A long day,
planning, preparing,
hope and doubt
both holding forth,
warm pub, cold beer,
let it be.
Words from the Jagged Edge of Truth
A long day,
planning, preparing,
hope and doubt
both holding forth,
warm pub, cold beer,
let it be.
Who holds their hand
in anger against the child?
Who turns their small hearts
into a pool of fear?
Did they learn of this violence
asleep in the womb?
We bury ourselves
when we bury the child
and in that dark hole
there is everything to lose
and nothing to gain,
we live with consequences
we live with the pain.
Can you hear the tear fall
from the glass eye of the Madonna,
her child lost in the great sacrifice,
wrapped in our own convenient pall?
This one human
feels the warming of the sun
this one human
knows the cold sleet of battle
this one human
breathes deep of the sweetest air
this one human
takes the life of another,
denies it sun and sleet and breath.
If this life,
held in the palm of our
trembling hands,
held as the highest ideal
above all gods.
philosophies and creeds,
is not sacred
then nothing is sacred.
Let the killing begin.
In your country you kill homosexuals
Jews, Kurds, Yazidis
and other inconvenient minorities;
In NZ we kill our babies,
a simple procedure,
a matter of convenience.
How quickly the words are lost
that are not gathered to the page
when first they emerge
from the forming mist.
shades of silver
creep over these years of loss,
dark clouds of grief
disperse slowly,
a mix of shadow and light.
a lamb,
battered on a hillside,
wearied by time
and expectations unmet,
wants to believe
in approaching footsteps.