I  and my sister were wondering who our ancestors were.Unfortunately it seems  both our grandfathers were illegitimate and we don’t know who their fathers were.And our grandmothers were born here but with Irish parents and the Records Office there had a  fire

So all I  know is two great,great uncles died in the American Civil War.If they had children we are unable to find out
Some of the family were called Joyce so we might be related to James Joyce and that  may explain my weirder writing.
My grand-dad was a coal miner for 50 years.He brought up 6 children alone.
And I have been thinking that “Mining” may be a useful metaphor for a writer.
Terms like,  “the depths of despair” might come from the feeling I have had when when I feel sad and I feel I am experiencing the world from a  darker, deeper place in my chest.And you can have joy in that deep place but I suspect I might try to avoid going there.We seem to live more on the surface now.I know I often feel I’d rather just feel ok. But in that place we may be connected to others through our  shared vulnerability.
And “seeing the light” might date back to a time when people really saw the light whereas to us it is a metaphor though some people do see the Light.I imagine it is when one is in an extreme place of suffering and no human can help.
So what does ” the hands of the living God” mean?

Turn back and live  again, he  said to me
Do not  wander in this blackness anymore
One wrong move will give death victory

We are each connected to his tree
The sunlit top, the roots hid in earth’s floor
Come,  live,  despite  your soul’s in agony

While we live, we’ll live with dignity
Not scrabbling for the gold in blood and gore
One more lie will give  death victory

The kindness of this golden light was  sure
And left an image in my soul’s deep core
Come live your life,  come live, he  spoke to  me

So do not wonder  now why you are here
We’re here to live and living shall restore
What  our suffering self has found so dear

I had never seen the Light before
Only Christ the tyger with his roar
Come back, accept, he  gently said to me
One right turn  and  here’s eternity

I told him it’d be a  crime and a sin which is an achievement of sorts  .. Satan’s, that is
The whip of the iceberg struck my face like a frozen crumpet buttered but unjammed.
If two hearts meet then run fast. if one  is yours
I was so feverish I was waiting for the dust to prattle and the skittle to boil.
When all is said in fun,where is the boundary of a heart?
Wish up an all night bar and dream of being high  in flight
He spoke a word that he left as a token..love.He wrote it in the phone directory.What does it vindicate?
He literally clawed at my lemon tart.. imagine what followed
You held onto my cart so I took you to the till and bought you for home delivery later on
He makes the sun whine when he’s down and if he’s up, he’s out with a bore
He put my heart on a pyre for his pleasure
You bored my heart so I went to the River Severn instead of meeting you
Flung over a hedge by a lover,she landed in a meadow full of flowers which made a wonderful change from his glowers
I don’t mention your cheating heart as I am unsure if you have any heart at all
Your lying heart misled me into a fair ground and I went on the ghost train.What a terror.
Please relive me,let me stay.
I feel I am gathering dross today.
Whatever we feel the world goes on,unless we are a maniac ruler

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/vindicate

When the brain is feverish and wild
Imagination’s seized  by all that’s bad
Look upon its works with temper mild

In  shared dreams by wickedness beguiled
The rulers  are dictators of the mad
When the brain is feverish and wild

As the warships  on cold seas set sail
The images of death make humans sad
Be calm and breath with care and temper mild

Provoking nightmares  in both strong and frail
The  world is lost and with it goes our God
When the world is feverish and wild

Struggling on the way with  winter gales
Burdened by long memories of blood
Should we live with temper ever mild?

Is this a dream or evil in full bud?
Are we sleeping in the   mythic wood?
When the brain is feverish and wild
Our minds run fast,   and  all sense is derailed

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/needs-poetry

“Emily Dickinson, that most exquisite poet of nineteenth century New England sensibility, once told a clergyman friend of hers that, “To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.” It should be the chief occupation of the poet always to be startled.

In fact, less than a century later, the poet Cesare Pavese, made the same point in his own Italian way. “Poetry, that is, the cosmic dignity of the particular,” he began, “is born from the moments in which we lift up our heads and discover—with stupor—life!” It is the sheer thisness of the thing—the thing that in the very brightness of its being really does exist—that the poet is moved to celebrate. His lyric excitement may erupt into language so lovely that it succeeds even in enrapturing the readers of it. A thing so full of the energy of being is certain to survive triumphant all the nothingness that surrounds and threatens it.

Chesterton, in one of his poems, repeats the phrase “vile dust,” and so rising majestically to rebuke the grim-faced preacher who spoke the words, whose denigration of our dust G.K. will not abide, imagines the planet itself in protest, summoning the dead stone that lived beneath his feet to confront and confound the naysayer:

Come down out of your dusty shrine
The living dust to see,
The flowers that at your sermon’s end
Stand blazing silently.”

https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/murray-les/poetry-and-religion-0572031

Les Murray is a relative of James Murray who began the Oxford Dictionary

Now therapy usurps the place of faith