November afternoon

For NJFM

That dreary day of early dark
I baked a cake - my thirty-fifth -
for Christmas, happy at the thought
of something done and stored away.
And as the warmly scented air
stole through the house, I glanced outside
to where the leaves could just be seen
dancing in the garden's gloom
as if in hope to see my child,
small and purposeful and quick,
come down the path towards the light
and smile at being grown-up
returning home without my help.
I smiled myself at years compressed
by memory, repeated tasks
and Christmases which mark the time
to where that child can now be seen
awaiting in his turn a child
approaching in the winter's dark.

©C.M.M.

Afterbirth

After the struggling's long dark
the wailing and the exhortation
the pain of separation and the sudden
rush of birth there comes a moment
precious in its quiet simplicity
when I recognise a new truth
shining in the newness of that day
as with a sudden huge swelling from my soul
replacing that hugeness now a tiny child
the happiness within is known and named.

There will be a time for more naming
and more recognition of this child
at once the closest stranger in my world
and my newest love, but now
is time for happiness alone
enjoyed and savoured in this peace
held between the movements of a song.

©CM.M. 11/08

Autumn Flowers

Two nasturtiums bloomed today.
I saw their gold as the sun
Tipped my autumn garden with
Illusive warmth. I took the seeds
From the drawer you placed them in
Years since, and planted late in some
Faint hope of their survival.
They flower, but the year is spent
As are your years, and winter comes.
These unplanted seeds were hope
Abandoned as your vigour faded,
Their tiny sunbursts a last dawn
Of tenderness before the dark.
Go on your journey, gently, now,
The last sun warm upon your face.
©C.M.M 09/04

Cathedral of the Holy Spirit

Cathedral of The Isles
Originally uploaded by goforchris

There was a church, rising
Above green terraces of
Pleasing symmetry,
Surely too neat, too
Small to encompass much
Mystery. Yet in that
Silent shell, in the golden
Brass-glow of candles,
God would touch
Careless souls, catch their
Hearts in a mesh of
Incandescent song, so that
Those who knelt there would
Pass through the veil of light
To the bright places beyond.

© C.M.M.

Hymn for Cumbrae

Cathedral of The Isles 2
Originally uploaded by goforchris

The Spirit guides me here,
to meet upon this hill
The outstretched arms, the wounded hands,
The love that finds me still.

In silence I am held,
Until my song takes flight
And breaking forth in golden notes
Fills heart and soul with light.

When I must leave this place
And face the world again
Good Saviour, from such holy ground
Come with me to the plain.

Consume my soul with fire,
Let love and peace fly free,
And at the end take all I am
And shape what I must be.

©C.M.M

Responding

Sometimes poetry seems to me to be the only vehicle suitable to express an idea or an emotion. This poem arose from my reading of a small part of Jürgen Moltmann's "The Trinity and the Kingdom".

RESPONDING

It is dark, dark night.
Take this cup – suddenly in the dark
it is too awful. But the warm tide
is receding into the dark
and the cold sweat of emptiness
takes its place. The desperate words
fall unheeded on the stony ground.
Withdrawn in a point of light
God has no ears, only pain
and tight-focussed squeezing of the great
love now raw and bright
above Golgotha. The night is past
but dark remains, and emptiness.
A searing cry bruises the great mind
drenched in the pain of loss and
separation – and this is done
for me, this hellish loss, this bruising …
so that I can see, can understand,
am not forsaken. It is too much.
Too much for me. Too much.

© C.M.M.

Bird-brained

A sudden rush of wings heralds
a thrush in triumph with a snail
shining wetly in its beak.

A second flurry and a second
bird appears, brownish-black,
aggressive movements: I want that!

The thrush heads off, hiding deep
among the million roses’ thorns.
A black eye looks at me and then

The blackbirds’ wife with one bold move
is standing just inside the room
which smells of ironing and clean shirts –

a blink of reckless possibility –
to wreak havoc in the warm clean space
with feathers, droppings, frenzied wings …

But no. She turns, and hops away
a bird again, in her own place.
The snail? Dead meat. The sun still shines.

C.M.M. 07/08

Once ...

In the hot silence
while he slept
and only the flies sang
she made the basket
strong with love
to hold this one most precious thing
and gave it, dry-eyed,
to the waiting flood.

