Your face is etched upon my heart

Your face is etched upon my heart.

I knew you in the morning light

Love is wise but never smart.

We have no need of others charts

In the mornings and the night

Your face is etched upon my heart.

As we waken sleep departs

To see your face is my delight

Love is wise and sometimes smart

Intuition, craft is art

Love is silent, hatred fights

Your face is etched upon my heart

Human Love can see in part

Face to face we’ll see aright

Love is wise love is not smart

Your face is etched upon my heart.

Love is wise but never smart

Is love blind? Who etched the lines?

Sacred, human, love is kind

I did not lift my head

Drawn towards the tunnel deep and dark

if I entered then my life was done 

My voice was mute my choices few and stark

I looked for help but no help  had then come 

Paralysed by grief and fear I stayed

The time went by and I sat still and dumb

I did not lift my head nor say a prayer.

Until I learned a golden light had  come

I was wrapped in love and comfort warm.

No words were spoken yet I seem to hear

I felt absorbed in love and held in calm.

Turn back to Life he said for I am near.

He changed my heart because it had turned black

Love had entered through  a little crack

Essex cornfields

Saturday was shopping then a walk Epping,Ongar,Finchingfield by car

Reading book reviews and chewing stalks

Buttercups and meadows,Henry Moore

Driving back from Chelmsford, cornfields flamed

Smoke and fire and earth, the sun dismayed

Farmers working hard, a harvest, grain

The sky through mist a cobalt blue displayed

Standon with its fords and wandering cows

Little rivers,Essex, flowing down

The Stort joins with the Lea,a gurglimg sound

Water for the Thames and mossy ground

The earth feels like my body sacrificed

The artist’s canvas stretched ,a matricide

Swimming in a sea of words

I’m swimming in a sea of words

Some may find this concept absurd

Is it metaphorical at best?

How is reality expressed?

The poets and the novelists must play

In the sea of words everyday.

But some of us have made our own small pools 

Where we control the words by rigid rules.

I like floating idly by

Lost in my own  sweet reverie.

Laziness is really hard to learn 

Willpower has to take its turn

I’m smiling in a sea of words

Causing consternation in the birds.

I’m floating in the warmth of Shakespeare’s spell 

Why don’t you come in with me as well?

In the end, the truth is where love lies.

With foresight, we may see  where  problems lurk
And  root them out before they start to grow
Yet often life’s mysteriously dark
And what we reap is what another sowed.

In hindsight,  this seems obvious and plain.
But some can  pick the  true out with no pain
Yet others choose  their fantasy again
They amble down a cheerful sunny lane.

Though what is real may not be what we wish
Better truth that hurts  than lies  that charm
Reality is not an easy  choice
Yet falsehood will mislead and even harm.

Insight grows with patient watching eyes
In the end, the truth is where love lies.

Cracked shall be the golden bowl

Soul making is a phrase from Keats.{ link to article by Jeffrey C. Johnson in Paris Review]

We saw Wolf Hall on TV recently and it is so wonderful.I am just writing down a few  of my thoughts not  about that but about Anne Boleyn… I meant it to be funny but I couldn’t manage that after seeing the play.

ANNE BOLEYN

Anne Boleyn withheld to win
As Henry lusted in his sin.

Once a virgin,sweet Madonna;
Henry turned in rage on her.

She bore him but one living child,
For her quips,she was reviled.

Henry knew not the fault was his
It seems the king had syphilis.

Or Anne was rhesus negative
then just her first born child would live.

We women make our worst mistake
When power for love we wrongly take

Our strength lasts but till we submit.
We need less love and far more wit.

Whatever lusty men may say,
their “love” dies when they get their way.

And they will take their wife by force
As cannons pound on oaken doors.

As for women,we must not
Promise gold we have not got.

Conception is a game of chance;
it happens more by happy chance.

we sin in pride in promising
What only God or Nature bring.

We deceive and trick and charm
At last our hearts bang in alarm

The man who begged upon his knees
Chops off our heads when we displease.

For Emperors and Kings and Lords
Wield fearful power by the sword.

Yet when for judgement they shall stand
How will point the knowing hand?

And just like us they’ll ashen be
When true majesty they see.

Into dust and crumbled ruin
they will go by their own doings.

Each day create with grace your soul.
Cracked shall be the golden bowl.

