Cross

                         CROSS

On a night when something beautiful died,

I glanced at the large wooden cross

Above our fire

It reminded me of somewhere You'd been,

On a day when something beautiful died.

The cross was hard, awkward, unyielding

Like everything else in that moment

But I had to cling to it maybe somehow

I could be closer to You.

Your beauty had died, mine too

My grief burst

The wood melted

Warm and soft like a body

I embraced it, You embraced me

In the  sacrament of that moment

In the cross You ask us all to bear.

     

               Wilf Dec 2017

Four Short Poems

                            VESSEL

Dirty earth

Mixed with blood

Kneaded and spun, fired and dipped and fired

And then

A pot to hold the molten gold

And pour the blood

On to dirty earth

                            Wilf Dec 2017

                 ANSWERED PRAYER

I wrote you a letter.

I didn't know your name,

And I had no  words but I wrote anyway.

I didn't know where you lived  

So I slid it in a blank envelope

Which somehow found your door

I didn't think You knew I was here

Or there

    or anywhere or,..

        or any body

But in the days that followed

The answer came, right here,

To me.

                    Wilf Dec 2017

         MINUTES

You turn the minutes,

These empty minutes

Into moments,

These moments

Into a life,

A life into

Our life

And all that life has come to be

Comes to be in this moment

In You

                          Wilf Dec 2017

              PICKING GRAPES IN TIME OF WAR

It seems frivolous to be doing this now

When people are fighting and dying

In a desert war in the Midlands

But these grapes dried under the high sun

Are for the weary soldiers,

It seems frivolous to be treading grapes

In this time

When the poor are being crushed.

But the feet that tread this fruit

Are the feet that have trod the path:

And wine gladdens the heart

                Wilf Dec 2017

The Lost Son

                     THE LOST SON

It was such a joyful day when Yaron came home. He looked half dead, but that was good as I had feared he was dead. A joyful day, a great feast; but it ended in sadness that has become like a twisting knife.

                      Saddiq was such a good boy. But when Yaron came back, he changed: first he was cold and distant to his brother, then to me for welcoming him back. Now he doesn't even  speak to his mother, poor Anna she weeps herself to sleep most nights. But Saddiq is in the synagogue as always as if nothing is wrong and this year he has been to the temple in Jerusalem three times, once right in the middle of harvest. Yaron did the work of three men then. Oh my Saddiq, does he think he can talk to God even though he will not speak to us?

                 I always knew that Yaron would be back. Now he is so grateful for everything, but it is not easy for him: while he was away he fell in love with a beautiful Phoenician woman. He found out that she was a prostitute, it broke his heart. Sometimes at night I hear him praying  for Father God to take away his love for her, he misses her badly.

                        Yes I always knew he would come back, but I am not so sure about Saddiq. He is in a dark and bitter place, further away than Yaron ever was, I have never seen this, is there a way back from such a place? If there is a God in heaven there has to be. But will my Saddiq come that way?

                       I hope, I pray, but I do not know.

               

                          Wilf Sep 2017

Judas

Green                                ‘Follow Me’.

Leaf curls                           He smiles

Spring                                Spring

Wind                                  ‘Heal the sick’.

Leaf curls                           He smiles

Summer                             Summer

Brown                                30 pieces,

Leaf curls                           He smiles

Autumn                              Autumn

Ground                               A kiss,

Leaf curls                           He smiles

Winter                                Winter

Green                                             .

Leaf curls                                 .

Spring                                  .

   

                       Wilf 06/ 2017

The Last of the Great Haberdashers

THE LAST OF THE GREAT HABERDASHERS
Herbert paused by the shop door for the last time. He remembered some of the
wonderful, eccentric and heroically impossible customers he had known over the
years at "Climbury and Son Gents' Outfitters and Specialist Haberdashers". One in
particular was old Popkiss, the professor of mathematics who had been coming in for
30 years with his hopelessly incorrect measurements carefully written out to order his
suits, but Herbert Climbury was a master of his art. One glance at a person coming
through the revolving brass doors and he could tell all their measurements before
they reached the counter, the professor's suits fitted perfectly. He thought about his
dad who had taught him all he knew.
 Herbert Senior had ended up in India after World War 1 and there
he met a mysterious Englishman called Cyril who was a tailor, he gave Herbert the
idea to start the business which he did when he returned home in the Twenties.
Apparently this chap Cyril was part of a secret society, which, unlikely as it sounds,
involved tailoring and certain martial arts.' "The Guild of Master Folders and
Haberdashers", they'd never believe it these days', he mused. But this was how
Herbert junior had learned how to size up people with such uncanny accuracy.
 He locked the door for the last time, tomorrow he and Sarah would be on
their way to their cottage in Wiltshire where they would spend their retirement. Still,
he was a little sad as he walked up the High St.
 He popped into Marks and Spencer's, "just one last time", he
thought. He wandered over to the sweater displays and picking up something he
rather liked went over to the mirror and stood posing with it. He put the sweater back
neatly as only he could, and bid a cheery goodnight to the two assistants whom he
hadn't noticed before. Herbert chuckled as he walked home, "The Guild of Master
Folders, they'd never believe it these days"
 Back at Marks, Dierdre and Sharon stared at each other, their mouths still
open in amazement; they had just witnessed Herbert Climbury throw a green argyle
pattern sweater through the air, its sleeves waving wildly, then folding themselves
with the front and back into the neatest of squares as if manipulated by invisible
hands it inserted itself perfectly into the display pile. They couldn't believe it.

