Do you see how mountains erupt out of oceans. Do you see how tears can make a flood, but from the depths we still emerge. Do you see how seasons fill their purpose, though we might prefer the sun benign. Do you see how everything is clearer, and cleaner for the rain. Do you see … More A Poem: Alchemist

I have a gift for you, which like all gifts held in the width of two hands, is greater than the sum of its weight. I have a gift that I give without words, written or spoken. Sometimes words do not bear the hearing, or adequately carry themselves clothed. Instead, my gift is open, like … More A Poem: Rain from Heaven

We do not get over anything, move on, let go. We absorb things, like the earth does the rain and snow. Do we believe when spring thaws come that the earth has forsaken winter. Or was winter rather the preparation for summer’s flush, the blooming, which takes the rain to cause new growth. No, letting … More A Poem: Healing

I take my garden seat, and it’s as though the conductor opens the score just for me. Or perhaps, it’s that I’ve just broached the moment unawares, and the bees and the tui’s, the passing gull against the blue, see me but as colour in a collage, or a pattern in a landscape, or the … More A Poem: Musings

When you can say I do not know why, this joy? Your happiness will take wings, and climb and climb, not dependent on restraint. To where the dancing clouds catch the first beams of light. Joy has as little need to comprehend a why, as we do to know the reasons for being. The naysayers, … More A Poem: This

The sky is but a blanket to cover us in this garden of the world in which we play. I can hear your laughter ringing out, like youthful memories of summer evenings at the edge of dusk, when the first stars emerged and voices would be carried for miles. Yes, the sky is but a … More A Poem: Blanketed

My morning prayer rises with the light. Swells like the billowing bud, or the ocean’s wave against a shore. Crests like the sun edging over the hill, catching alight each bark and leaf turned to its glow. My morning prayer escapes as breath, meeting the cool dawn air, or as birds suspended, in the pleasure … More A Poem: Signals

What do I pray for? I can’t pray for peace, not while the wind blows through the branches. But right now, the bird, whom I’m sketching with words, sits on the tremulous limb chest puffed out to the sun. I see the ways its wings and feet work, to keep it attached to a dancing … More A Poem: Bird on a Branch

Forget the mask. Forget the forehead set. Forget the stiff upper lip. Let yourself tremble, shake like the windblown leaf, speak your truth. Though it might be to admit failure, fear or pain. Life has its vicissitudes and we can sometimes start to roll like a stone gathering speed, or may feel the pounding of … More A Poem: The Holy Broken

Everything is made from ashes. Just as the skin sheds continuously, or trees divest themselves of leaves, or the shells are broken down to countless smithereens, so everything that breaks, falls, sheds, is reduced back to dust to sand, to ash. To the stuff of which the earth is made. Resurrection is revealed best in … More A Poem: Ashes