Call Out the Light

 

We come to sing the turning of the light

Strike the fires, make us warm

Call out the turning of the light

It all began in chilled dimmings of the light

The empty darkness for empty bellies  

The snow and deadness in the night.

We were dreary in the darkness of our doubt

We were tear-filled and fearful

Then we conjured up the light

We needed the turning of the light.

Yes, we come to sing the turning of the light

Strike the fires, make us warm

Call out the turning of the light

Come all, make noise and wake the sun

Ring bells, bang pans, crash cymbals in the night

Make the sun wake and bring us hope again

We need the turning of the light

Children grab your friend and run

And dance and play and gather round

Hug your parents, hug your friends

Make us glad to see

The sun return and mount the sky

And so to show the sun’s gift of hope

Let’s all share gifts and cheer

To see this hope and sing with lusty glee

Yes we need the turning of the light

Strike the glory fires, make us warm

Shout out the burning of the light.

Sing the turning of the light

Shout out the burning of the light.

A Memorial

 ABOUT ROGER MY SON NOW GONE

 

He came at us in surprise

we too late know this warrior, soul poet,

for poets feel and feel becomes them

and from them their people come to

see more than they expected from anyone

a warrior, yes, against all odds, seeking and

slaying all odds with a smile and a wink

 

He came to me last night in a Starshine

and this evening he came with a smallest

Rabbit stance staring into woods and gardens,

proud, twitchy mostly unseen, they said he made them

better, in the starshine and more than enough but

not me, sometimes there in stasis but never

there rightly and wrongly…yet and still he enthralled

the throng, young, old, pedants and believers, all

drawn to the serious and to the silly, still laughing

 

But where has he gone now, where the likes of him

gather, but I don’t think he’d stop there, I think gatherers more

like come to him at least as they seem to have seen it

so we feel this known Soul Poet, but what of the Warrior,

the fighter of fleeting kerfuffles but now the big one

we know he was keen to and sought at least in tone, and

sought summarily as then we thought…but no not now,

no more that chance…but still we know he would and could

his Soul Poet let us know that for all time now wrapped in virtue and love.

Easter, in the year of the plague, 2020

You don’t really need to believe anything

just look around

And see the change

And nothing promises anything.

Get away from the noise and look around

That’s all.

Rebirth, resurrection, reincarnation—call it

what you will

it’s real

in life

way beyond

what you could

ever know

so

don’t worry about it

just smell the air

hear the mating birds

get close to the flowers.

It’s all good.

Thoughts on Her Majesty “Freedom”

You believed

then

that you could go to her serenely

gleaming Majesty draped on her perch,

you could go and shout and sing

and march a throng, seek, appeal

beseech in common, sing, a march along

sense

her granulated succor, at least

you thought, the man-child you had become,

yes, that one, even then still believing.

And now you know, now, and for all she’s truly

now

a snarling, smirking Majesty, her shameful,

bronze, a hollow pose now

shambolic, and now a slothic

grubbing mocking grifter laughing

at flaccid, hoary hope, at angered

frozen bile, defiled and hammered.

You are now woefully inured

to scum, soloing your bleats into

the blue green darkness.