954
Speak in the gaps between the words
Call to me from the silent skies
Sing from the midst of unseen birds
Bid me wake as the darkness flies
So that my heart may come to find
In all the turmoil of the day
A peaceful and reflective mind
To carry me along the Way.
(to Tallis Canon)
Brian Hick june 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 30.6.23
951
Big Bang
If only thinking were as organised as verse;
Each tidy framed idea in its place,
Each fleeting concept pinnded down and exposed
To microscopic, water-tight inspection;
No chance for it to wriggle and excape.
But my though is like seeking
Grey moths in a fog,
No sooner glimpsed than lost
Or worse
Clutched but slaughtered in the act.
Verse, at least the way I write it,
Exists only as it hits the page.
I may not have recognised
The neatness of its form
But suddenly, here it is,
Whereas
Before this pencil set it out
I've no idea where this line will go,
And worse
If you should ask me in ten minutes time
What I had written
I wouldn't have a clue.
I'm no Wordsworth, composing as he walked
Or Elgar listening to trees
Then returning home to simply set upon the page
What was already there.
Like the Saxon sparrow
It comes from nowhere
And is as quickly gone.
Only
The instant of creation
Survives.
Brian Hick summer 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 23.6.23
950
Done
Tha vex me, blood; the voice came from the hood
Which stood beside me in the corner shop,
And I admit I thought - this isn't good!
Tha vex me, blood
He said again, before I'd time to hop
Behind a stack of soup tins; so I stood
And said I'm sorry, which seemed to stop
Him in his tracks. i'd not meant to be rude
I mumbled, as he shifted on the spot
Said Tha's ok and left; so I could brood,
Tha vex me, blood.
Brian Hick 2011
©Sally Hick 21.6.23
22 May
A sea-mist had rolled in across the town
Engulfing us as far as Silverhill
But by ten o'clock the grey-edged frown
Had passed and sunlight started to instil
A late sring warmth with its casual hint
Of lazy afternoons down on the beach.
Unpercieved at first, it seems to sprint
From groin to groin until its fingers reach
Up into the centre of town
Where visitors and locals, in their macs,
Slump unprepared for heat, as they frown
Or mutter it won't last, until, their backs
Basking in the unexpected blaze
Of summer's glory, they smile and hope it stays.
Brian Hick 22.5.11
©copyright Sally Hick 19.6.23
948
On the RSC's Merchant of Venice
What endures after the applause?
Despite the carnage and brutality
A simple flame of hope hints at accords,
Renewals and the possibility
That Love will find a way out of the hell
Of human desolation which is Lear.
But all the wealth of Belmont cannot quell
The appetite for profit and the sneer
Of anti-Semitism - even though
Shylock is as culpable as all
The champagne Christians who won't dare to show
Unselfishness though it prevent their fall.
While suffering can serve to raise our sight
Greed's mirror only cuts us from the light.
Brian Hick May 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 16.6.23
946
Please - I don't need the dark night of the soul;
There's more than enough to trouble me each day
Without concerning myself with the roll
Of super-spiritual being, who, by the way,
May not exist and even if they do
Show scant regard for those of us who care
For others; and, although we may be few,
Try our best to empathise and share.
If we accepted all the platitudes
Of born-again believers and the crew
Of happy-clappies, would ensuing truths
Have anything to say to me and you
When all we ask is love to be set free
So you might know how joyous Love can be?
Brian Hick 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 12.6.23
945
Where were you when he slashed his wrists
Or she lay pain-wracked on the bedroom floor?
Why are you silent when the racist twists
His blade into the innocent and poor?
Don't tell me how you feel our pain
Or suffer with us; afterall these years
Of genocide and butchery that claim
Is worthless, and it falls upon deaf ears.
Rational, we look for evidence,
For any hint your teaching might be true
But all we see and all that we can sense
Confirms the bitter fact that we will rue
The day that we were born and hope to be
By Death's kind release, from Life set free.
Brian Hick May 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 2.6.23
The next blog will be posted on Monday 12.6.23. Sally
