In Memory of my Dad on Fathers Day

Kick Off

September fresh we start again, 
by early autumn nipped to ruddy life.

New season’s paint has reddened smooth 
my fragrant iron resting place.

The terrace choir’s achant, 
brown baritone and tenor bright.

And holy Bruno climbs from briar censers 
as Bovril salts my tongue.

And there you stand:

Brylcream-slicked and shiny-shoed,

your china-blues ablaze,

your Woodbine-yellowed fingers
shoveled thick and calloused 
kindly holding me.

And I, 
thrilled by bigness smalling me, 
otherness calling me,

Gifted, belonging and beckoned on, 
I know from you I will not run for fancied wealth to slops

nor break my bonds for freedom-false but rest content

and dream of what will one day be.

Then, as pigeons flap from floodlight frame and, haloed, hover,  

echoes down the years:

“This is my beloved

in whom I am,

in whom I am well,

in whom I am, well, pleased.”

Shadows

Yes you are right.  I've still not been blogging much.  So in the absence of any words from me how about a few from D.H. Lawrence?  Can't claim to be big fan of Lawrence - too much self indulgent tripe - but this is a cracker.  Think I'd like it at my funeral.  Not that I'm feeling unwell or anything.

Shadows

And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

And if, as weeks go round, in the dark of the moon
my spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom
pervades my movements and my thoughts and words
then I shall know that I am walking still
with God, we are close together now the moon’s in shadow.

And if, as autumn deepens and darkens
I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms
and trouble and dissolution and distress
and then the softness of deep shadows folding,
folding around my soul and spirit, around my lips
so sweet, like a swoon, or more like the drowse of a low, sad song
singing darker than the nightingale, on, on to the solstice
and the silence of short days, the silence of the year, the shadow,
then I shall know that my life is moving still
with the dark earth, and drenched
with the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal.

And if, in the changing phases of man’s life
I fall in sickness and in misery
my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead
and strength is gone, and my life
is only the leavings of a life:

and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches
of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought forth before, new blossoms of me

then I must know that still
I am in the hands of the unknown God,
he is breaking me down to his own oblivion
to send me forth on a new morning, a new man