Every written word carries a seed
Every crafted poem, a vineyard
Every painstaking poet, secateurs
by which to dress the vine,
to balance spurs, direct buds,
remove decaying lines
and reduce undue foliage
to better nurture the fruit
to bring the harvest
to release the wine
to inspire the dark flow
onto another page

I woke early and walked
as if by advancing
with my back to the sun
I might outpace
what was to come.

As if my futures may
for a while, be kept at bay
As if I might yet sojourn this day
and elude the shadows
of what was to come

I walked until today was spent
and empty-handed,
I entered my advent

In the long years of anger, when sadness reached its zenith and the children were lost for words, I looked around me at the plants watered, at the canvases covered, at the manuscripts authored, at the relationships recovered.

I looked and saw that in our pain, we had turned to the crucial, away from the futile. We had become pupils, not of the brutal but of the true communal - our original design, created with hope and with love in mind. And so we had readied ourselves for the light,  for the Kingdom that kept to the original divine, a fresh drawn coastline with welcome in mind. A Kingdom without borders, but with beaches and harbours, a Kingdom of refuge, where noone's a foreigner. A Kingdom where each can rely on a King to rely on and his brand new earth, not pie in the sky or promises broken.

I looked, and I saw what I already knew, that we were past due for change from man's empty rhetoric, that we were all full-tired of fear-filled hate preach. I looked, and I saw the waiting King, who will speak only truth to those who are listening.

"Let me blatantly ignore the key tenets of your question and, in the interest of proper dissimulation of the facts, let me insinuate underlying assumptions and make disparaging comments which seek to undermine the credibility of the sources of the data you quote, the reliability of those distasteful first hand witnesses on the dodgy line and, lastly, the relevance of the assertions made.
"I can do this with all confidence, without a shred of competing evidence, because of my tacit refusal to see beyond my world view where I might be confronted by the truth of the devastation my government has wrought. My therapist calls this my coping mechanism, but I'm not just coping, I'm winning.
"Next question?"

I held a ball today.  It had been too long that I did such a simple thing. To hold and bounce and catch. So long, I feared it would be a challenge. But muscle memory, child memory, father-son memory, cannot be so easily shaken.
I held a ball today: a luminous thing, found in the undergrowth, and now mine. I shan't let it go so easily this time.

Between the lychgate and narthex lay
a limbo approaching communion,
where one can linger at the border, sitting in the margin
with enough of a toe hold on tentative worship,
while insulated from the assembled fervour.

And Arthur prayed alone:
conversant with his God,
but wary of the draw of the warmth within
and the risks associated with human contact.

When you stand,
stand on solid ground

When you run,
place your feet with care.

But when you dance,
step out on the sprung floor
and tread the air.