Patience builds a fire

I cover myself in a cloak.

Crouching down, head bowed,
my world becomes a cave.
I turn inside and light a fire
in the darkness -

a seed of a flame 
sheltered from the world’s winds
as I close every door
and feed it.

The offer of this inner fire -
the heat of passion 
and the light of clarity. 
But both are spent easily. 

Throw open the doors
and the fire burns bright
and the fire burns out. 
Leaving only ashes. 

But protect the spark and
nurture the first flames,
build it well and feed it well
through rush and crack
to slow burn embers that
hold their own against 
the ice of winter’s night. 

Patience builds a fire. 
Patience and devotion 
and quiet attention.
To be seduced by the first flash
of a fire’s power is to lose it. 
Don’t sit back. Don’t try to use it. 
But remember the power
of a warm hearth that
does not succumb 
to a cold, dark world
but endures and, what’s more,
radiates warmth to all. 

How and why I write

This is how and why I write poetry.

Something is going on.

I'm pacing the room.

Or flat on my back staring at the ceiling.

Or trying to solve something by thinking it through, but finding that thinking it through doesn't solve anything.

When I am lucky, in one of those moments I remember that what I need is to find the current. And I remember that this is how and why I write poetry.

In those moments - of pacing or staring or solving - the thing that plagues me is that there is some tension that I don't know what to do with. And, when I am lucky, I remember that the tension that I don't know what to do with is what poetry is made of. The unwritten poem is just waiting to be fed some tension. Like a loom waiting for thread.

If I wanted to write a poem and couldn't lay my hands on some tension I didn't know what to do with, then there would be no poem to write.

So, in those moments, where there is tension and I am fortunate enough to remember, this is what I do. 

I listen for a clue. 

I listen for the line or the word that 
- found -
might let the tension know
it has been heard.

I imagine it is like a painter looking at a lake then looking down at a board of oils and looking for just the shade of blue that matches and - finding it - relaxes knowing that that patch is taken care of.

I am trying to capture an inner landscape, looking for the words that will match it, piece by piece.

-

When you go fishing, there is a long stretch of time where to anyone passing it might look like you are doing nothing. And you are. But it's a doing nothing that allows for just enough listening so that in the moment where hook and fish meet, you are ready. Knowing you might have to sit for hours, you sit with a kind of quiet, wide alertness that is still and simple enough that you could sit there and listen almost forever if it were needed. But in the moment where the line comes alive, you change. No longer the can-keep-going-forever spacious listening. Now you must become one with the line and the movement coming through it. There is no world but the eye of your mind and this movement and this line. There is no space for any gap between the moment when you feel the twitch of life in the line and the moment you move to respond. It is the dance of two lives meeting.

To find the first clue, you become the fisher by the river. You can’t go looking for it. You can’t jam your head under the water and take a look around. You can’t plan a journey to get there. Can’t furiously swim towards it. No.

Only when you stop.

You can hear

what you need to hear

only when you stop.

Finding the first clue means dropping everything except a single commitment to listening for what is here. What is here now. Listening. Still.

The mind that plans is split between here and some imagined other place. The mind that regrets is split between here and somewhere that has passed. So you can plan, you can regret, but you can’t plan or regret and really listen for what is here. You will half-listen at best.

Only here. Only now. The mind stills.

Even if you have some thought of what you might find, even just that thought stands in the way of listening well. It’s like trying to take in the vast expanse of the horizon by looking through a funnel.

The mind stills and opens. Eyes closed, you are floating in space. No intention. No direction. Only here. Only now. And open to hear what may come.

In that emptiness it is as if the wild seething nest of tension pauses just long enough that it turns from a ceaseless blur into something you might be able to bring into focus. As if its chaos is no match for your stillness. Even in its relentless movement it reveals something of itself if you are still enough to see it.

Hold me like a wave

A shred of what is here reveals itself. As if the tension calls out. Calls out with what it longs for. Says its name. Asks for what it needs.

Hold me like a wave

And in the moment it reveals itself I know it is true and, feeling that it has been heard, a little piece of me relaxes.

When I am crashing

That moment - of finding the first clue - is the moment where the fisher turns from being a waiter to being a dancer. It is no longer my job to float in space and listen in every direction for everything. My job is to know that I have found the thread and to follow it.

When I am crashing

then I need you

Because those first true words have a quality that the feeling alone does not have. They are true to the feeling - but they are fixed. Like a stake in the ground.

Hold me like a wave

Every time I hear or read the words they bring to life again the feeling they were born from. They give me a way to return again and again to the thread of feeling. My job is to follow the thread all the way to the end. All I have to do is keep returning, keep listening and keep going until the feeling has revealed itself fully and, being fully expressed, lets me rest.

When I am crashing

then I need you

to hold me

This is the work of concentration in the face of distraction. There is a subtle feeling - this tension that I can’t make sense of - but there is also the world. Everything is an invitation to distraction. To put down the pen. To go outside. To get out of the rain. To get a drink. To make a sandwich. To think about something else. To finish it off later.

To stay with the subtle feeling is to say no to rest of the world.

It seems to me the poems only come when the tension deserves a poem. Some small irritation or curiosity might for a moment feel like it has something to say - only to reveal itself to be barely there at all. No. It’s when the feeling is vast and untameable - or subtle and vital - that it can become something.

Keep returning. Keep listening. Keep going.

There is a quality to concentration. Now not floating in space, but rather standing in the middle of a busy market undistracted by every passing sight entirely focused on the task in hand. If the quality of concentration wanes, the quality of listening falls and the quality of the poem crashes. I have killed good poems by not listening.

