My Response to the Canticle of the Creatures

The world sings your praises

Earth, rich and dark beneath our feet, speaks comfortable words of care
haw and acorn speaks of the richness of your gifts
This day of fading summer, 
Loving warming sister sun, cool breezes speaks of  your constancy in the turning of our days 
Calls of Daw and raven fall from the sky speak of life, fulfilled nests, sharp against the white cloud, speaks of life returning 
Azure sky, gilt edges of the green trees, speaks of the wonder of your vision for our lives.
Speak always to our hearts 
Speak always in praise to the creator Lord

September 17 2025

 Our world lies broken, 
hurt burns in so many hearts.
But no-one talks about healers
They only talk about the breakers, the dividers 
Men and women seek to tear apart people 
To tell lies that make a frightened young man 
into a fearful brooding menace 
The question “who is my neighbour?” 
Is answered by a scream, “it’s not the brown one”
But that’s my great neice, 
The blood in her veins has run 
in this valley for a thousand years
The question was first answered by a brown man called Jesus
He said the neighbour was the person who acted like one.
Then I have many neighbours,
Some honour the Prophet
Others honour the Son
Others honour the human 
Some are white, some are brown, 
I am neighbour to each as they are to me
It’s not one way
It’s community 
It’s communion 
We are a fellowship of humanity, of hope 
We are we
No-one is they, or the other
It’s easy to think like this,
It doesn’t hurt my head to think like this,
It doesn’t make me have to think mad thoughts 
It hurts to hate, it breaks your heart,
confuses your brain 
Take the easy way, walk the way of us 
Not the way of them
Walk with an open hand not a fist 
You can’t catch a helping hand 
With a clenched fist 
An open hand can place a poultice 
on the wounds of the broken ones 
An open hand can brush the tears away 
An open hand can reach out and rescue you
An open hand can share a pasty 
An open hand can release your fear 
We can mend the world

Autumn 2024

 Gold refined from a damp summer begins to show in the leaves

Echoing the gentle October sunshine 

Leaves fall to the still waters of the canal

Slowly drifting downstream 

A young heron sits on an old pipe in the river

Looking out here and again for a fish

The bright shining yew berry lies untouched on the dark earth

Black and yellow a male blackbird’s call a warning

Blue and purple shine of the crows wings

A buzzard dodges ravens over the wood 

The leaves hide the calling of the little birds

A wren darts into the base of a tree

The fluffy long tails dodge in and out of the fading leaves

Shimmering water in the sun are the last dances of the pond skaters

The tears of God

A holy place was built on the high hill
Here the Holy One had His presence
Here was the most sacred place on all the earth
Here the holy man was enraged by the defiled space
Here He taught about the Kingdom of God 
Here the soldiers ran and stained the stone with blood, 
Here the stones were torn down 
Here it was barren, stones over a recovering city
Here in an amazing night another prophet visted
Here it become the holy ground
Here a great dome of gold was built
Here the children of the one God began to squabble 
Here they called each other names and threw stones
He was hung from a tree, stretched in pain 
God wept

His children were scattered 
His children kept fighting 
His children fought and killed each other
His children blamed each other for their own mistakes
His children began to slaughter each other 
He was gassed and burnt- hanging in the air in a soundless scream 
God wept 

His children gathered in the holy place
Here they would find peace together 
Here they would build a new and just society
Here they created a new catastrophe
Here they created new wars 
Here they created new injustices 
Here His children found more ways to hurt each other. 
Here they learnt to make the weapons of hellfire 
Here they learnt how to hate, how to be cruel
Here they learnt to lie  
Here they bound each other into ghettos 
Here they unleashed death, killing children
He looked up into the unsmiling face of the gunman, on the missile aimed at His home
God Wept  

God weeps for his children, 
for our inability to love, 
for the way we only teach hate
for our fear
Good weeps 

Our planet burns.

 Each year there are catastrophic wildfires in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Australia, in the UK over the last few years.

We have seen cyclones and hurricanes stronger than our memories, the sea level is rising, the glaciers are shrinking.  Wildlife is moving north and south as the polar regions warm, some of the wildlife will have nowhere to go, the polar bear may disappear.

The deserts grow and the people of the Sahel lose their lands and their freedom.