Keats wrote this extract below [read all by clicking on soul above[ and he died when aged  only 25 years:

I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

Than the song of birds,he had the words

He ‘d held me in his arms and said,
what I had never read,
That life is more than learned discourse.
So as he spoke, I watched his face
And his rich dark eyes;of course
His eyes gave out such natural force
More strong and subtle than the song of birds.
Yes,almost like a poet’s words
In how he moved me like no other man;
No matter how they think they can,
They lose the step and do not dance
And never ever chance
A leap when they might lift me high
Above their head. I’d want to fly.
Yes,the form and feeling give an extra note
To express those feelings more remote…..
We do not need to speak or write
We have both touch and our eye sight.
And yet our human discourse is a need
An anchor,lest the current’s speed
Should crash us down on Coniston,
And we’d be gone.
Just write it down
A verb ,a noun..
A string of sighs,our mouths,our eyes.
A paragraph that never dies,
within your finger tips and cries
For pen and paper and my wish to save
Some part of you,some heart some art

far beyond your grave.

Your gaze.

My days

I long to see your face just one more time.

I long to see your face just one more time.
I didn’t know that day  would be the last.
I can’t create the real by using rhyme.

You’d  smoke a cigarette  and write some lines
About the mountains that we’d  climbed or  passed
I long to see your face just one more time.

On Ingleborough  we had made designs
But heavy rain came down and we were lost
I can’t create the real by using rhyme.

We turned around as if it were a crime,
For we knew  such decisions have a cost
I long to see your face just one more time.

I teased you  on the muddy  slopes  in mime
I could not speak for I had seen  your ghost
I can’t create the real by using rhyme.

 

In Dent  or  up in Teesdale  will you come?
Or  by  scarred boats in Staithes,  eternal rest?
I long to see your face just one more time.
I can’t create the real by using rhyme.

 

 

 

A golden sheet

I saw your soul like that of a wild bird


Someone other guided me to act
Deep inside my voice had been unlocked
I sang the psalms and then a lullaby
Not aware in thought that you would die.


I fed you with a teaspoon the mashed fish
From a plate as good as one might wish
Like a little child you tried your best
You smiled at me and gazed like one who’s blessed


You sat up with a brighter face at last
Then lay back and God knows all the rest

Oh, don’t go yet ,my darling,I am here
The floor of heaven came down amidst my tears
Made of sumptuous satin, gold,revered
For a little moment it hung low
Then it rose and took you in its glow
I saw your soul like that of a wild bird
Taken by the Power who spoke the Word


A sheet of tears fell down from my closed eyes
It’s hard ,so hard when those you love must die

When that cat  caressed you  with its claw

cats and newspapers
Art by Katherine

Sitting in  a garden down in Kent
A  cat climbed on  your knee  though it was Lent
They should be “fasting”  like the Christians do
Unless that little cat was a  born a Jew

Christians do not fast in more than name
For this deception,  who can   heaven blame?
The Muslims and the Jews  fast from all food
But cats and   heathen people  eat and chew

They drink no water,eat no bread nor meat
Thus their Fasting  is  from animals complete

Their minds receive   perceptions as you saw
When that cat  caressed you  with its  claw

Take another standpoint  once a week
In the garden,  cats may bite your feet

Memories of childhood

My sister oh my sister do not die

I feel that I still need you in my world

And Rivington we saw the larks upfly

Anglezarke the reservoir still swirled

Fresh water for old Liverpool’s

supply

I cannot go to Rivington alone

Nor Scotchmans Stump to see birds little bones

Once we lit a fire by a stream.

I’d like to go there now my love my queen.

Sturdy and determined she would climb.

Take the bus to Horwich it’s nearby

We saw ripe elderberries full and fine

In the distance Winter Hill stood high

The highest hill about so high austere

I won’t take you there sweet Eileen dear

Houses built of gold and sin

Ante mortem let us trust
For in the grave we turn to dust
Yet in life the poor are cursed
Our treatment post mortem is just.

The worms and beetles care no more
For the rich than for the poor.
They are happy to devour
Bankers,despots,every hour.

Ante mortem, greed does win
Houses built of gold and sin
But God,who lives in each within,
Cares no more for gold thann tin

If post mortem we are judged
Why does the rich person grudge?
Why do we refuse to budge
Up until the final nudge?

Throw away your heavy goods
Live like daisies by the woods..
Fear not hurricane nor floods
As daises grow even in mud.

More dependent on all power
We trust in madmen’s city towers.
Yet God told us to live like flowers…
To enjoy life for an hour.

Perception is no privilege.
We each have the wits to judge.
See and note where you have smudged
What your creation would allege.

Post and ante, even now
The currents of our hearts allow…
The inner sea which has its flow
To take us where we need to go

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