To write a poem should take the entire heart
The mind and soul, our body and our dreams.
With trepidation,take a pen and start

Let preconceptions , though well meant, depart
Creative work evades such plans and schemes
To write a poem will shake the tender heart

We travel lands unknown without a chart;
With courage, trust the dark and deep unseen
For inspiration,take a pen and write

We bite the apple,bitter, hard and tart
Knowledge enters in perceptual streams
To write a poem will move each living heart

No logic,reasoning, signs, however wrought
Will bring to life the holy pattern’s themes
With each image ,still your dreaming heart

The earth ,the oceans, seas, the sacred scenes
Where humans live out daily what life means
To write our poem , we need a mystic’s heart
In solitude, we fill our pens and start

Those little words invented as we loved
Now have no other speaker but myself
Lost, unique, the husband, still beloved
The honeyed words, invented as we loved,
From my speech these words must be removed.
I can no longer use our words, our wealth.
The little words invented as we loved
Now have no other listener but myself.

Across the road I see the Tudor wall
In its cracks defiant flowers grow
The modern traffic sounds out a fierce wail
From the East a freezing wind still blows

In between the natural world and man
The space provides a habitat,retreat
Ancient yew trees grow without a plan
And in each little bird a heart still beats

Concentrating on the  ancient viewsk
Ignoring the red buses as they pass
Ignoring strident music , find the clues
Down comes peace and joy, our Holy Mass

Reversal of the figure and the ground
Brings out a new world where love is found

When love is nothing but a word,
When our deep feelings can’t be shared.
When joy and woe unwoven lie
When we can’t speak, except to sigh…..
When we are lost behind the glass,
When burdened feelings never pass,
When noone is a trusted friend
When we are scared but cannot bend.
When love embodied goes away
When we are numbed but cannot say.
When we are rigid with the strain.
When life has little but such pain
We suffer as our will has gone
And we’ve no task to lure us on.
We need to know we’re not alone
That love can penetrate a stone.
That like the Christ we rise to life
When we endure with will its strife.
When we accept that all is lost,
But wish to live despite the cost.
Then we are saved as are the flowers
Which decorate the fields and bowers
Though all shall crumble into dust,
While we’re alive we’ll slake our lust.