Humanity's Footprints

In whispers, it is said, mouths

hidden behind walled hands,

that God’s words are found in the sound

of water; water pooling, trickling,

flowing in rivers, crackling across rocks.

It is thought as well, though no one admits,

cracked lips sealed tight lest the words excite,

that the devil is found in the sound

of sand; sand blown, brushing,

driven across the land, filling the towns.

It is never mentioned, though well understood,

that when the water and sand merge - there

in the mud is the sound of humanity; humanity

sucking, gripping, pulling, leaving wordless shapes

in spaces of things forever departed.

Soldier buried beneath the red sea:

When the red sea crashed

my children of the future

became lost in the non-being of never-will-be.

Washed clean

by water held back and then released

yet I,

a soldier forced to follow or starve;

driven down the bank to follow the Israelite -

am I less than the slave,

should a god decide my fate

by changing theirs?

Or is that the essence of faith -

that fate decided

will not erase your fate

in the slate cleaned by the concealed

hand of a god playing dice in a hall

with other gods great or small -

the bones of future children (as well as the present circumstance)

the chips passed around

in this game of devil-may-care betting

between beings unseen?

Or is it that the gods are no more

than echoes of the genetic twining

wishing to forestall its own demise

by creating future strands and in this copying,

as our blood courses through artery and vein,

we hear the voice of  the true God?

Do we pretend afterlife knowing the death

we must embrace

means some of us lose the race

towards procreation and to appease as all,

lest it be us in particular that fall,

we enchant ourselves with the possibility

of reaching that lofty and eternal hall after the moment

when the red sea stops flowing and the pump falls still?

CROW

Crow takes

leaves displeasure as an aftertaste,

Crow’s wings make the sound of weeping

as he flutters into rooms

cold with waiting.

Crow carries

away hope in his beak

black and bleak as winter,

nests in hearts lost to events

understanding cannot fathom.

Crow hovers,

He is the rolling ocean, white light

captured in the edges of his feathers

as he hides the leviathan that glides

through all our nightmares.

Crow caws

as he struts across branches

sends seismic shudders into the psyche

death is a wail, is the answer

to all our woe.

A Poem for Kevin:

Magpies did not warble that day

there was no sun in the sky

that day

no animals emerging, no songs sung

not that grey day.

Trees wept leaves that day

flowers re-furled, lowered their heads and bowed

that day,

insects refused to fly.

The mantis did not prey, spiders spun no webs

not that day.

Worms did not emerge, snails stayed in their shells

and I sat and stood and sat again

hearing my wife cry

as I stared at the outside and witnessed nothing at all

that day

my mind full of  him; his laugh,

his voice, his bright, bright eyes.

That day

I tried to fathom what cannot be;

how the ocean’s depth cannot compete with despair’s ravine,

and sorrow’s heat burns the heart

all the way into winter

and words become useless,

as they did

that day

the day my friend Kevin passed away.

I will not hear his voice

nor see him smile

nor share a meal and a drink

as we set off on another adventure, or have a coffee,

‘milk on side’ and discuss

all the things right and all the things wrong

not after that day, that horrible day

that stealing, ice pick of a day, that took a life

no one could afford to lose.

Perhaps the magpies did sing,

perhaps the animals emerged and the sun did shine

but that day, and these days since

I have not seen nor heard them.

The sound of coins through the centuries:

My brothers sold me,

giving me into the hands of the flesh dealers,

the merchants of bone and blood;

sold me for a handful of gold…

my brothers, who shared my voice, my hearth, my tent—

jealousy ruled that moment as the wind whispered

in sand that cracked the lips and filled the throat,

‘your father found favor when looking in your eyes.’

A father’s love, like a technicolor coat,

can be a vicious thing; highlighting an absence

as much as it grants light to what is…

my brothers did not see me,

did not feel the bond with me, they experienced

the dreadful lack that drinks choices the way the antelope

drinks from the waterhole

leaving behind the hole in the heart

where a father’s regard should dwell.

The moment when the coins

were exchanged from opening hand

to cupped palm,

and I was handed over,

set a sound through history

repeated in the thirty pieces finding Judas

or the crowing of a cock and Peter’s future denials,

a sound that reverberate still

in man’s dealings with each other and with the planet.

Jen, who creates me:

 

Is the beginning

found in our hands or in our feet -

a fall or a climb?

The finger writing fate

or the toe dipping into the night?

Did it take seven days for light

to find its place

or perhaps time cannot be measured

until there are eyes that can see

perhaps my life

like ancient Abraham

only began

after you.

Every morning I wake

turn

and there you are fighting the daylight still

determined to remain in sleep

cocooned.

I wander out to the shower

stand beneath the fall

decide again that the light is not the sun’s shine

but our response.

Coming down

We walked that morning, you, tired, wrapped

in hospital blankets, the newborn too, out

the whishing glass doors of the hospital - you could take

no more; into the fine drizzle, falling…covering trees

like tinsel. I carried Mary, you beside me, four-year old Jack

in front, laughing, always laughing, his being open

to the world, like grass pushing towards sunlight and rain

with not a thought to the roots left behind.

On down the empty road we walked, not far,

we lived in the same street as the hospital

and wondered as we walked if anyone else ever

walked home nowadays. Holding Mary, watching Jack,

feeling you beside me, I felt like Moses descending, cradling

the tablets that set the whole of his world up before him.