WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO
 
The god sees another flight go down as one man fixes a gate
and there are herons ready for flight but waiting for the exact moment
as the small boat goes by with three noisy children and two angels who
are mostly silent because language cannot make the meanings more real.
 
Why we do what we do is about open doors and what might not be said
and the originality of the hidden and the way changing a name tells us about the past and how entering a library leads to silent conversations.





THE TULIPS DO NOT SIMPLY DIE
 
The tulips do not simply die,in the vase after three weeks
Of dancing light,each hour a fragmenting into new shapes,
Each petal as if it could escape,as if flight into another form
Waiting at the edge,the shades now shaping lockets and blades,
As if each one might become glass,transform into moth or moon,
the perfection of psalms transforming into crucifixion ridicule.





THE MIND OF GOD AND OTHER
 
The mind of God is buried in the field
which is why there are trees and always voices.
If you dig up the mind of God
you will be late for school and nobody will believe.
They will tell you about temples and bones and the
way that a miracle meanders around the truth to
become a mosaic of meanings.
When they are teaching about 'other'
(death,sex,deceit,sacred dancing,circumcision etc)
they get into the lower tone,the bones of being thing
and we can see that by the time you get there you may
have very little time left which is why  there are fields
and trees and lanes that go nowhere and some things
may never be achieved and elderly people very often
fall into a fade towards the end of a paragraph about life.





SIGNALS
 
Come and sit down;
the words will not hurt.
You may imagine your god here
or the terror that sometimes lies
behind the thrushÕs sudden song.
Betrayals are sold on every street
and the Jesus Man slumps sideways
in a deckchair before the next trick.
Can you create a tree? The old play
with their toys and the doctor tells
us that he loves them all the time.
What it is to die so often and look,
there go the angels of jazz yet again.
Each night we wait for the moths to
perform their circles of jeopardy;
they worship flame and it kills them.
One,two,three;over and out.





REMEMBERING TO FORGET
 
The numbers no longer add up.
Rooms that were beautiful and huge
need a good spring clean and soon fill
and the Church In The Wood is really a shed
The tea room in Malvern closes at four.
 
We search for clues;blue eggs,ancient
hedges,missing villages.In country houses
our toys are on display.What goes up is
difficult to see and gets swallowed up
in improbable sunsets.Is that The Queen
 
and what has she got to do with the people
next door? The new pub owner says that he
is a retired policeman. He looks like a bishop.
Did I tell you about the woman who?
She never existed.


     © David Grubb 2008