Thinking of angels

Oh, do not try to make it ordinary
or even think of credibility -
this visitation by the angel
or many
to shepherds in their freezing fields
or Mary -
no: I see hosts of snowy wings
descending in impossible sweeps
of power, I see
faces taut and gleaming, and those
piercing eyes that penetrate the soul
so that breath fails, and when it
passes there remains a vacuum -
and perhaps just a single
                                          shining
                                                       feather.


©C.M.M. 12/11

Dedicated to the choir of St Thomas, Fifth Avenue, for their singing of A Babe is Born (Matthias)

I've used a different picture here of the Annunciation from the one I used on blethers  - though nothing I could find quite matched the vision I had!

Winter Solstice

The silver tree is a white ghost

in the dimpled white of last week’s snow

as the pale glow in the eastern sky

shows where the short-lived sun will rise

while night withdraws itself to where

a thin moon hangs above the hills.

The coloured lights of the coming feast

Shine in the silent streets below;

The last cries of the drunken night

Are echoes, and the drinkers sleep.

The birds wait, frozen on the tree.

A prayer stirs in the coldest heart.

© C.M.M. 12/11

Suffering General

The original Southern General Hospital, Glasgow

Hospitals no longer have that smell

- the fearful pungency of old -

no: there is a casual air

about the hours of waiting, where

random chat is fractured

and coffee cups abandoned

as if this were a station –

a brief halt in life’s affairs

a stop along the line

before the terminus.

Stop: don’t think of terminus,

not here, among the shifting

interrupted lives of those

who miss their names –

impatient calls and repetitions –

then stumble off to share their need

and leave, calmed for now or not,

out into the grey day where fog

swirls round a half-built tower

and coughing echoes in the biting air.

©C.M. 11/11

The conversation

Under a pale sun - not cool,just
grey and calm - the words
flowed. Dissonance and history,
patronage and eternal things,
maths and music and the links or
not links were tossed about,
resolved and questioned,
worried and smoothed against the demons
that might darken a day.
And all around the earnest talk
the birdsong fluttered in the unthinking light,
the peerless technique of the singers
rising and falling among the flowers,
its challenge merely territorial
its  beauty only in our minds.

C.M.M 07/11

Birdsong in Gethsemane

In the darkling garden

a lone bird drops

liquid notes like dark blood

beneath the quiet trees. And then

silence. And in the silence

the old struggle surges

as flesh and soul pull

apart. The body aches

to be the prayer, to feel

the God’s warmth

in the darkness. But

there is only stillness

and the blood’s song

and the everlasting longing

as somewhere far away

innocence sleeps.

©C.M.M. 04/11