The Church

The Church I used to know
And love
Is changing
Hardening
Ossifying
Transmogrifying
Into something I no longer recognise.
I have never seen
A portrait of a Pharisee
So not strange
I don’t immediately
Recognise
one.

Night

The night is coming
Encroaching
Insinuating itself into the corners of my garden.
Wrapping itself around my waking memories and experiences.
Cloaking them in an inky tide that raises dreams
and reflections.
It drenches the soul
like heavy hot monsoonal rain.
Will I sleep tonight?

Bookshop

Lives
and memories
and experiences
pressed and compressed
between pages;
distilled disclosures
and confessions
hidden
behind metaphors
and ciphers.

Melbourne

Grey-blue
basalt empire
of coffee and art.

Grief

He is gone
but not
the body, the voice is gone
but the presence lingers and seems larger somehow
the memories
the advice
the stories
the jokes
come to mind
like spectral visitations
uninvited dreams.
There is a dull ache
in the head and heart
an emotional virus
affects me
its symptoms are
melancholy
and tears
and regret.

Hand

I sat
looking
at my hand
when I was
ten.
“In 40 years
this hand
will be old
and wrinkled.”
I’m fifty…
This hand
Has grasped
And fed
And loved
And shaped
And blessed
And painted
And written
And betrayed
And saved
And held
And waved
And buried
And fished
And caught
And rowed
And lifted
And joined me
To a beautiful world
Of light
And joy
And suffering…

Depression

“Did you hear?
She had
a
nervous
breakdown.”
She had
A life-changing
Experience.
She had
an insight
into
human
frailty.
She had a time
of
forced
reflection
and
reassessment
of
all
of life’s
presumed
Intransigents
Immovables
Unchangeables
Immutables.
“We are our childhood.”
“We are what our families make us.”
We are
who
we want
to
become…