Prayer for Indecision

By my standing still or taking a step,
Thy will be done.
And if the rightness of my decision be not clear to me,
May I nevertheless execute it with conviction,
If it be Thy will.
And if I should err,
May my confusion make it clear to me
That the decision remains always to be taken.

The Old Man and Me

He rose as I approached,
Having been seated on the velvet grey boulder,
And leant on his cane,
Which had been resting on his cold old shoulder.
Something of a smile
Was sketched upon his far-seeing eyes,
Something of a pause
Was in the green turf's unheard sighs.
Had he lost his way?
Or was it now much harder than before?
Was the sky pure blue
Calling him to tarry here no more?

Less Is More

Or...?

Common Pursuits

What's on my mind,
In the saucer beneath the dome
Where consciousness I find?

How can two people share one goal?

If they share the words, do they have common sense?
Is the pleasure felt by one, for the other just as intense?
Or is the range of outcomes by one considered right
By the other likewise painted and viewed in the same light?

Let's just suppose.

But what either really wants now
Neither even knows.

Dimly apprehended, shadow of future maybe:
The grand strategy of disordered life is based
On the gurglings of a baby!

For my Valentine

Love is the perfect poem:
Analyse it and it's marred.
Speak of it? You must begin
And be betrayed by where you start.
All emotion, being, self -
Chuckled tears in the wellspring heart;
To go beyond "I love you",
Beyond living it, is hard.
This sort-of sonnet seeks success
Starting from certainty of failure -
An apology not designed to impress,
Not adding more where more is less,
Just saying "I love you", yes:
I love you.

That was Thursday; this is Monday

The birds agree; the birds agree:
Though it be dark, the dawn they see.
One short weekend divides spring's dawns
From last week's silent winter morns.
A yet unsweet avian chorale
Hints gracelessly the time is nigh
For daily hymns to raise morale
As winter's end ends night time's sigh.
Foolish birds, as dim as night,
Know ye not that mornings bright
Herald days of thankless flight
To feed your ever hungry brood
Whose every thought is thought of food
Not once of your or my good mood.

A Change in Outlook

Waiting for the train, by darkness over-vaulted,
My lazy roving eye by two-tone dark is halted:
Behind the dark dark hills a lighter dark is showing
And last night's moon is set, not eastward gently glowing.
This is the day this is the day...
When winter morns start yawning
Soon to be abed by now
When springtime morns start dawning.

"Dawn points, and another day..."
Are the words that spring to mind
Sent to a friend, what does he say?
The morrow in the pool will find
Him raised from his slumber early
Swimming through the water swirly.
What sense in this: "Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you"?
When Google whispered, this I heard:

"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few."

So all the poem I quoted him, as the website shows it:
Sarcastic his response: did I just compose it?
My reply needs must be terse
So, quickly, I composed this verse:

"Web surfer Phlebas, Google drowned,
Yore words forgotten, newly found;
A sea-changed corpse of wrongs long gone
Trumps response to spring's thin dawn:
Hie thee to thy watery rigour,
Dive in search of youthful vigour;
Still, find it not in Neptune's arms,
But in blind Chronos' fatal harms."

("In my beginning is my end..."
The poem I sent to my friend.)