Tag Archives: poems

Unpredictable – a poem revisited.⤴

from @ blethers

I've finally got round to some revising - a poem I wrote in Vietnam, in the heat and humidity of our first days there, before I'd settled into accepting it all. I was put off by the comments of someone I'd considered a sympathetic critic - made the mistake of letting him see the raw first draft. However, re-reading it and changing the structure more than the content, I find it recreates the moment, the strangeness, the otherness. So here it is, more than I year after I first wrote it.

Unpredictable

The lawns of rice deceive the eye
until one sees unwillingly
the ditches and the depth
and something strange and out of place
like graves or shrines in centre-field
and recognises foreign-ness
as tangled in this alien world
as mats of green inexorably
drifting on the muddy tide, which
people eat, like snakes in wine
and scorpions, and spiders piled
in glistening heaps to tempt the eye.
And flowing round the air’s embrace
is heavy with the drifting smoke
of stubble burning in the fields
beyond the river’s parapet where
sunset comes before its hour.
A song comes from a hidden bank
and cattle, golden in the light
descend to drink and all is strange
and lushly vibrant in the dusk.

C.M.M. Vietnam 03/15

Unpredictable – a poem revisited.⤴

from @ blethers

I've finally got round to some revising - a poem I wrote in Vietnam, in the heat and humidity of our first days there, before I'd settled into accepting it all. I was put off by the comments of someone I'd considered a sympathetic critic - made the mistake of letting him see the raw first draft. However, re-reading it and changing the structure more than the content, I find it recreates the moment, the strangeness, the otherness. So here it is, more than I year after I first wrote it.

Unpredictable

The lawns of rice deceive the eye
until one sees unwillingly
the ditches and the depth
and something strange and out of place
like graves or shrines in centre-field
and recognises foreign-ness
as tangled in this alien world
as mats of green inexorably
drifting on the muddy tide, which
people eat, like snakes in wine
and scorpions, and spiders piled
in glistening heaps to tempt the eye.
And flowing round the air’s embrace
is heavy with the drifting smoke
of stubble burning in the fields
beyond the river’s parapet where
sunset comes before its hour.
A song comes from a hidden bank
and cattle, golden in the light
descend to drink and all is strange
and lushly vibrant in the dusk.

C.M.M. Vietnam 03/15

The meeting⤴

from @ blethers


THE MEETING

This the night when under the dark dome
the hard stars shine and that one
shines brighter than them all, the night
when power and pomp and wisdom and wealth
come seeking a king and find instead
love in ordinary, human love, vulnerable
to all that wounds beneath the sky -
This is that night. It comes again.

For earthly power was melted then
in tears of joy, of journey done,
of understanding what lay there
in poverty of place and rank
and all they knew, these visitors,
collapsed in shards of sudden loss
and left them free to live again -
This is that night.

©C.M.M. 6/01/16

The meeting⤴

from @ blethers


THE MEETING

This the night when under the dark dome
the hard stars shine and that one
shines brighter than them all, the night
when power and pomp and wisdom and wealth
come seeking a king and find instead
love in ordinary, human love, vulnerable
to all that wounds beneath the sky -
This is that night. It comes again.

For earthly power was melted then
in tears of joy, of journey done,
of understanding what lay there
in poverty of place and rank
and all they knew, these visitors,
collapsed in shards of sudden loss
and left them free to live again -
This is that night.

©C.M.M. 6/01/16

The meeting⤴

from @ blethers


THE MEETING

This the night when under the dark dome
the hard stars shine and that one
shines brighter than them all, the night
when power and pomp and wisdom and wealth
come seeking a king and find instead
love in ordinary, human love, vulnerable
to all that wounds beneath the sky -
This is that night. It comes again.

For earthly power was melted then
in tears of joy, of journey done,
of understanding what lay there
in poverty of place and rank
and all they knew, these visitors,
collapsed in shards of sudden loss
and left them free to live again -
This is that night.

©C.M.M. 6/01/16

Remembering on All Souls⤴

from @ blethers

Holy Trinity Dunoon: All Souls

This evening we remembered. We lit candles in front of the altar for family and friends lost. We considered our mortality, and our human response to it. We were reminded how faith and raw emotion can make difficult bedfellows. And I remembered a poem I wrote over a decade ago.

Communicating

Today I would have phoned -
wished to share the small
details of my life, the
safe return, the laughing
at the rain which fell
as if the Flood would come.
But had I rung the number
as familiar as my name
you would not be there.
A stranger’s voice would say
your words, and the strangeness
would be too much to bear.
And contemplating this
a glacial shifting in my soul
gave promise that in weeks not lived
the frozen tears would find the way
and spill into a distant sea like
drops into the ocean of my love.

C.M.M. 4/05

Remembering on All Souls⤴

from @ blethers

Holy Trinity Dunoon: All Souls

This evening we remembered. We lit candles in front of the altar for family and friends lost. We considered our mortality, and our human response to it. We were reminded how faith and raw emotion can make difficult bedfellows. And I remembered a poem I wrote over a decade ago.

Communicating

Today I would have phoned -
wished to share the small
details of my life, the
safe return, the laughing
at the rain which fell
as if the Flood would come.
But had I rung the number
as familiar as my name
you would not be there.
A stranger’s voice would say
your words, and the strangeness
would be too much to bear.
And contemplating this
a glacial shifting in my soul
gave promise that in weeks not lived
the frozen tears would find the way
and spill into a distant sea like
drops into the ocean of my love.

C.M.M. 4/05

Remembering on All Souls⤴

from @ blethers

Holy Trinity Dunoon: All Souls

This evening we remembered. We lit candles in front of the altar for family and friends lost. We considered our mortality, and our human response to it. We were reminded how faith and raw emotion can make difficult bedfellows. And I remembered a poem I wrote over a decade ago.

Communicating

Today I would have phoned -
wished to share the small
details of my life, the
safe return, the laughing
at the rain which fell
as if the Flood would come.
But had I rung the number
as familiar as my name
you would not be there.
A stranger’s voice would say
your words, and the strangeness
would be too much to bear.
And contemplating this
a glacial shifting in my soul
gave promise that in weeks not lived
the frozen tears would find the way
and spill into a distant sea like
drops into the ocean of my love.

C.M.M. 4/05

Washed up – a poem for today⤴

from @ blethers

Washed up

The children on the beach
have no cares.
Their garments lap upon the waves
that brought them here.
They are not playing -
they are dead.
Hair like seaweed in the foam,
their small bodies come to
rest where other children play.
So small, so dead. The hot tears
flow but cannot warm
those tiny souls that drift
and sigh into my heart as I
turn away, their image
floating useless in my mind.

©C.M.M. 09/15


When people take their children into leaking rubber dinghies in the dark to cross rough seas, knowing how many die every night, there is nothing “bogus” about their desperation. - Polly Toynbee, writing in the guardian, 3 September 2015

Washed up – a poem for today⤴

from @ blethers

Washed up

The children on the beach
have no cares.
Their garments lap upon the waves
that brought them here.
They are not playing -
they are dead.
Hair like seaweed in the foam,
their small bodies come to
rest where other children play.
So small, so dead. The hot tears
flow but cannot warm
those tiny souls that drift
and sigh into my heart as I
turn away, their image
floating useless in my mind.

©C.M.M. 09/15


When people take their children into leaking rubber dinghies in the dark to cross rough seas, knowing how many die every night, there is nothing “bogus” about their desperation. - Polly Toynbee, writing in the guardian, 3 September 2015