 Our government and opposition suddenly, see the votes of a posh London suburb turn on anti-pollution measures because the voters don’t understand or care and instead of speaking truth, politicians trip over each other in trying to seem car friendly, suddenly allowing more fossil fuel (1) exploitation.  Instead of a struggle for truth and justice, a race instead to placate the foolish and the selfish. 

The cry of the high-minded freedom activists (the rich tories) “It interferes with freedom of motorists”.  I ask, “are they free to drive drunk, to race through the streets, to kill”, we all know the answer is no, so nor should they be free to poison the air we breathe

Those who seek to protest are going to to be criminalised because they inconvenience the comfortable, the wildfires interfered with their holiday, heaven help that they are delayed on their commute 

It’s time to call out the lies, the darkness, let us speak truth to each other, let us hold each other in our prayers, lets us become a people again.   We are fragmented communities without connection, without trust in each other, the first action of authorities is to deny instead of speaking truth, to apologise for mistakes.  So let us together make a pact to speak truth, to pray for each other, to smile at each other, to be kind to one another, maybe then people will begin to trust other 

(1) Infosys, owned by the Prime Minister’s father in law signed a billion  dollar deal with  BP  two months before Sunak opened  hundreds  of  new  licenses for gas and Oil extraction from the north sea  ( London economic  )  Infosys  list Shell amongst their  clients  ,  incidentally  the Shell  CEO  joined  Sunak’s new “business  council” two weeks ago 

Rain

The earth exhales, 
we breathe in the rich intoxication 
of its wonder
rain is falling onto parched ground
days of battle, seeking shade 
are ended, the earth opens its old hands 
in joy  
as it drinks its fill.
The warm rain that fills the plants with hope
their buds open,  
the bees swarm to fresh nectar  
on this the longest day,
rain sets the world free
to grow, to bloom 
to set seed 
to hatch
to fledge
to emerge into a new world 

Elegy for the frightened

The time is now 
The place is where you are
The hope is real, it’s for all of us
The love is strong, stronger than we can ever know
The passion is true, clear and meant

Awaken the sleeping joy, hidden no more  
awake my heart to love 
awake my sleeping soul
The sun is high in the sky, the light is strong 
The earth is green, the flowers burst 

Reach out and welcome 
Your family 
Your friends 
Your broken neighbours
The lost and the alone

Don’t be afraid, you are strong
Don’t run away, you know how 
Don’t lock the doors, what are you keeping hidden
Don’t hide from love, you know you can’t
Don’t be beaten by fear, what do you desire?

Awake 
Stop sleeping 
see the light of your eyes
feel the warmth of your love
reach out in waves 
 
Set the bar high
And be proud to try
Don’t cry if you fall
Stand up, be loved  
Never give in 

Let fear fall from you, as a winter cloak 
Let your heart be strong
Raise your head and look the world in the eye 
How can you be afraid now 
He has risen from death      

Awake

 

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.   It is sometimes thought it could never happen again, it was  the act  of a few hardline dedicated madmen.  Sadly it was not, when the SS  followed  the Army in the conquest of Latvia, Estonia, Belarus and  Lithuania,  in  over a few months well over 250,000 jews were  dead.  This was not done by a few dedicated SS brutes but by many local groups who enthusiastically followed the SS lead.   This is still to be acknowledged by those countries. To acknowledge the evil that was done is the beginning stopping it happening again. 

It is also important to see the steps that lead to Holocaust and to be able to recognise them in the world today. Modi in India  is slowly but surely demonising the Indian muslims.  Israel becoming even more extreme in the treatment of its Arab population.  The UK in the appalling treatment of the Windrush generation and its demonising of asylum seekers.

All it needs is the silence of good people to allow the little things to pass and the bigger things become easier and soon you are looking into the abyss of the war in Ukraine.  Here like the rise of the Nazi state, little truths and big lies are slowly mixed into false narratives of how we stand strong against the evils of degenerate values. 

