Faith-based poems

The Church Clock

Up the fractured vertebrae stairs,

The hollow tower,

And every tick and every tock

Is counting those steps and tallying the years.

The black iron cogs

In the time-worn clock,

Industrial halos for a myriad angels

Who, synchronised, dance

To the same Celestial

God-Born Beat

As that vital, skeletal, metal heart

In its venerable husk

Of stone.

The cogs, they govern

The wind-blown face

And they talk to the hands

And they bang out the bell

Over mortal concerns.

And the woman below

Hears its solid

Proclamation

While posing the blooms

For someone no longer a prisoner of Time,

Of one who did heed the Celestial chime

That calls the faithful to Heaven.

Seeds of Love

"Look," He said

As, being The Catalyst,

He pulled right out

The musty, swollen

Drawer of my Being

That I'd left neglected

For fear it should shame me -

Or jam and stick.

"Yes, look," He said,

"A packet of seeds.

Now… sow them."

And He indicated, firm,

Just once again

The creased and faded

Solitary pack

Of Sow-Me-And-Water-Me

In the guilt-laden

Deep, nagging gloom,

A forgotten corner

Which now had turned

(In my panicked mind),

To a starkly lit,

All-too-public spectacle…

But I did not reckon

On the delicate touch

Of His understanding.

"Please look," He said,

As I tended a slim

And fresh fragility,

And He watered the shoots

Of new, promised life.

Church

I sit at the kerb

With a cold flesh of stone

But, yes - a warming,

A breath within.

And my host is the village

That yet regards me

With care, with care...

And many have come

Who adorn this place

With a garment of Love

More subtle than paint

And finer than glass -

With a Love

That is myriad,

Woven all through

With the glow- warm thread

Of a beating heart.

And ever I watch

As young women text,

As a child runs past

And a man staggers by

With a yell to the world.

Come visit (crying out?

Or still in the moment

With utmost poise?

I really don't mind)

Just bring me yourself

And I'd love to break soon

(With you)

The Bread.

So, how about Sunday?

Mary

The wind blows the cloth

Against her form

And all is there,

And all apparent,

To be whispered about

Behind an aching

And tautened back.

And that swelling?

A whole, dark

Universe, world

To the unborn speck

So lacking in state

Of experience -

Yet He is the print

Of the infinite God

Who made the girl

And all around her

In the vast beyond.

The child (unformed

Yet infinitely knowing),

The world’s only answer,

In mortality confined

By a waist once slender

And easy encompassed

By a carpenter’s hands.

The Bread and the Wine

Hymn

He is the plain, the hillside,

He is the mountain on high,

He is the dawning,

He is the reason why.

He is the rolling thunder,

He is the hope on the storm,

He is the splendour,

He is the cure, the reform.

He is the sun, the harvest,

He is the summer, the rain,

He is the growing,

He is the gathering grain.

He is the wheat, the barley,

He is the grape on the vine,

He is the mannah,

He is the bread and the wine.

For the music, please click on the video below:

The Communion Table

The trees, all cut down,

Asleep in their tomb

Of a workaday yard,

Reduced to our narrow,

Rightangle Creed,

The stiff, mortal rule

Of set square and block.

Resurrected, assembled,

They could have been fashioned

A barrier, fence,

A deaf-mute post,

A marker of property

Loathing our presence...

But one has been chosen

To build that place

Where Faith is fed,

To be...

The frame of a stage

Where a prayer delivered,

(Salvation proclaimed)

May speak for us all,

And raise the the silver,

The crisp white cloth

And the fragile feast

That serves for a fare

We pray to be fit for

God.