Almost forgot the words today
Hardly remembered what to say
Couldn’t think if I had hidden
Anything of worth away.
Words from the Jagged Edge of Truth
Almost forgot the words today
Hardly remembered what to say
Couldn’t think if I had hidden
Anything of worth away.
Sometimes the gale and the driving
rain, the crack of the thunder and
the restless rumbling of the earth,
remind us we are only guests on this
planet; guests for as long as we tend
to the well-being of the garden and
of one another.
A simple seed, a small kernel of life
lodged in the soil, in the fertile earth,
brings forth a sustaining harvest that
nurtures us against the waxing and
waning of the moon.
It is wonder that cradles
the orchard and the trees bearing
fruit of sweet and joyful taste;
how could it be that such gifts
be ours, more than we can number?
This mountain, this woman
Who sleeps below the sky,
Who lies above the river
In the dying of the sunlight.
How did I miss the word on the page?
Was it the heaviness of my eyes
Or the fury of the moment or the rage
That slumbered in the glass sky?
He turns the earth with his shovel
And then ploughs it with his hoe
He grubs a trench, centimeters deep
And plants a row of potatoes.
Here, within the glow of the flame,
there is no one a stranger, no one
without a seat at the fire, no one
who lacks a welcome extended;
here, with the beat of each heart,
we are both friend and stranger.
And the lights were turned down low
with faces in the fire light aglow,
we were one with those we didn’t know
and we learnt to sing the songs we sung,
each of us speaking in that other tongue.
Be still the river
Be still my heart
Deep in the valley
The mountains part
There in solitude
There in the place
I, unreachable,
Bow to that grace