Posts Tagged ‘Life’s Sunshine and Rain’

The Snake

Slippery, slithering, sliding, snake.
Life, shifting, searching, seeking you out.
Eyes unblinking, fixed upon you.
Movement, energy, feelings too.

From under the earth the snake has come,
Carrying poison into your blood?
Bringing power out of the mud?
Passions and anger,
Laughter and love,
Shine in the eyes
Still looking in yours.

What do you see in the light of those eyes?
What poisons have you
Brewed up in your soul?
What resentment or passion
Or unheard cries?
What tears unshed
Through someone’s lies?

If this is the snake
That has bitten your chest;
If this is the creature
That poisoned your breast,
Suck out the vile nectar,
Draw out the bad brew
In that way there is
The redemption of you.

My dog Vincent was a runt.
He was mine from when he was a pup,
So anxious that on our first walk
He would only go a hundred yards
From our house before he sat,
And refused to go any further.
Each day he would chance a bit more,
Until he would follow me anywhere.
He grew into a big dog,
An Alsatian, but always less fire than other dogs.
And one ear never stood up
Into Alsatian prick-eared alertness.
So he always gave the impression
Of a plant that forever stays limp
For lack of vital energy
That floods the system direct.
But he was a clever dog.
I guess runts have to be
To travel life with less resources.
I taught him how to shut doors,
And to implicitly obey commands,
So he could walk the London streets
With me unleashed without risk.
And runts are often very lovable,
With unusual characters.
Maybe they need more love than most,
And so have appealing ways.

And I am a runt —
So loved my dog with understanding.
Born small, premature,
Struggled to stay alive,
But made it through.
Like Vincent, I’ve developed strategies
To face a weaklings anxious heart.
I found the switch for frantic anger
While I was still young,
To frighten larger predators.
Within myself I created
Rooms and treasures
To compensate my outer lack.
But unlike Vincent
I have no flop ear to tell the world
I am without the vital force
To make me prick-eared.
And so, my prick-eared,
Prick centred friends,
It is hard for me when
You tell me I should be this —
I should do that —
And that my tiredness is in my mind.

Now look at me!
I say with pride —
I am a runt!
I am not prick-eared.
But I am here,
Not hiding in a corner.
I do not turn back
At the hundred yards.
But I walk my own road.

The Possible

I caught it here today,
That state, that realisation,
That shifting constant Possible
Of fragrant inspiration.

If words were numbers,
Lining up to form their different meanings,
There’s never any end to all the ways
Those numbered words could reach out to our feelings.

To shift a four from here to here,
And put a nine in there,
Is what lies in the poet’s art
To form those poems fair.

And when you catch that Possible,
It opens up to you,
The vibrant garden words grow in,
Infinite, varied, new.

The New Wine

In the basement I have been lain,
Waiting only to be opened.
Though I am lain long
I am the new wine.
You will know when you drink
For I am the harvest
Of all ripe life.

I am the red blood of the many.
Fallen or torn from the vine
I am the spirit of multitudinous life.
The essence of my being
I give to you.

To drink is to be moved within –
To open yourself to penetration.
I am the light in the flesh,
The way of reconciliation.
I am poured out to renew all things.
The past will be buried
And born anew today
Without regret.

All may drink
For I am plenty.
All class, all creed
May quench their thirst .

The Messiah

I am the Christ.
Oh Christ, I am the Messiah.
Dear God, pardon me,
For I am my own saviour.
I am my own salvation.
Here to forgive my own sins.
Coming to heal my own illness.
My peace I give unto you.
And I will raise the dead.
For I must take up my bed and walk.

Tony Crisp

Meanwhile

The silence creeps under my door,
Gentle as the moon rising.
It enfolds me
Until I smile
With the expression
Of a child at peace.
So deep –
And rising.

The Impossible

To a baby, walking and not wetting its pants is impossible,
But with many a fall and accident it manages the unattainable.
It is a god in its achievement.
To talk, to fly heavier than air planes,
To walk on the Moon, were all impossible.
We challenge the impossible every day.
Over and over we fall back into defeat.
Many lie there broken.
Yet with the next moment
Along come youngsters
With no more sense than grasshoppers,
And because they don’t know
What the difference is between right and left,
Do the impossible.
Out of the infinite potential,
The great unknown,
They draw something new.
With hope, with folly,
With a wisdom they gain
From who knows where,
They demand MORE.
And it’s a common everyday sort of miracle.
Mothers do it constantly for their children –
Transcending themselves.
Lovers go through hell and heaven for each other,
And flower beyond who they were.
You and I grow old on it as our daily bread,
Yet fail to see how holy it is.
And if we turn away from it,
It is because it offers no certainties,
Gives no authority,
Claims no reward.
It is the spiritual life of people on the street.
And our dreams remember, even if we fail.
For this is the body and blood of the human spirit.

The High Pasture

My watch showed half-past four
And thirty seconds.

