Above all guard your heart

Take care with whom you share
your thoughts and dreams
For where the heart
and mind lead
The body
often
feels an urge
To follow

Stand Off

We sit, you and I, with the silence deafening us

Thick walls built from solid justifications, shields of righteous indignation raised

Hearts ache and lips long to speak

But soft words break on barriers of impenetrable pride

Words of explanation texted

Emails full of unyielding words banged out on long suffering keyboards

Written, not spoken

To speak is to open, to invite, too vulnerable, too close

Too little time to think, to explain, to deflect

Apologies half offered, half rescinded in their qualification

The lack of understanding building impenetrable iron grills in the doorways of the fortresses of our self-belief

A desire to reach out, to put right, to understand

Swept away over and over in the raging torrent of self-justification

The silver thread of truth glinting occasionally through the seemingly unending darkness

Almost funny really in its simplicity

That two people who profess to love so much can appear to care so little

Letting go

I hold you in my hands

Like a dove longing to fly

But your wings held close to your side

I realise I can't hold on - love should let go

But how scared I am that you'll fly away

Gently, slowly, I open my hands
Releasing your wings
But you don't go

You nestle into my hands secure, knowing

that if you had to - you'd fly

In letting you go I'm pulling you closer
The freedom making it more real
Delicate, held together by strands of love
Not by the harsh fetters of insecurity

I see your eyes looking into mine
Trusting, loving
Like the sea on a calm day
Like the sky in spring
A twinkle of something to be seen
And yet not touched
A fleeting dream proved only by my memory

Your eyes search my face gently enquiring
The lightest touch of my hand in answer
To feel your arms around me again
Not to hold on but to share
A moment caught between us in the embracing of our hearts

In my quietest moments you are there
Real only to my mind - my senses numb
But when we are together
Then , my senses, wake!
Trap every moment , every smile, every silent word

1989

Hope

The fervent hope of mans most inner reaching desire

That devours the desperation of a life led in hopelessness

Optimism brims forth through the dark drapery of despair

Creating that soul searching glow as a fight against the anxieties of reality

 

The visible succour that all see:

Hope

 

Optimism for a being lost in the profundity of wretchedness

A lifeline to ecstasy - a confine

Secure from the period when all you have is nothingness

 

Until, at last, that hope is realised and hoeplessness departs

Leaving a moment, a time for solitude

For the gratification of an experience

the consequence of the sanguine expectation:

 

Hope

 

September 1981

We'll always have tea

Clear blue eyes fixed on pink unmoving lips

A heavy silence suspended in the air between

Punctuated by the gentle clink of metal on china

One mouth moves. Two eyes avert

Lips slowly parted by a tumbling torrent

Tripping over and over in unseemly haste

Fear expressed in silence and in words

Hope acknowledged, deferred, suppressed, grasped

Half thoughts. Half mooted

Half suggestions. Half swallowed

A step away, toward, together, apart
A silent dance moved by a mutual beat

A spark that ignited in an instant
An unbidden collision of time and words, hearts and souls
Smiles shared. Hearts touched

Dreams given wings to rise and fly

The flame burns, wavers, dips
Rises to shine with incandescent light
Then finally yields to the breath from the lips
That exhale with the words
Enough now