A line that is true leads you to the next line that is true. So, if you write a line that is true, then you have a chance that the next line will be too. But often - and especially when the concentration dips - the mind will offer up lines that are near enough. Where they sound good. Or they make sense. Or they’re neat or clever. But the line that sounds good and makes sense and is neat and clever is nothing if it is not true. If it is not the line that perfectly captures the next little patch of feeling that needs to be captured, then it is a line that is not doing its job.

My job is to keep on saying no to lines that are near enough and to accept nothing less than lines that are true to the feeling they promise to capture. Until there is in front of me a poem that says all that needed to be said.

This is how and why I write poetry. Taking the tension that, because it is not seen, is making life harder and illuminating it, so that the the life that is in the tension can be seen and can be lived. Weaving the chaos of life into a fabric. Not for the sake of the poem - not to make it beautiful - but, in the making and reading of the poem, to listen in a way that helps to make the fabric of this life itself more beautiful.

Hold me like a wave

When I am crashing

then I need you

to hold me

like a wave

holds a rider

lifting me 
on the thundering rise
to show me the horizon

that I might vanish 
in the gift 
of great distance

and then 
when I surrender 
to this open, wide awareness
give way and let me go 
and show me 
I don’t need 
to be carried

I need to be thrown
to be shown
I can stand up
and fall down

on my own. 

A turning point

I am writing to you from the desert
Where I have wrung myself out 
Like a damp flannel on an airless day. 

There is nothing left here to offer.
No deep well of intuition. No gleeful spark. 
The dusty casing discarded by an insect. 

I turn inside to drink from my creative source
And, head back-tilted, feel my teeth meet
The lip of an empty metal water bottle. 

I call deeper. Still nothing. My own self
Is an empty cave and my longing 
A hollow echo coming back unmet. 

Not even rising panic. Not even deep despair. 
No jittery nerves to light the fuse of nervous action. 
A void. A loss. An inconsequent emptiness. 

There is nothing to do. Nothing to do
But listen to the low static hum of
Some future agitation waiting to make itself heard. 

I let go of the flannel. Let go of the desert. 
Let go of water bottle insect cave. 
I let go of longing for a longing to call me. 

A still point. The brow of the hill. 
The tide not in, not out. 
A dial turned to zero with a click. 

When I stop. When I stop and stand still. 
When I drop to the floor and lie looking
At the world going by. Then the world goes by. 

Two birds cross my path. Three. Four. 
The wind runs through wasteland grass
And through the treetops that mark the horizon. 

Soft breathing. A whistle song from this tree
To that. A crow. A car. A train. A dog. 
The low static hum of distant traffic. 

I am an empty page. I flip the switch 
From output to receive and let the world write me. 

I am the bud of the bud of an early flower
And the weight of one sunlit drop breaks
And floods me with the brilliance of rain. 

I am a river weed pulled by the current in deep water
Well-rooted and dancing, flung by the life
Of mountain water’s path to the sea. 

I am the ocean abiding in effortless expanse
Accepting the intrusion of a million streams 
The endless embodiment of taking and giving. 

I am the path compacted by pilgrim’s feet
Offering them the metaphor of the certainty they seek
By staying where I am and going nowhere. 

I am a spacecraft refuelling in weightless emptiness.
I rest and wait. And rest. And wait. 
Without intent or goal or mission. 

And time will take its time. And I,
An abundant and vital oasis, 
Will see the fruits of its labours. 

Somewhere, on the far side of that tree-lined horizon
There are the makings of a dream -
Colour and movement and people and song. 

And they will come. Or maybe this track will carry me there. 
But this morning, with the promise of nothing
But a slow walk home, they may stay where they are. 

I am on hold. This is a holy day. 
I am letting everything go its own way. 
And when it is time, life will start again. 

Poems for meditation (2022)

[These sessions are full now. If you’d like to hear about the next time I do this (or similar) you can sign up for updates at the bottom of this page. Thank you. Cx ]

A short introduction to a practice.
Mondays 17th, 24th, 31st January and 7th February 2021
8pm (UK GMT). Free.

Here’s the promise: a way to meditate that is as easy as reading a poem.
(And not even a difficult poem. Or a long poem. As easy as reading a short, simple poem.)

Two years ago, I wrote a short book - Poems for meditation. It’s just four short poems, based on four stages of meditation. Those four stages - and these four poems - are designed to move your mind from whatever-state-you-might-be-in towards a place of clarity. When you’ve found that clarity you can either just enjoy it - or use it as a starting point for further meditation.

To mark the new year - and to give myself the best chance of finding the clarity I need in the weeks and months to come - I thought it would be a nice idea to revisit the poems with a series of short Monday evening sessions.

They’re open to everyone. They’re free. The session itself will run from 8pm-8.30pm - and then there’ll be a further half hour in case anyone wants to stay on to talk more (or meditate more). We’ll start with a very, very simple meditation - just a kind of settling down. Then we’ll look at one of the four poems, read it a couple of times, talk about what we see, talk about how to use it as a meditation - and then meditate with it. That’s the plan anyhow. It might go differently on the night — I’ll just follow what feels right.

If you’d like to join, add yourself to the WhatsApp group [group now closed to new members ]. I’ll send all the info you need there, along with links to the calls.
(Any questions - drop me a line.)

New

When I see you,
you say two things.

That I must rest.

And that I must 
cut myself free
of old ties that 
keep me restless.

It is the curve of you,
cradling empty sky,
that tells me: rest.

And your borrowed light,
drawing a sharp line 
through the night,
like a knife that cuts,
but doesn’t exist,
that tells of my escape. 

Turn your heart over

When you find yourself
caught in the snare of
whatever, remember to
not struggle, but let go.

A fight keeps you there
where you find yourself
caught. So, don’t fight,

but turn your heart over,
breathe out, and move only
when you feel you are free.