sleepy dove.

Here is an oasis where each fragile heart

may rest in the universal heart of God.

The collective heart beat of a mob around

the stake and funerary pyre, shouts shrill 

into the blazing morning:  “Kill the witch!”

The collective heart of high righteousness

thumping its heavy beat on the white van

screams:  “Go on, hang the bloody bitch!”

The heart’s beating may follow the mob 

as lemmings run to the precipice’s edge; 

may hover like a lost feather in the wind; 

may choose as its guardian and its guide

the bright light of science and reason, or

God’s love, the heart beat of the world.

Across the Bay

I stare across the water mesmerised

by a shaft of brilliant light, like a lunar 

arrow penetrating the deep darkness 

far beyond the mysterious horizon.  

This portent my signpost to God 

my hope, my meditation, my prayer. 

“Wohin is Gott?”  Nietszche’s 

Madman cried - Where is God?

And to himself replied: “Wir haben

ihn getötet,  ihr und ich” - We have

killed him, you and I.  A wise fool

the death of his God proclaimed.

God knifed in the back, abandoned

in the jungle, sentenced to oblivion,

a crumbling leaf on a dying tree,

decried, ignored, forgotten creator 

of the universe and king of kings,

a fast fading shadow over our land.

But can God who was never born, die?

Must those who discover the voice 

of the sacred in the bell’s summons

to the altar, abjure that mystery? 

Is my soul’s love to be prescribed 

by a chill logic and dry philosophy?

Deus - Θεού - God - الله - Dio - Duw,

patterns of sound, a verbal shorthand

with no profound universal meaning,

significant only to the solitary mind which, 

driven by reason or ignorance, custom 

or creed, it will repudiate or embrace. 

There is no human intellect so infinite

that it can comprehend the full meaning

of “God,” no science so definitive that it 

may safely pronounce that God is dead,

nor human design so perfect that it may

offer more than a token of the divine.

Whether or not God exists, whether

faith and practice alone absorb such 

fantasies into my fevered mind, I put 

my trust in the God my heart’s eye has

seen in the bright darkness at the end

of a path cut by a sacred silver arrow.

The horse with curved ears

Bred and born to bear a royal prince,

curved ears meeting to form a crown,

magnificent mane streaming proud

in the desert winds, the Marwari horse,

patient, sure footed and brave, carried

his soldier master through the heat

of the long day, his loyal companion,

fierce defender and lifetime friend.

A fighting horse, a dancing horse 

with coat of fine spun pale gold, eyes 

set wide, luminous, large and deep, 

harnessed with silver and glossy silks

decorated with flowers and plumes,

this was the darling of the Rajput 

warrior and the pride of Rajasthan,

the wonder horse of Old India.

My soldier ancestors who lived, 

loved and died in India, scorned 

the native horse with curved ears;

British pride chose the thoroughbred

and rode the polo pony from Europe.

Independent India cruelly consigned

the rich man’s warhorse to history,

the Marwari to the shafts of a cart.

Be glad that the saffron turban, bright

symbol today of Rajput courage is seen again, 

master and horse reunited shine

as one in civic festival, field and dance

sharing their old mystic symbiosis

whereby the protector of the equine

virtues renews those same virtues

of faithfulness and trust within himself.

But meditate today on the continuing 

fate of the luckless Marwaris who, 

through the blistering heat of summer,

still loyal, still patient in their misery, 

must haul cruel tons of wet bricks to the kiln.

Quivering limbs stumble the long miles,

eyes close against the dust and pain

and the once proud heads hang low.

Such cruelty springs from poverty,

its victims the poor sad beasts upon

whom their wretched masters depend.

Lay aside now your precious search

for eternal truths and your comfortable 

enlightenments, empty out your mind 

that you may hear the still small voice: 

‘These too are my children - love them.’

The shortest day - the longest night

Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, or, The Birthday of the Unconquered Sun    

‘Today’ said the Lord, ‘I offer you my children

a choice and I command that both 

heaven and earth shall bear witness to it.

You may freely choose the gift of Life, or you may 

choose the final sleep that comes in Death.

Life will bring you many blessings, 

but to die untimely may be a barren curse.

My children, choose life.’

A man weeps and, distraught, shouts

to the lowering slate cold sky:

‘I am become weary of this earthly life, 

of its sorrow and its deep unremitting pain,

its bleak injustice and its abject fear.

My wife is gone from me, my children lost,

my dreams vanished in the reality of a cold dawn.

I choose oblivion and Death.’

‘My nest was emptied’ softly croons a rock dove,

‘when thieving jackdaws took my nestlings,

and, like an angel banished from heaven, my mate 

plummeted to earth as lighting struck the forrest. 

But I shall live to find another mate and build

another nest, to rear another brood

and feed another lay of helpless peeping chicks.

That is why I must choose Life.’

‘Consider’ said the Lord, ‘this bright glow 

of winter aconites, more exquisite than any royal queen,

 who strive neither for wealth nor for vain glory, 

but who dying will accept the welcoming hand 

of the dark angel and give to him their seeds, 

that swelling buds may come to full term 

to make lovely the hallowed land I have given you. 

They have chosen Life renewed.’

‘I am a no-thing,’ murmurs the stream,

‘I merely move in the stony bed of His appointing.

My part is to set free my sparkling waters 

to flow for ever beneath the wide sky, 

that there may be life for small fish, a mirror 

to reflect the ravishing beauty of the kingfisher

and a safe haven for the dragonfly.

Always would I choose Life’

The man sits quiet in the silence of the cold night,

the longest and darkest of the year.

