Written on the walls of my heart
It’s now or never
BE IT
Time is precious
USE IT
Love even more so
NEVER BETRAY IT
John Lyons
Author: irlandesuk
Look to love
Look to love
What do you want to know
what words do you look to
for wisdom for understanding
that there’s nothing free from dust
in this world
or that the turbulent sea
will outlive us all
that the genius of nature
is inexhaustible ?
Seed bud leaf flower
the mysterious genealogies
of all living things
and natural selection
and the truths that never waver
Look to love
to the love in your life
the love that survives
the day to day
the flesh bound fast
to another’s flesh
for better or for worse
Arrange your home
the inner sanctum
be seasonal and fill it with roses
never mind the dust
honour your heart’s desire
time is a luxury
spend it wisely
John Lyons
Moonless night
Moonless night
A night in which I saw no moon
but stood in the darkness
and gazed up at the black sky
seeded with a million stars
visible to the naked eye
some still in their infancy
others dying a lingering death
and I thought of all that distance
and all that light and all that silence
and all the love that we once shared
and all that warmth that so suddenly
turned to cold disdain when you left
John Lyons
The first duty
The first duty
The first duty
is to honour
the love we share
to kiss and make up
to make amends
for words unsaid
for deeds undone
and hurt unmeant
Eternity condenses
into kisses into smiles
into songs of innocence
and experience
The first duty
is to put the past
to bed
to rise
with the lark
to step away
from blindness
and raise a glass
to trust
in love
John Lyons
Fruit of the stars
Fruit of the stars
A sky
full of snowflakes
obscures the stars but
from their hydrogen
and their oxygen
comes water
a marriage made
in a molecule
Yes
fruit of the stars
and chain of constant
resurrection
that for which
we were born
moving within the light
at rest within the shade
a temperate life
capable of noble deeds
energized from before
the moment of conception
and measured against
the inspirations of time
and judged
by our capacity to love
Love
that supreme fiction
poetry of all that’s made
bonds of flesh
bound in words and intoned
in tender hymns
to our humanity
cherished thoughts
that elate the heart
and fire passion
in our blood until we attain
the proud pangs of paradise
John Lyons
Revised
Undiminished
Undiminished
Is there anything more
that you and I will do
other than live our
silent separation
our flesh dumbed down
shattered the rose of beauty
that we once shared
the tower truly broken
the land laid waste
with weed and briar
rife where the garden
once stood
Is nothing to be learned
from living breath
no lesson to be drawn
from seasons past
Say rather
that all is there
subdued but deeply held
love poised to bud again
to spring into open space
fresh leaf for all time
John Lyons
Disbelief
Disbelief
Slow ebb of life
snow falling
ice melting
all bound for the ocean
drift of cosmic debris
chaff in the wind
our footprints erased
from Margate sands
Disbelief
that nothing held her
beyond a day’s pleasure
the memory unscathed
the sediment of tiny
shreds of existence
strewn across the beach
the day to day
driven out to sea
by the rush of time
Stars beneath which
the wind moans
the howl of foxes
filling empty dreams
John Lyons
More than words
More than words
Better silent
if there be no words
to move the heart
to action
Starfall
in the night sky
tears of light
all things cosmos
all things process
So the fingers move
in fine traceries
over her body
delicate acts
of worship
On these long
winter evenings
we think
of nothing else
Memories will
not sustain us
the parade must
move forward
before our heels
die
Her breath
a counterpoint
to my own
a harmony
slow to fade
let’s not make
history
let’s make love
John Lyons
Magnetic alignment
Magnetic alignment
The beauty of frail
flowers of frost
on the window pane
fine filigree of ice
that will soon melt
under the morning sun
And I think of love
of compassed perfection
magnetic alignment
in which the eyes have it
a tongue-tied love
that exceeds the night
subsists on the light of stars
values truth and sincerity
holds the body sacred
knowing that the flesh
source of all life
never lies
To lie in the lee of love
sheltered from time
from the depredation
of thwarted dreams
that lives in shared decision
set upon a common path
a sole direction
that trades not in power
but in tokens of gentleness
As the wind ruffles
the fresh leaves of trees in spring
so love stirs the heart’s fibres
its voice never fades
never fails
John Lyons
How it goes
How it goes
A poet works
with eyes and ears
listening and watching for
whatever is worthy of note
and for the silence
that sustains it all
A poet sees and tells
such as it is
the lie of the land
the clocks that tick
the hand that leans
out of the boat
to trail fingers
in the smooth sea
A poet wipes the salt
from his lips
before he kisses
the love of his life
He preserves
her beauty in lines
that will reach
beyond
the outer edges
of time
But a poet must not
be betrayed :
to do so is to break
the universe in two
John Lyons
johnjosephlyons 