In penitence,
in perseverance,
in plea bargains with God.
Here, where pole meets pole
and fear greets desire.
Submerged
in the collapse of self,
desolate
but still devoted.
Alone in reality
The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.”
Thomas Merton, no man is an island
Undoing
The longest night,
a seed in soil.
Turn the blade of discipline
to your own undoing.
Somerset, England, Winter Solstice 2019
On the cusp
The autumnal ritual of submission unfurls.
Matter collapses into matter,
and frost embraces the curve of the hills.
The trees release their fertile garments,
laying themselves bare.
Bony limbs carry silent, unseen buds
and visions of blossoms to come.
With their subdued palettes of colour,
the fallow meadows join to declare:
no birth, no death -
only changing forms.
Being a walking question mark 