Different Light

In this 21st century light
You look like anyone else
From your time and place
In the Middle East.

In the half light of my half journey
Colours begin to sleep
Something else comes to life
The lines in your face like river beds
Compassion and Grief
Carved out for us.

When darkness comes
Timeless and
Inevitable this far down the road
I know by senses I do not know
That You are there smiling
Like a young moon
The light of unquenchable kindness
In your unseen eyes
                                           Wilf Sep 2016

Moses

Meek, fearful, murderer,
Friend of God soon to die
Looking back
From his last mountain path
Back over the forty year long desert
Every bush is burning
                                                      Wilf SEP 2016

Lullaby

Jesus come to me
The shadows are long and sharp
The night is not at rest
Wars rage and rage wars
Only you who never sleep are at rest
Sweet Jesus give me sleep
                                                       Wilf Sep 2016

You Are

                                YOU ARE

                                    Closer
                                   Simpler
                                  Stranger
                                 Less Lord
                               More Friend
                            But only because
                      I didn't fully understand
                  What a Lord was, or a friend
                  But now I know a little more
.                        You are no less Lord
                            And much more
                                   A Friend
                                    Strange
                                    Simple
                                     Close
       
                                           Wilf Aug 2016

Pilgrim's Field

          Pilgrims' Field
I am walking up this hill
To a field of golden wheat
From which the sacred bread is made
That pilgrims long to eat

The morning sun is high
But this wood is dark and still
It is long, and hard, and food is scarce
But I am walking up this hill

Each time I fall or faint
There, is a healing tree
Planted by my great friend
To bring hope and strengthen me

As I rise to walk again
I am further up the road
Somehow carried by the healing
Closer now to God

It is the dream of that golden bread,
The embrace of those sacred hands
That keep my footsteps resolute
All up this dark green land

WILF 07/2016

The Place to be

                           THE PLACE TO BE
   The correct and bestest place to be
   Speaking theologicalee, and politically
   Is the high moral ground
   It's all the rage, it's all around,

   But there is a dark and dirty tree
   That shakes with an anguished plea
    "Father forgive for they do not know"  
    Welcome to the ground where the high morals grow.

                                                Wilf July 2016                        

Old Songs and Lovers

Songs of old lovers; dreams and adventures
Over and over my mind.
 Like an old piano playing
Out of tune and out of time
In a dark bar after hours.
I could be the piano or the fingers on the keys,
Either way it can be hard to stop the tune.

Sometimes in the dark hours that have no name
You are just a breath away and a spoken word would crack the intimacy
Then all I can do is whisper
Love, into Your ear, but at other times..
Old songs and  lovers barge in
Like a drunk that won't go home

I know that You were always pure
But on those cold hard mountain nights,
were you tempted
By what the girl from Magdala could have been, or John or Martha?
Was it easy to turn away from such thoughts of  tender warmth and talk to Father, the tenderest but sometimes farthest of all?
 It can be hard for us, was it hard for You?

Was it like a shepherd's flute or lyre for You?
Imaginary music trying to take you
Far from our Father.

Your past was in eternity
Mine was in a different place
You were tempted by things you never did and yet I know
You do not dispise our struggles
And when the piano plays soft and close
You are closer than the songs and the lovers.
                        Wilf Jun 2016