Invitation to a Garden Wedding
What temple of praise is it that we raise?
A Sunday church of sermons and duty
for souls whose altar craze may lose its blaze?
That which is of Love could lose its beauty?
A rose is not intent upon its scent
nor night the light whose absence is essence.
But if it were true would judgment relent?
Will chastened stone exult and rain fragrance?
Our cloistered pleasance, graceful and striking
in its aisles and tended devotions
christens blossoms of earth’s fertile Firstling.
But these blossoms grown wild are bastard sons?
From what seed are we sprung? Mary’s “I do.”
Life weds grace; the Garden planted anew.
Categories:
firstling, blessing,
Form: Sonnet
I'm the light-
Their dark did ignite
For spreading her thigh, I'm the lot
Fruit of the seed got
There on tilling, a choice
For two, the force
Farming, cause of the day-
Toiling, the only way
Too early she'd set out
Too young to glove for bouts
Her prime the cost
That my peak won't be lost
Though, a cub to be bred-
Yet, I, firstling to bread
Her youthful moments I choke
From her yoke - a bloke
Still not a tear for a time lost
But, care that mine's not lost
Spent her days for mine
Thrift them, so I don't pay fine
Bore me in the womb,
Raised in her room
Paved away from the tomb
So my days would bloom
Her dreams, my reality
Her peak, my beginning
Categories:
firstling, appreciation, devotion, mother, mother
Form: Rhyme
And suddenly understand you're underwater
Flapping, snap-coral beneath someone's paradise
Bung-lusting rope towards parallax sunslick
then smacking the sole of your swollen left foot
with an empty Coke bottle, the driver's advice
While cursing the urchins in firstling jerk Tagalog.
Later your friends bring you sell-by-date strawberries
candour and candlesticks
joysticks and carrot cake.
Jim makes you laugh
till you don't.
And so soon you consider
the maximum age for dancing
half naked in half-light.
In the gaps you must wonder
whether good folk seek heaven
because it's a lie,
or deny it
because it isn't.
Back in the suburbs the sun is on holiday
Locksmiths are busy, the elderly cold
I don't mind the rain, which feels like connection
Singing Roy Orbison, so near the fold
Categories:
firstling, holiday, paradise, rain, sea,
Form: Free verse