Old Poems

Just a few of my old poems here, written over 40 years ago.

The first reveals why I never made much upward progress in my office working life. Instead of getting on with my work I would be idling, looking around......

often as I look around me
at odd times of the day
I see people as they might have been
if love had found a way
a hope a chance a maybe
will flicker for a while
a face more used to sorrow
will break into a smile
then the past will catch the present
and a shadow fall once more
to leave the heart so lightly touched
as lonely as before


The second concerns our reaction to the death of those we love. I've sometimes been shocked by what could be called "testimonies of faith" by those touched by the death of a loved one. Once I worked in an office where we had an ardent Christian fundamentalist. Hard core. In fact a kind man with an open genuine smile - demonstrating at least to me what I still see to be true....that often a deeper mind/heart can unfold, a deeper intimacy with Reality, more in spite of our beliefs rather than because of them. Anyway, this guy told us that his mother was seriously ill. We would get an update now and again. One morning he came in and one guy asked him if there was any news of his mother, was she well. "Yes she has never been better" he said (and, yes, I knew what was coming) "She is with Jesus in heaven." Stoic, not a blink. To him, a demonstration of "faith". Whatever he thought it was, the man who had asked him how his mother was was not impressed.

Faith and belief. Opposites. At least as I see it and experience it.

Another "testimony" I remember, of a 12 year old girl of a deeply Christian family who lost her brother. She said she had never shed a tear, that he was in heaven.

Strangely enough, Martin Luther seemed to approach the "middle way" of the Dharma. When he lost his young daughter he said:- "How strange. To know that she is safe with Jesus in heaven yet to feel such sadness."

To me this relates to the story (told somewhere else here) of the zen master who was seen by a novice sitting beside those who had lost a family member, weeping with them. "You of all people" the novice said, "I would have thought would be beyond all this." The master said, between his sobs, "It is this that puts me beyond it."

You see it, know it, or you don't. Finding our true humanity is not, in effect, to deny it; it will never be to betray this world, the only one we have known, for some imagined "other". If you lose those you love, you grieve and weep, not reach for some "belief". The healing, the true grace, is in the tears.

"Jesus wept"

Here is the poem......

Death dissolves with distance
And the questions asked
More academic at the rim
Than at the centres blast

Affect and affectation
Ours until is heard
The answer told by death itself
When our heart breaks in turn.

Well, I will pack up now. Just a last little ode, of how we can often think ourselves inadequate in terms of expressing love, of building deep relationships. Yet back in my own life I have had moments when a simple unexpected smile from someone has lifted my heart. Reality can be so simple at times, full of surprises.

Love is where you give the most
No inner warmth or starry host
Eternal, waiting to be caught
Waiting for the words "I ought".

All our lives spent searching for
A roaring wind, a Holy Law,
When our love, all the while,
Was in a word or in a smile.

May true Dharma continue.

No blame. Be kind. Love everything.