 WILF Jan 2017

Living Stones

LIVING STONES

How lovely stands the city,

Once so full of people full of gold

How lovely stands this city

Full of gold,

In this furnace of injustice

The gold has melted, spread thinner

Now it shines more brightly.

In injustice the inscrutable hand

Of God may or may not be found

In this intense heat and pressure,

Structures break, protections fall:

Ribs bend and crack

As hearts are pulled close.

Love lives here despite us,

Despite those who were, Them

Before we forgave them.

Love lives here

Love lives here

Love lives here

The hand of God.

                                 WILF 06/2017

Mountain Walks ( For C.V.)

                MOUNTAIN WALKS (FOR C.V.)

I think if you walked in these mountains  

Alone, believing nothing,

You would still be changed somehow

In a somewhere

Deep inside the soul

You do not believe you have.

If you walk these mountains alone

Believing that you, like them

Are  made of earth by

The Father of  souls

You would not be alone.

If you walk these mountains

With a friend, this kind of friend,

Then the snow and the sky

The rocks and the moss

All reveal the knowledge of God

In friendship’s light which is stronger

In this thin mountain air.

                                        WILF 05 2017

Me and Ms. Simone

             ME AND MS. SIMONE

Ain't got no common ground:

She understands Bach, I don't.

She's a woman, I'm not.

She plays piano, I can't.

She sings; don't ask!

She's beautiful, I'm not.

She's black, I'm not.

She's angry, I'm not,

But when she said

"What I want is to live with no fear"

Her tortured eyes told me

We're in the same place.

                                    WILF 05 2017

How Lord

      HOW LORD

How have we come to this?
Some of the best souls of my generation
Swept  off the main streets into back alleys to get lost
In the name of.....
And in the meantime our sons and daughters
Worth their weight in gold
Wander those same streets fatherless.
Yes, I know something had to be done
But how did we come to this?

As I have looked on helplessly
I sometimes think this has broken me beyond repair:
I wish there was something in me,
That could take my anger and grief
And lead them in a protest against
All
This
But I am  too docile,
Maybe it is the silence of the Lamb
Holy and meek,
Maybe it is the battered sadness of a victim
A victim of this clean up job
Which has made more victims
As it purges out the 'sinners' from the Friend of sinners' church
All in the name....Yes all in that Name

I wish I could cry like Jeremiah did
He had a tender heart.
Mine is tender too because it is bruised
Dear God heal me
Do not leave me too numb to cry
For this church I love.

                              Wilf Mar 2017

Thickening

  THICKENING

Combing the  twilight air
Then,
A thread of hair from nowhere
Somewhere in the air
Leading to a face
And a mind whispering,

This and thats of what consequence?
Then
Threads of thought lace and
The rope of  poetry
Thickens.

                      WILF Mar 2017

The First Time

             The First Time
The first time ever I felt God near
He was a ball of darkness
Darker than the blackness of my room
Impenetrable and alien
It took away my will to breathe
As I sat in my bed, terrified and thrilled

Days later He came as a gathering storm
Wanting to take my heart and blow through me

There have been so many times since
Not always the terror but
Always that familiar first time feeling,
Something virgin being experienced, and experiencing

Tonight,
Lying here alone in my bed 
Whispering, 'I love You, I Love You I.....
And joy rising up and up and up
Into the the warm night.

This is the first time again,
And the closer you come the more I wonder Who You are.
I always have the same prayer
" Hello I love You tell me Your name"
You always give the same answer.
It is always a surprise.

                            WILF FEB 2017

Moon Music

                       MOON MUSIC

Your gravity pulls our strings
Changing our tune, like the colours of the night
Not easy to see what it is we hear
It is mostly nothing but then,
Then it is disturbing;
 That shouldn't go with this which never works with that.
God who should be drawing out harmoniously well behaved music
Stooping into this dissonance ?

Stooping, when really You should be in heaven, with all those harps
Like a proper God.
But I'm glad You are not as we imagine
And though these strings ache at every pull,
There is the pattern
Of something beautiful and eternal being created.

                                     WILF Jan 2017

Winter Meditation

               WINTER MEDITATION
Winter sun is weak but does not surrender,
Throwing silver swords
Onto the frozen grass
The war goes on.

The summer sun cannot reach into here
Through the growing green.
This place was made to know the sun
In winter
Low light through bare trees
Secrets shining in and into the cold

Those bare trees
I have heard their dwellers many times
But here in the barest time of all
I can see them, lovely in their spindly homes.

The sky, when it showed was a shy blue
So assured of who it was
It did not need to look Imperial
To be the conquering canopy of all below
                                       WILF Jan 2017