Then thinking many thoughts of you
I looked again – it had not moved.
Nor did it as I watched
Forever in that timeless moment.

And so I wandered
In that High Pasture
Where no time passes
Thinking all that could
Be thought of you.

And as no time passed,
I looked at me,
Seeing all possibilities,
All brightness
Even to an angel.

Then all darkness
From drunken pit
To murderer,
All of them mine
If I so wished.

Then shining
Ever changing
Never formed
Into the ending
And beginning,
The destruction and creation.

Into the timeless moment
Of blissful loss
Where I am no more
And still its
Half past four.

The Glory

I had walked this same path countless times before, but this day I noticed something different.

Yes, it is the same path leading up from the street I live in. It still leaves the main road to rise between the country cottages lining the unpaved stony lane. It still takes me under overhanging yew trees in the lonely graveyard, devoid now of the chapel that has become a house.

In rain, in fervent sun, in despair and in joy, alone, or with my dog; or better yet, with H. I had walked so many times from the stony road to the narrow footpath. If it were summer and wet, the long grasses would crowd the rutted path, soaking my shoes and trousers.

The path runs halfway up the river valley following the course of the Misbourne. Below it lie the long wonderful gardens of the old High Street houses, rich and splendid. Above it gently rising are the farm meadows of pasture, the wheat, and wooded tops of hills.

The seasons, the mood I am in, my age, through the years, have brought constant change to it all. For it is more than a path. It is the geography and historic measure of my soul. Its length and breadth hold landmarks of my becoming. That old barn there is where, as a child, I first dared enter someone else’s property to see what it held, and found treasures of ordinary things wonderfully new to me.

There, down the valley, beneath that stable loft, I first glimpsed the top of a woman’s soft thighs as she climbed the ladder to the loft. How I came to be there I have no memory. But the beauty of her naked thighs I cannot forget.

And that stretch of lane passing the school is where I dared go beyond the boundaries of my childhood fears. I dared to walk further, and go into the unknown, to sail over the edge of my world and survive.

On that path there, between the houses, I knew the smells of bruised elder, and the incense of privet in bloom. Over in that distant copse I discovered where the nightjars nested, and where the grass snakes writhed by the lake.

Far across the valley, up high on that distant hill near the reservoir, H. and I tumbled among the fir trees, and loved each other on the carpet of leaves. Then, in the quietness following our love, we looked up and saw four fox cubs playing, almost near enough to touch.

Today though, I am standing admiring a tree. It is a giant elm, gnarled, weathered, its bark broken in places, leaving a hollow interior. What history this tree knows. What relationships it holds, and what storms survived.

But it is not the tree that has called me. Or, maybe it is the tree, the smell of elder flowers, the privet, my woman’s lips on mine, the summer, the winter – all. And in the mood of that wholeness I walk on, turning up Cherry Lane, up into the hills as evening spreads its quiet.

Standing in a high meadow, looking back into the valley as the light fails, there is a great richness in the light places and the shadows, the contours, the folds of hills hiding people and their dwellings. So is my life rich when I do not stand too close, and distance enables its tapestry to be seen.

And in the middle of it all, there is something out of which the weaving and the colours come. All the hues are there, but only some are used.

Is this my life? The deep blues of this night hiding the details of the valley—is that my life?

The quiet here is like music. And I look up, and the heavens are ablaze with an extraordinary number of stars. I am breathless with the wonder of them, with the singing I can hear.

Can you hear it! Can you hear the song of the heavens? The stars are pouring out glory upon us. Glory to you! Glory to me! The earth is bathed in glory. Wonder falls upon us.

My gaze returns to the valley. It is alive with lights. Hundreds of people are in the streets gazing at the marvel of the heavens, drinking in the new wine.

Transformation is upon us!

The Deep Night

For Helen

When I was a child,
The night called me from sleep.
It would speak to me from beyond
The window of my room,
Until I sat on the sill,
And listened and looked upon it.

And the night was deeper
Than the stars,
And older than time.
There was no beginning
Or end to it.
There had been no evening,
And there would be no morning
To this night,
Or to its still beauty.

This night was mine alone.
For no creature stirred.
No sounds disturbed
My possession of it.
It was a world
Only I knew,
In which I could walk
The streets of my own
Mind and heart.

I could explore
The woods and rivers
Of all that was in me
To create.
And by the light
Of the silent moon,
Know the magic
In the deeps of the night.

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Tony Crisp

Posts Tagged ‘Life’s Sunshine and Rain’

I am the Christ. Oh Christ, I am the Messiah. Dear God, pardon me, For I am my own saviour. I am my own salvation. Here to forgive my own sins. Coming to heal my own illness. My peace I give unto you. And I will raise the dead. For I must take up my bed and walk.

I am the Christ.
Oh Christ, I am the Messiah.
Dear God, pardon me,
For I am my own saviour.
I am my own salvation.
Here to forgive my own sins.
Coming to heal my own illness.
My peace I give unto you.
And I will raise the dead.
For I must take up my bed and walk.