In the dim beginning
we were simple: grass in the field
baking to the colour of plain biscuit,
swayed only by a wingless wind.
Water and light were undivided,
no firmament there to guide us
other than knots in a rosary.
We pressed those beads tightly,
mumbling the calculus of our virtue.
Parents who knew no worse
- or if they did, never told us -
seldom counted just how many
raindrops made a shower.
Hereafter was a given thing, unglimpsed
somewhere in mist across marshes,
or the smoke from a thurible.
You and I see clearly now: swallows perched,
still on the broken fence we share.
x. 2021
Poetry Is Not Dead - May 2023
This came from a workshop exercise. It's not at all the kind of poem I wanted to emerge with but - having made the mistake of going to Genesis for an opening line - that set the direction of nebulous navel-gazing. There's no stopping the 'once a Catholic, always' syndrome once it's let out of its box.
ReplyDeleteAh,the inevitable omega of a completed poem that starts from the beginning. Is this a warning for rookie poets, Mark?
ReplyDeleteWhatever your intention, in my book, you have a fine poem there. This non-Catholic loves it.
Thanks Richard. Rome does proclaim itself the universal church ...
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