You Heard My Cry

You heard my cry and answered me

In the dry salvages

Where dust chokes all my utterance,

When I remember all my throbbing life

Is only dust,

To dust it shall return,

You answered me.

You heard my cry and answered me

In the lonely reaches,

In the dark of desolation,

Where the owl’s cry haunts

And the bat’s flit wears grotesqueness

In the crumbling ruins of my fear

You answered me.

You heard my cry and answered me

Under the shadow of doubt

And the voices calling questions

Till I wonder if I even have a name.

Swirled in the vortex of uncertainty,

Multiform in map-lessness

You answered me.

You heard my cry and answered me

Loving the unlovely

Always and everywhere

The only song I know,

Played in ten thousand melodies

To harmonise as one

You answered me

And gave to me yourself.

This Dance

We will dance this dance together

Till our hearts beat to one time,

As we brush against each other

And our fingers intertwine;

Then the music calls us outward,

And we turn and twirl away,

Turning back towards each other

At the ending of the day.

This was never in our planning

All these steps we are compelled

Yet they come from deep within us

From our hidden selves upwelled;

There’s a song that won’t be silenced,

There’s a hush that must be heard,

There’s a power in the whisper

Of the heart-defining word.

So I bring to you this courage,

Torn and tattered though it be

All the grace that I can gather

From the ragged shreds of me.

They will weave and they will waver

For a wind is blowing through

Lending strength that feels like flying

As I stumble back to you.

For all love is nine-tenths courage

In the daring to let go

Of our fortressed self-protection,

The defences that we know:

To step out into the wildness

Of the music and the wind

And this dance the only compass

To the mercy we must find.

………………………………………………

For a Friend in Pain

Weave, mercy, weave your comfort round her frame

Soften the agony that burns like flame.

Let her be held in gentleness and peace

Until the torments of her body cease.

Unwind the ropes of pain that twist and snare

Until a gentle freedom meets her there.

Soften the harshness of mortality

Fill her with peace and gladness, whole and free.

Let her know rest, the gentle gift of grace,

Held in your arms through all that she must face.

Keep her within your mercy, safe, entire

This is my prayer for her, this my desire.

On Reading "Educated"

They have bent their world to their words,

And fear, not love, is their binding;

They have harried the might-have-beens,

Self-righteously ever fault-finding

The shadows becoming their homes,

Their cause and their folly self-blinding.

I know not the God that they serve,

Heart-bitter, and hands toil-bleeding.

They see not his light or love

Only wrath and dark prophecy heeding;

In spiralling anger and dread

They seek what they think they are needing.

The earth is the Lord’s, oh yes!

The sun and the rain are his giving.

Their righteousness cannot attain

The peace of his boundless forgiving,

Caught in self-spun webs of deceit,

They have not begun really living.

Do not wrap me

Do not wrap me in moonshine,

I prefer

The swift, sharp stillness of the stars,

Cold as diamonds,

Cutting past the fluff.

Let me taste salt on my breath,

And a true wind blowing

Steady and sure and strong

Pinning me hard,

Against the inescapable.

Denial is bondage.

Let me smile at children (yes!)

And weep at beauty.

Let me laugh with the skipping clouds.

Let me find comfort

In the small things and the ordinary

(Grace notes for my dancing.)

But do not refuse me

The sound of the trumpets’ blaring,

The crushing weight of truth,

The silence at the heart of revelation,

The place where self is seen

Unflinchingly.