The shared values between Hitlers Germany and Putin’s Russia (and Trump’s America) include anti-gay, anti-semitic, anti-liberal values with a return to a mythic homeland and nosensical Christian Nationalist narrative  - A holy Germany , holy mother Russia, MAGA   Then suddenly it seems easy in the deluded  mind to do the unthinkable,   to invade Ukraine,  to kill millions  of people because they were  Roma, gay, disabled,  Jewish,  to  seek to to over throw democracy in the name of democracy   

The only defence aginst  this darkness, is to keep loving, to keep caring,  to hurt  and accept vulnerability.  Do not to keep silent, when you attract rage against “being woke”, be happy, you are hurting them.  Woke is aterm we must welcome, how can it be wrong to be awake.  How can it be right to sleepwalk into the many hells we humans have built in our past?

A Silent Day

As that great solemn procession 
Passed between the mourning crowds
I saw the birds fly over silent streets
Collecting the autumns bounty

Perhaps they were pleased at the lack of traffic,
They were undisturbed by that beat of drum 
Metronomic at 75 times a minute.
Undeterred by the field guns bursts

The colour of the slowly moving people
Must catch their eye, but none spotted the spider
On the wreath of flowers. 
No magpie looked at the shiny diamonds

So many different processions
The last is down a country lane 
No crowds, just the birds, the grass,
And still same drum, the same beat 

And past fallen flowers, smiling dogs and silent pony 
The final destination is reached
A chapel as great as any cathedral
There is the last resting place 

Now in the quiet, away from eyes of bird
Away from worlds eyes, a mother, grandmother
A father, grandfather, both laid in earth
Rest they in Peace and Rise in Glory, our brother and sister  

Sirfon 22

The tree is broken,

lichen, green, grey and gold

Cover the barkless branches

There are leaves, 

here and there working hard for life

The black horseshoe on the stem, 

Mark of where the leaf failed

An ash, stunted by the sea winds

Broken now by a strange illness, 

It’s future is shown by the pale grey, 

lifeless skeleton lower down the hedgerow

But growing in and around these 

Dead and dying is life, an elder seeking

protection from the salt breezes 

Lichen, rich and coloured

The warblers rest here,

the swallows seek food alongside

The robin chicks search out the insects.

A hare rich in colour and glory runs past

There is never an end in life, 

a pause, a breath, an eternal promise 

Summer lady

 
Day by day, I sat here
I watched the world go by 
The birds on the window feeder
Queuing up on the telephone line
but beyond there my eye had not gone
till this moment on this blue sky day
 
Suddenly the world has changed colour,
The birch white trunk rises through a froth of leaves
The dun coloured fields are verdant
The dead trees are alive, dark stems hold leaf
Fresh green of baby leaves, blue green of faded daffodils,
rich green leaves sprouting deepest bluebells
 
Even the dark greens of the Holly
suddenly have pale soft leaves of that fresh green
The blue of the sky is now the summer blue burnished bright
Not the pale lambent dreamy blue of winter
Under the greening canopy, ransoms white and bitter sharp stars
Gleam and the air is rich with garlic
 
Senses become alive, as do the mornings, no longer silent
But full of joyous soft songs of dove, blackbird, thrush,
Robin, willow warbler, blue tit, wren and dunnock
The earth itself breathes out its first breaths
Rich brown aroma of promise, the rose rises to answer
Seeds break the surface - yet another green
 
Will these little threads of palest green,
really become the grey green of lavender.
The dark green rosemary holds up its blue flower  
The thin green chives lift balloons from the dark earth
Shrouded Purple stars to follow the wild white stars
The Summer lady is dancing today

where

Enter into the Holy  place 

Enter into the  divine  grace

Shall we  marvel at the  finery  

The Glory and  splendour

The majesty and opulence,  

Shall  royal music  fill our  ears ?

Or  shall we  bow our  head in wonder 

at the simplicity of the stable,

shall we walk in amazement 

as he walks  on the  road with us?

Shall we cry  at the  spectacle of the

Dead man on a  cross, repeated again and again?

Every place is  holy,  the veil is torn away so

enter the holy place,  enter into his  love 

and receive the divine grace

in whatever place you  sit.

Mountain, valley, river or desert  

Wherever you walk, he walks with you

11th October 2021

 Now  the shadows of the year

Grow longer, now the colours 

Of the year turn away from the green

Streaming into gold and red and  yellow and orange

Fire colours in the cold air of autumn

Now the little groups of birds hunt for

The winter food  stores 

The wind blows cold through the open window  

White clouds drift across the pale blue sky  

A clear sun lights the hills,  it’s heat a shadow  

It’s fire is lost, lost into the crisp dying leaves 

Of the golden trees.

