Candlemas and Pentecost

Lacking original inspiration, a raid on the notebooks.  A couple seemed worth picking over.  Always short of confidence about posting poems, so do it on a Friday night when not so many come. 

I am not a believer, exactly.  But certain moments, and places, carry weight.  I too rarely put a date on anything I write and put aside, but these were written on those days.  Candlemas is 2nd February, the old Imbolc, Celtic spring, Groundhog Day if you like.  Pentecost of course was just a couple of weeks ago.

I am not writing about oil spills or aid convoys.  I probably should be.

~~~

Candlemas; what the sunset said.


I cannot give you absolution, though
you'd like me to. I won't restore
the grace you've lost, or thought
you ever had to lose.

Light will still bleed
from this torn skin of cloud; molten,
the burned-down stubs, chipped and scraped
from blackened sockets, will keep
some fragrance of the honeycomb.

(And not to would be waste for sure,
another evil added to the pile
already unredeemed...)

But something's always lost.
After how many sunsets
will this old star burn down,
smoke, gutter, grow cold?

~~~

Pentecost

Pentecost, and there are flames at last
about my head. The church spire shines
fresh out of its cocooning scaffold,
and woodpeckers hammer away in the valleys.

Flames, made from blades of maize
that blaze and flicker out of earth,
and tasselled heads of barley
sheening at evening in shades
we cannot name, and crushed
out of the odour of geranium weed,
and struck by the persistent finches
tapping out the edges of their worlds.

And on the ridge road, I'm told in tongues,
to live, and that we live within each other.

And entirely alone.

~~~



Next up, probably more bugs and flowers.