He turns his pallid face upwards to look

at the stars, a thousand gilded beacons

lit to welcome a new year, new hope, new life.

Anguish and exhaustion dropping away from eyes

once made bleak by misery, he whispers 

‘I pledge that I too will choose Life.’

Bridge in the sky

My pavement plodding feet protested

that their bones hurt; muscles seized

with the chill of the damp afternoon

cried ‘Hold, enough, now is the time

for a soft chair beside a glowing fire.’

But a rogue breeze touched my cheek

and whispered ‘Turn around, and look

at the symbol in the sky, an airy bridge

where the old double headed dragon 

who sees both before and behind, 

mediates between earth and heaven.’

I turned around towards the cold east

and saw a great arc of light, its seven 

colours springing from the headland,

spanning the bay and sinking gently

into the distant horizon’s misty edge. 

Each translucent droplet was made 

a prism by the pale sun’s emerging

rays as dark rain clouds drifted away

into the afternoon’s jealous embrace. 

Tired, foot weary and cold no longer,

I stood filled with wonder at this sign.

This was the bow Yahweh set in the 

sky to confirm his covenant with Noah 

that never again would such a flood  

threaten the world of his children; 

this was the silhouette from which 

came the myth of the Rainbow Serpent, 

creator god bringer of life and death;

these were the colours that inspired

the Rainbow Flags, symbols of hope,

of inclusion, of tolerance and reform.

But I thought on none of these things.

I heard the waves beat on the sand,

a brisk Intrada fit for welcoming a king.

Touched by the immutability of God

I felt enveloped in a new soft warmth,

which seemed to radiate from this

celestial miracle, today come glowing

into my world, and I sang a mute Jubilate.

For I saw clearly the bright ribbon of light 

in the heart of this magic arch, holding

the universe secure in an invisible web, 

and the source of my pure undiluted joy. 

December

December : Will the heart remember?

I look through the old album

and I remember the place

where I was a child, the elder

tree at the end of the soft lawn

where I lay cool and sheltered

from the summer blue-sky sun,

and watched the kaleidoscope

of changing patterns as the

shimmering leaves swayed 

gently in the far away calm

of those magical afternoons.

But what if the old brown photo

no longer stirs the memory?

What if I see only a pale web

of crumpled leaves cold against

a sky overcast by smoke black

clouds, heralding the coming 

of drenching rain which blots

out the innocent happiness

of that long carefree season?

Memory will be found wanting,

maybe the heart will remember.

From the cliff top I can gaze

far across the sweep of the bay

to where we had our happy

times in the modest chalet set

amongst the copper beaches

where squirrel and nuthatch

visited our veranda, and we

were young again in our love

for the place and the wonder 

of our shared passion and joy.

This is my raft of sweet recall.

But what if from that cliff top

I perceived only a misty veil,

curtain dark in the twilight?

What if all that happiness

were to fade into amorphous

shadows on an old stone wall?

How would my life be then, if

I should no longer remember

him, my lover and my friend?

Can the heart’s recollections

prevail against an empty brain?

I can only forget that which is

already done and departed.

Smoke beyond the horizon,

which I have not yet seen, is 

a chimaera of the imagination,

white on white, black writ on

black, blank in the dawning of

tomorrow’s forgotten dream.

Thus, while memory remains,

in hope and faith I will pray

that a heart nurtured by love

may cherish an abiding peace.

Envoi

The Days of Birth and the Days of Death

are the only days of a life which rarely pass unnoticed. 

They remain in the consciousness as milestones 

both to sorrow and to joy.

They are in each life unique Days of New Year.

This day and every day of my New Year

God grant I will remember you.

Amen   So may it be.
                                             Naomi

December

December : He could not stay to watch her

In that fine careless rapture 

of their first togetherness

and in the full flowering of love

he nurtured her, he cherished her,

by his love he reassured her

that he demanded nothing from her.

He hoped for nothing from her

except that she might love him

and rest easy in the sweet house 

of comfort that he made for her,

beside the gnarled apple tree and 

he pool, petal carpeted with white.

She sat amidst the fragrant blossom

and asked ‘What drives this love?’

‘Acceptance of how all things are,

of how you are and of what I am,

blessings bestowed on what has been,

arms wide to welcome what is to come.’

He took her to a southern land where

crimson dark roses bloomed amidst 

crystal fountains and stone laced

arches in the Sultan’s gardens,

and the dark twisted leaves 

of the myrtle gleamed in the sun. 

They sat on the top of a mountain

the world unfurled at their feet,

great trees tinged with autumn, 

the dancing stream a silver thread 

amongst the darkening bracken

and the mournful crying of sheep.

For them in their joy the ordinary

became the extraordinary,

old cobbles shone with spun gold,

rough grass a green velvet cushion,

while lowering clouds glittered, 

reflecting a thousand invisible stars.

In a balconied white walled room

in a Home overlooking the sea 

he lay on a crisp white sheet.

Time for the intertwining of fingers,

words of love lovingly unspoken,

and a gentle caress on the cheek.

He could not stay to watch her

grow old, he would not mourn

the final disintegration of the body 

and failing spirit once so full of joy. 

To do this for him was now her 

privilege, and of that she was glad.

‘I am only alive when you are here’

he said, faded eyes warm in the dusk

and the lamplight, smiling goodnight,

putting aside the fear and the pain.

The air was sweet as with lavender,

vibrant with the song of unheard birds.

She returned one frosted afternoon

to the sun filled white bright room,

come with a kiss to wake her prince, 

but as the world gratefully embraced 

the day, he had begun his long 

journey and slipped quietly away.

                                                          Naomi