Long Evensong Poems

“Small Addictions” 

bit by bit 
the hunger begins,
the time when everyone,
it would seem, is giving in
to those small addictions

inevitably they become
your sole purpose for living,
your entire self turned inside out,
those small addictions 
inevitably grow 

they...

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"Exegesis"



At 7 he was 
thrown to the wolves

Bede marked his territory
hidden secrets 
kept in the abbey

he escaped
went to war
where the unwanted trod

First regiment,
Vietnam
he took with him
like a comfort blanket
his Nicene creed and God

and on returning...

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Excitedly we travelled to the fair.
   As fragrant scents of flowers filled the air.
   Dawns gift of light showing sights enthralling.
   Dewdrops mirror, broken pearlstrings falling.
   Sunshine...

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"Supernature"

The walls have eyes here 
they are all hungry
they reach up to pluck words 
like apples to eat from sacred trees,
it feeds and fuels them 
on their irregular journeys
through their pleasing dappled gardens,
gone all dark,...

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I can't
Now that that name 
Has dominated my life,
An evensong with
Everlasting lyric
That at times when I may
Be still
I can recite through memory.
It is yet still new to me.
So many are the fresh syllables
That lay undiscovered...

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Pt I: Pilgrimage
1991

he’d pick ‘his’ path up as it fell
between the dunes toward the wood
and as the trees knew him so well
they’d all bow down right where he stood
and every day with time to pass
he’d...

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A beautiful,
radiantly pregnant,
lady liberty
swings back and forth across this Left to Right predominating stage
of ecopolitical history.

As she recesses toward Left stage climax
she recedes from LeftBrain audience's co-evolving view
for one ecstatic, yet anticlimatically ambiguous, moment
sweeping a...

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Wistful is the heart, silent the walls
    where the gambols of youth echoed.
A return tale’s sentimental journey
  inside the gates of Sweet Briar Road

Long it behoves me my thanksgiving 
 ...

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In the church are whispers high, so sweet that they defy belief
They wave their branches to the sky, bared warnings to the Autumn thief
And down below in cloistered shade, the hymns of evening bare their...

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Stone Spires

Stone cathedral spires rise
          Sharply
From freely flowing waters
 Birthing rebirth -
Lifting up unto the eternal
 A psalm
   A canticle
    ...

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The evening formed shivering sable remembrances
Of so many nights before just standing in the rain,
And moonlight flickered silently over sleeping streams
A trembling golden cavalcade with no need to explain
How even in the deepest shade a...

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Sunday after Evensong
We would go for a sherry
Now don't get me wrong
It was just a sherry, nothing more
I'd look at her face
She would look at the floor
We'd talk of the sermon
By old reverand Jones
We'd have...

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when listening to music I hear it played in colour

two arythmic arcing shapes
sway to moaning baby blues - then
burst from syncopated sleek-hipped dreams,
veiled they in smoke grey gaze
where figures drift an' dive,
mischief minds bedecked by
clock...

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“The Monk Windows, Ravens, Angels and Embryos Forming” 

Dawn arrives
in the black and white
misunderstood in the abstract
you can see the 
embryos of thought forming 
always inside us 
the children 

white angel wings 
cover sleeping pages
where...

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There is an hour 
which interferes with work - 
"our hour". 
We use it, or are used by it, 
to bound round supermarket chains 
or sandwich bars. 
See? We're bound by bars and chains. 

Workers...

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Moonlight Sonata 
 
A mockingbird sings his nocturne, 
 Silhouetted against a sky of  velvet blue, 
Welcoming on the garden path 
 The Lady Claire de Lune 
Slipping from behind tall cypress trees, 
...

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If dawn invites grace-filling abundance,
what dual horizon limits sunset?

Awake each morning
with or without alarm.
What promise waits
to unfold this liturgical dance
across our day's embracing stage?

Thought of sunset,
even this next one.
Too soon arrived?
Or will dark never arrive
to...

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In her car, the woman in deeepest melancholy sat.
Rain falling, tears falling, splat!

She thought of those many days before.
With many a handsome suitor at her door.

She closed her eyes and she warmly remembered!
Teaching bubbling children...

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Cars are the wind on the streets
semi-truck wheels shriek thunder,
rain shatters against stone and brick walls
on dusty roads, oak trees fence with twigs—
wushu wooden clatters.

Dreadful arrays of dryads
azure and amethyst gossamer haze,
sleek, silken strikes gist...

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                               Evensong of Hope 


...

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The bistred day has fallen still,
A darkened mead hangs overhead;
The hush within the evening chill
Chants now the yore is gone to bed.
A gently breeze steals from the west,
Cool along the shadowed lanes;
The sunburned broil, ...

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Silhouettes embrace dawn’s sunrise,
Kissing, gently, the heart’s soft cries,
Music sighs from its vibrant song,
Playing on hearts that can’t go wrong.

Shadows stir flames, burning insights,
Across the moody daze of nights,
Harmonizing dreams, all along,
Playing on hearts that...

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To let me rove just once again
To feel the silver sighing rain,
And let me wander one more time
To watch the heavens as they climb,
Is all that I can ask of you
For there is so much...

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"LUX VITAE LUX"



Here you stamp
your mark of 
approval or not

We meet at the point
where a Father
is the judge of what is good

and what is not.

And we try so hard
to avoid heart contact
over all the plundering...

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For my sins and everything I ever did or sought to be, 
Contempt and dying to be clever in unfathomed pools of sadness, 
I plumbed each depth and splashed the ether, oscillated shakily, 
Strapped to...

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