Thirst
Another day I awake thirsting for something I cannot define. I walk out into the first light in hope to catch sight of the elusive beauty which draws me onward.
O mystery, so ignorant am I. O light emerging from a well at the centre of the soul; grant us to be always open to inspiration from whatever source. How hard to be alert in the silence to the voice of voicelessness. .
The arc of a life – who knows where its zenith is? Intimations are all we get, unless we learn stillness … and then the richness of life unfolds before us like a landscape of lakes and mountains filling the horizon; and we realise that world lies within us.

Prayer
I wish I knew the words that have answers.
Or if I knew the answers
Maybe I could work out the questions?
It should be simple
To put the two together.
At one level we already know bits of it –
That life is a game
and the key to winning is thanks …
for when the mind is silent
Another voice is heard.

Plastic
This is the saddest thing
You’ll ever hear.
Can you bear it?
This spring the dolphins
Came into our bay
And fell sick, one by one,
Of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
That near her boat
One had lifted its head
As if begging for relief
From the long drawn out
Agony of its death.
Such was its unbearable grief
That if you shared it
You yourself would not know
How to survive.
There was no reproach,
But in its eyes was gathered
All the pain that animals have suffered
Since the dawn of time
at the hands of men.
The next morning
This dolphin, affectionate
And gentle, with a plan
To return to the wide and wild ocean,
Was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
’Cause you should know,
And never ever forget,
We all share this one and only world;
And what kills one species now
Will just as surely kill us all in time.

On Fire
At times we’re in the grip
Of events we can’t control;
Time and again swept back and forth
By tides beyond ourselves.
And then it feels as if we are drowning
In our own feelings.
So it was I reached the conclusion
That I must change.
But how to reach inside my frozen veins
Towards my motionless heart?
At first I was willing, but frightened.
What I mean is,
That I was overwhelmed by my life
And didn’t see how to do
What I had to do to get control,
Which was to go back and start again.
The anger I felt
Was like a fire raging within me.
I began to curse,
To stumble and choke.
Everything conspired
To drive me onward.
I cried out as if there was someone –
Anyone – to hear & come to my rescue;
Instead I was given
Shoes of fire, hands of flame.
Crashing against the walls
I fell throu a door,
Fire in my throat – a portal into grace
that lay forever open as I burned.

The Dance Within Time
O do you
see who we truly are?
Just dancers turning
Round and round,
Until we drop.
At night
in the dark branches:
in the morning
in the choral forests
of the world.
Well! We could float of course,
but would rather
dive into danger.
Driven and forever spinning,
we know
no peace in the body,
floating in an appetite,
of oceanic fluids;
yet anchored in one space.
Instinct,
Imagination,
with the dark gravity of time
swirling
and tangible,
Never at rest, yearning
to be part of pure light
that glows forever
where no one is.
So it enters us –
in the morning,
shining with savage comfort
like a bolt of lightning;
and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.