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Steve Page Mar 2022
This morning tomorrow won't be as expected - it will be far from this tonight and nowhere near as planned.  There's no telling when it will be back to its old self.  So for now, we'll make do and sleep and dream of another yesterday, because today won't do.  It never did.  It never would.
Steve Page Mar 2022
Easter will be late this year.
It's still cold and the blossoms
shine pink,
carpet bombing indiscriminately.

Easter will be late this year.
March paces itself
striding to the end
of the tax year, the start
of price hikes and a train
of trans-continental refugees
from some god-awful war
just spitting distance from Lidl.

Easter will be late,
but Mother's Day will bring
a distraction of blue elastic bands
bound around barely blooming daffs,
happy in damp sticky hands.

And then they'll be the anticipated
crucifixion.

Resurrection
can't come soon enough.
Lent feels different this year.
Steve Page Mar 2022
When I am seen, I flinch within.
My self makes a choice
between fight or flight
and I'm no fighter
and flight is a risk
that I'm not in a fit state for taking
so I freeze in place,
hoping the sight of me
won't cause offence
or, worse still, curiosity
and, worse case, sympathy.

Just pass by me.
Nothing to see here.
Sometimes fighting or fleeing are too hard.
Steve Page Mar 2022
I realised with momentary surprise
  that my mirror was stuck back
  in 1985
back when I knew I knew how to smile
  and believed in my peculiar sense of style
back when my lower back was furthest from my thoughts
  and I thought my hair was the peak of good looks.

My now flipped face frowned at the trick of time
and at my lesser hair’s climb
  down,
bringing myself back to my present face
  and to continue with my routine head shave.
1985 seems a long time ago.
Steve Page Mar 2022
The best poems avoid eye contact.

Just before you find their rhythm,
catch their direction,
they dance away,
and you watch their beauty,
leaving

you full of wanting
wishing
you knew the steps
hoping
you might keep up
wondering
where they led
leaving
you to tap your feet,
missing
every third or fourth beat,
kidding
yourself that you too
could be sliding, shuffling
and maybe grasping the sway,

but they dance away,
and you stay,
while your eyes follow.
Caroline Bird: "Some poems won't keep eye contact."
Steve Page Mar 2022
I never chose my chromosomes
I never chose my genes
I never chose my race
I never chose my skin

I never chose my name
nor any of my family
I never chose my native tongue
nor my nationality

I never chose very much about me

But I chose the ones I love
I chose you for me
Steve Page Mar 2022
"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile"

So let's not reduce him to metaphor
Let's not make allegories of the resurrection

If he was not tortured
If he did not hang
If he did not die bloodily and tearfully
If he was not buried in darkness

If he did not physically rise,
with a 2 ton rock rolled away to reveal the truth,
with 2 full size, hard-to-miss Angels
to angel-splain what the disciples saw,

If he did not reveal himself and walk and touch
and eat and speak with them,
If he did not ascend
as they watched open mouthed
If he is not now sitting with the Father,

"we are of all people most to be pitied...
"but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.
"Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory."
Easter is coming.  1 Corinthians 15 expanded
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