First thought of the day

Crawl out of bed
           peer out the window
first dusting of light
           on all I see
but I see with memory
           as much as with my eyes
the different complexities
           of silence 
sometimes a comfort sometimes not
           as I imagine in the trenches
where my grandfathers fought
           and the poet asks
how long is a rest
           in music
and I ask
           how long is this silence
and what does it portend
           and is it a beginning
or is it the end
           of a fragmentary process
the silence of innocence
           or of culpability
and will I one day
           be a bird bereft of song ?

John Lyons

Sanctuary

September and with it
           come days that taunt us
with blue skies and hoarfrost
           in the meadows at dawn
falling temperatures
           and the defeat
of summer memories
           as though life expects us to lie down
and give up the ghost
           without a struggle

But no
           love retains secret pockets
of warmth and light
           to see us through the winter
through the bitter cold
           of ice and snow

Chestnut leaves are turning
           to a dull crisp brown
the shiny fruit splitting
           free from its spiky shells
the games we played
           with those conkers long gone

But the consolations of love
           will sustain us with livable time and space
to see us through the coming months
           invincible love will flower
once again in spring
           the love that burns
within the sanctuary
           of the eternal soul

John Lyons

On beauty

What few things we have
we carry with us
our mind and our senses
the capacity to feel
and to express those feelings

beauty is not the blind rose
it knows nothing of our admiration
it blooms amid thorns and bees
and it lives and dies in silence
unaware of its glorious scent

it is we who confer the distinction
of beauty upon the world around us
just as we separate the wolves
from the sheep and all that is good
from what is not

and love

love in all its soft and subtle glory
the greatest beauty of all
how the eye is besotted
with the loving world around it
the eyes and the lips
and the tongue and the hands
that touch and are touched
man woman or child
the greatest beauty of all

John Lyons

Speculation

Process and discovery
       learning and adaptation
a lifetime spent
       never really knowing
who we are
       or who we were meant to be
using language as the principal
       tool of investigation
using feelings
       as the ultimate sounding board

How hard to know one’s self
        let alone another
let alone the otherness
        of those we love
Who is to say
       that we even occupy
the same time and space

I heard the whirring wings
       of a wasp around my head
around my hand
       that did not sting me
but provided in a sense
       a wakeup call as though
it had been a messenger
       from another plane or reality

Love lived on the lip
       trusting in the unknowable
desiring to be an intimate part
       of another being’s mystery
to make and share a body of love
       built up from fragments
of truth and beauty
       and pleasure and acceptance
of our own imperfections
       a union of purpose
intention at the heart of it
       the whisper of promissory words
that should be carved in stone
       for all time

John Lyons