Clouds on the horizon

 Morning ferry clouds 

The morning ferry’s sailing

Past my breakfast window

Sliding like a silver swan

When I look up she’s gone. 

Leaving only golden clouds 

Lit up by a rising sun

The sky’s come bright

Alight from a wintry night. 

The ferry’s headed right to left

Arriving at the Harbour

While Rosslare folk are still asleep

Early on a Monday morning. 

The numbers in the hospitals

Are rising day on day

Some won’t change the way they play

They claim it’s too confusing. 

None as deaf as those who fail

To change their selfish lives 

Because their pleasures trump all causes

Their freedoms allow no patient pauses. 

They party hard ‘cause ‘they deserve it’

No care for others or themselves

The innocent who catch the Covid

The nurses of intensive care wards. 

In deadly wars they are the traitors

Consorting with the enemy 

What about their neighbors’ freedom

From death, disease and injury?

Sunday Morning Strollers

 Sunday morning strollers

Sunday morning strollers

Walking down the beach

Reflected in the puddles left

By a tide that’s out to sea 

November’s fast declining

As we welcome Christmas in

My shadow is extending

With the yellow sun behind me. 

The cold East wind is biting

It’s time for hats and gloves

But the senses feel a stirring

It’s so good to be alive 

I reach beach-end and turn around

The low sun reflecting in the water

Warms my face and lifts my spirits

A welcome bonus at Autumn end. 

Its a late November Sunday

With Advent round the corner

Today we’ll worship walking

Along God’s lonely shoreline. 

Another, then another

 We’ll have another

We are a nation, oft a stranger 

To moderation and to restraint

We’ll give it holly, and if we’re sorry

We’ll repent tomorrow and pay our way. 

We’ll have another, then another 

What’s your hurry? We’ll leave no bottle 

Half empty for the morning. 

What’s the point in wondering?

Not for us the half pint of bitter

Or the tiny glass of table wine

No, fill that glass til overflowing

Birds don’t fly on one wing after all.

Not a race of small half measures 

Empty and full we understand 

Time in the wee hours spent sleeping

Is time wasted when a raging party 

Flows freely in the kitchen. 

Then time for songs sung with eyes half-shut. 

These winter nights will pass more swiftly

When no one’s a stranger and all are kin

In the wee hours in the kitchen. 

Regrets are passed round in a parcel 

To be opened on the morrow

But for now we’ll raise the rafters

Exiling sadness, forgetting sorrow. 

Response to Cop 26

 Hope for the best

The climate is changing

We hope for the best

Being serious people

We’ll prepare for the worst. 

We’ll pull out the stops

We’ll cut down our travel

We’ll live far more simply

Our footprint will shrivel. 

But we have to assume

Not all share our goal

Some talking the talk

But shirking the walk. 

Most people will wait

Til the water is lapping

Filling our gardens

Coming in our front doors. 

Then the slowest will move

As fast as they can

Straight out the door

From pot into the pan. 

We humans will change 

Not before options killed

What ethics fails to move

Necessity will enforce. 

I look to the future 

Without hope or despair

Interesting feelings

If afforded somewhere. 

I'll put my hand to the plough

And drive straight on

We can only mow lawns

As Voltaire once said*

*il faut cultiver notre jardin

Candide by Voltaire 1759

Precious hours

 In the precious hours 

In the precious hours 

Before the soul has left the body

After the heart stops beating

As the flesh grows colder. 

The soul looks round 

At friends and family gathered

Warmed by prayers and thoughts

Moist from tears. 

The soul is first in limbo

Caught between the worlds

Unwilling and unable 

To bid its farewell yet. 

But soon it must release its grip

Fly away as the coffin’s dropped

Taking note of plot and number 

Of the body’s deep eternal slumber. 

Then off it peels into the galaxies

As cosmic dust from where we started 

In a spiral that grows forever

Encased in memories like a lover. 

Don’t pray for me for I’ll be fine

Keep me in your heart, that’s all

Harvesting the better bits

We had some fun you may recall. 

I’ll think of you on your journey

That all men make to the stars

Do not fear the final furlong

Into the Light and blinding glory. 

Keep dear Teilhard in your pocket 

De Chardin’s vision in your shroud

His sweeping arc of goodness

Enfolding an eternal promise. 

Embracing all the universe

Covog

 Covog

The fog from Covid dulls my brain

My grey cells turn to mulch

I don’t make sense half the time

Not even to myself. 

My better half is much the same

We often lose the plot 

Our fondest hope is half plus half 

Makes one and sense wins out. 

It’s mostly so but sometimes

Half plus half makes nothing

Then back to the drawing board

To check the careful adding. 

We’ve all gone just a little mad

These eighteen months of hell

Have put us on the edge

We’re holding on until

The remedy will surely come

When normal programs play

When embraces and the feel of skin

Will save us from this plague. 

The time will come

 The time will come

The time will come when we are neither christian nor pagan

Neither believer nor unbeliever

For it will be a time of knowledge, not belief,

When distinctions fade. 

As Jesus said so wisely

There will be neither married nor single

Male or female

English or Irish. 

It will not matter in what plot we’re buried,

In simple Quaker graveyard or in polished stone,

Young or old, plain or handsome, 

Nothing to distinguish in eternity.