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