Soon we will see  the filigree of winter,

Instead of this faded memory of High 

Summer days, high  unending skies, gulls  calling  across

The bay.  Light deep into night,  stars like diamonds

In velvet.

Memory is not the same, I shiver in the wintered wind. 

Will these  northern winds  bring the wild swans? 

Will geese  from Svalbard feed  on these  fading  fields ?

All those  pumpkins won’t frighten the winter sprites

As they take the colours away from the land,  

Leaving  here and there flashes of red on the rowans 

To show the birds where there is food,

The holly dark green sharp leaves keep birds and sprites  

at bay,  hiding their red drops till the feasting times of the Nativity 

and the turning of the year  

Quiet

Stillness,  the quiet of day,  sun  on the dunes

The gentle ripples of the clear waters 

As they seek the sea, turning this way and that 

The sky is alive  with music,  there a tiny bird

Fills the blue vault of heaven with song  

The maytree heavy with rich scented blossom 

Casts a dappled  shade

A buzzing  drone  to the skylark  provided  by bees  

Bees  of every shape and  size amongst its creamy blossom,

A mew of the buzzard adds a wild note 

Bass comes from the great black ravens

As they dance in the sky room 

A silence  of singing birds,

A silence of the lifegiving river

A silence  of  bees

A silence  of Life

Where is summer ?

 Winter seems still to grip  me and the land

Despite  blue  skies and  scudding  clouds 

The bright sun seems  cold  somehow

The daffodils  are still flowering and

 the Bluebells and the May Tree too

Tulips finally break cover – a hint of blue  on the hyacinth

each day brings a tiny change

I am weary of this long winter, my bones ache and crack

As  they were frosted twigs

The May Tree blooms  regardless of the cold,

Like the  birds who take the nesting cue from  the lengthening day

But winter clings on, despite  the greening of the valley 

Cold north winds  push the swallows  away from their summer barns

Pentecost passes and the fire is cold and distant       

Homeland

 Dreams  of  winds  on the dunes  

Marram grass whispering 

Ravens  dancing  on the Air 

An amphitheatre of sand and grass  

The river running down to the sea,   

the  mountains over the water 

Stillness  seizes  my soul

Quietness touches my mind 

A holy land,  

A Hajj denied us

Now the summer warmth is in the sun

Nights  draw  out  

Will our pilgrim feet  

Be set free?  will I walk again

On that precious  land?

Will healing return?            

Kaya

High  above the  valley the old causeway 

Runs  across  the northern hills from east west

A stony lane leads  off to the  farm below

In the old wall a gap stile lets me squeeze into the wood

Now in days of the old winter, its dark beneath the evergreen, 

she runs ahead,  white and  brown under the  trees

dancing on the pine needles that carpet the ground.

One leap takes her to  the bank of the fast clean running beck

A water in the tongue of the peoples here.

She  laps the cool water, leaps  back and  off again

flag waving tail , shining in the gloom, a whistle

and she turns  and hurtles toward us laughing,  

plants a muddy paw on my clean jeans and  off

weaving through the dark conifers, following her nose

excitement, in every  glance , every smiling look back at us

One last run to Redmires Water before it falls

into the ravine too steep even for her.

 

The wood ends and the open moor field opens in front of us,

scattered with great slabs of millstone grit, dry but cold

I perch for a while on the broad surface of the rock

And she  flies down the field,  no  farm animals  here today, 

a narrow path leads down the field,  but not for her

The tussocks of moor grass are full of precious scents

here one - there another, soon she is  almost out of sight,

but ever and again  there she is,  the shining white and brown

winking in and out of the grassy mounds. 

I call,  and suddenly  the sense  of  speed and dog

coalesce in the streaking  joyous animal  running to me.

Praised, rewarded she dances  up and around me as we return to the wood

Retracing our path,  thirsty, as soon as she can

she  drinks deeply from the cold running water,  jump ups the other bank,

has a quick nose  before leaping the whole width of the brook,

landing on the soft carpet next to me.

 

Two years she has been on this earth and all is well,   she doesn’t worry

unless we  are five mins late with her tea,

unless we are upstairs, because then she greets us as if we have been to Ulan Bator

unless we  have forgotten it is time for her treat and then the sadness of God is in her eyes as she  lies her head in front  of me.  She is lying on the sofa, warm against my leg,  head on my knee, her deep brown eyes  looking  across the room, gently closing.

Gently sleeping  till another of her favourite people comes in, all is joy and greeting again

turn

 The year is turning, the earth blood is beating

Through the white hills,even while water is ice

Drops of waxy snow, growing from the green

Floating over the snow covered ground 

Spikes of winter green crack the frozen soil

A blue of heaven’s making covers the sky 

The birds scurry here and there, looking 

For nests and food.  The blood is flowing 

Light lasts longer, the sun warms the forgotten 

Corners, suddenly there are insects flying 

Black against the snow, seeking the green sourced snow drop

The robin dives in.

The winter of our earth is ending, blood runs

In her veins again.  The winter of our world still holds us 

But hope is still growing, not the shining perfection 

Of our dreams but a new world begins to emerge

Lockdown3

 It is foolish to sit here and say I am unaffected by the lockdown.   I have worked at home since March 23rd 2020,  I have gone in to a place of work perhaps 7 times since.   Fiona works in a school and has been busy apart from the summer term 2020.  We have continued to get paid.  We managed two weeks of hols last summer, ok we lost a cottage this coming Feb but we have got all our money back.   We have a had a full house with two of our three children staying with us and we have a loving busy and active Springer.   We have good broadband so it’s easy to talk with family and friends.  We can buy in a takeaway each week, we are all good cooks.   We are too all intents safe and secure.  We are not folk for going out and partying, but actually managed to get out for a meal for our anniversary.   We are safe, our eldest who lives away and his partner tested positive for the virus but were completely unaffected.    

Why then should we feel stressed - but why wouldn’t we be.  Our world is in the grip of a terrible pandemic and it seems that we are merely pawns of a government who want to make political points and so few true comprehensive statements alas!

It appears that the virus crossed from a bat species via an unknown (possibly pangolin) intermediate host species in a “wet” market in Wuhan China.  The pangolin, if it was the intermediate host,  should not have been there as it is both pa protected species and wrongly believed to have health benefits  (pangolin scales and rhino horn both made out of the same thing as our fingernails are oddly believed to possess mystic healing properties).  However now, the authorities there,  are trying to deny this to their population. The ex-president of the USA kept calling it the Chinese disease so is it a surprise they push back at this foolishness and truth lies bleeding in the crossfire along with the hope we can stop this again.

Other fantasists like the pangolin eaters, think it is caused by radio masts for 5g phones, others believe the vaccine is full of nanobots.   Governments are so distrusted that no-one follows the rules – except in a few places of either extreme despotism, or rarer still, good trusted governments.

So we see a world slowly fragmenting into distrust and sadness and we can’t hug our loved ones, the next generation who give us hope, the previous generations who remind us of the hygge of Home.   Instead we all have to stand alone, tired and sad, finding some joy where we can, each person or family on their own sandcastle.   Waiting for the isolation to end.  So we all suffer, we  all ache in this time.  

Winter

 Grey clouds touch the earth, mist and damp 

The planet seems to be weeping.

In this time in the pandemic,  

the time when we have a vaccine, 

why is the earth weeping?

She weeps for those who have died

And for those who are yet to die.

Tears for those who death was too soon.

How many have passed into the night

Because of our desire for pleasure,  

our false economic equality of a human soul 

and a business selling beer and fags.

Broken hearts join their tears to the skies.

Broken plans litter the years past 

and the time till the spring.

Those who died without the virus 

Passed from our lives all to quietly

We lost our chance to say goodbye

The darkness of winter is on our hearts,  

we lost our Easter, our Eid, our Diwali.

The earth keeps moving – keeps on turning

The endless dance of gravity brings it  al 

 round and round again and again 

The earth is turning 

The snow has melted away and left the drops of white behind

Spikes of green break the frozen the earth

Soon the celandine will capture the sun on the woodland floor

Easter will come again.

And we will walk in the greening woods, our hearts will find healing

And maybe our feet will join the dance of life anew.