© C.M.M. 08/08

Garden at noon

The garden, Kington
Originally uploaded by goforchris

The sun’s light is such as to
obliterate all colour save the
red and purple in a pot
behind which a gang of
glossy bees plunder thick lavender.
Another casual urn is tightly packed
with small blooms –
such careless profusion betraying
the industry of cooler days.
Behind the tall poppy-brides
a sinister trampling suddenly ends
as a blackbird emerges, ruffled
in foolishness at being caught.
Pink roses hang in full-term weight
above the hidden path, guarded by
a spiky sentinel in a tall pot.
And as the tall trees toss in the
wind’s stir, three black jets
scream belatedly as they wheel.
Do they look, the men within,
to see below this garden stuffed with life
and fly on, their hot metal tombs
filled at once with remembered scents?

© C.M.M. 07/08

Llananno revisited

Llananno church
Originally uploaded by goforchris

In an empty church
where once a poet prayed
I sat, the sudden cool
a contrast with the world
of sun and life and heat
beside the river’s glint,
beneath the hurried road.

Above the skewed cross
behind the dying flowers,
the empty candlesticks,
a huge, green tree
filtered the sun's light
which flickered on the stone
as the great mind of God
thrust a small pulse of its power
into my waiting soul.

©C.M.M.

I recently visited this tiny church in the Welsh border country, a church which is barely ever used, a church immortalised in a poem by R.S.Thomas who liked to visit it in much the same way as I did.

Dead relevant

In church one day we hear
about Noah and the man
who built his house on rock.
We know about poor folk who
build on sand
or cliffs which fall down.
Global warming and
high tides: everyone is glad
to be so relevant.
But down the leafy drive
where all the shops are shut
these three girls, young and
skinny-ribbed in sun
are shouting as they show
how people lose the way
by living on the beach:
“Fucking Sunday,” they yell.
“Fucking Sunday. Eh!”

©C.M.M. 06/08

Nevada Desert

The long straight.
Originally uploaded by goforchris

So this is a desert. Grey dust
stretches for miles to rumpled hills –
dust peppered with puffs of thorn
and punctuated by tall spiked shapes.
A heavy silence presses on the ears
which pound in answer as the blood
rushes round. There is no other sound.
No bird sings, no creeping thing
rustles the dry leaves, no water
drips or seeps. The huge pale sky
is windless, and the straight road
an empty slash to the far haze.
God, we are small. But in this place
man became so huge that worlds quake,
in the hideous paradox of size
destroying with the particles of God:
creators of deserts still to be.

©C.M.M.

West Coast Line

Pendolino Virgin Trains
Originally uploaded by JamesZ_Flickr

Speeding up England on the West Coast line
for Christmas, on the twenty-third,
was always going to be a journey
of parallels, of those who have and
those poor sods who haven’t booked
who squat in silent misery on
cases over-stuffed with gifts.

We slow to crawl through Birmingham
past empty gaunt gasometers,
canals and vast flat muddy plains
patched with puddles big as lakes.
The queue for coffee edges on
towards the counter where the man
has just run out of paper bags
and will not let us have hot drinks
for fear of spilling on the crowds
of squatters in between the cars.

The fogbound cityscapes give way
to late sun slanting over cows.
The couple opposite grow loud
from drinking solidly for hours.
We stop at Crewe. The dusty roof
- of glass, but fogged with layers of filth –
casts dim green light on grey cream tiles
as stragglers haul their luggage off
the heavy train, and we heave out
into the sun, a golden stream.

At Warrington we have a laugh –
the drunken woman disappears
and then returns to tell her tale,
How she’s been stuck, and phoned for help:
“I’m in the toilet in coach J –
I’m in the darkness” – and she laughed
half fearful that her plight had been
broadcast to all, but sadly, no.

Wigan: some platforms, not a pier
grey beneath the pink of dusk.
Above the wires, a large pale moon.
In red iron cubes some pansies flower
-and off we go, past playing fields
where hardy figures kick a ball.
The loud-voiced man stands up to leave
- a chance of peace from the next halt.
I think of Larkin on his train
and brood on weddings in the sun
as darkness falls and off we speed
much faster now, with no more stops
till Scotland and the homeward stretch
to Christmas and the thought of home.
The train is quieter now. I doze
and when I waken we are there.
We drag our bags down to the door
and all these strangers pull on coats
to leave the long womb of the train
and vanish in the Glasgow night.

C.M.M. 12/07

Not Prosaic

I feel that this poem owes a great deal to my greatest influence, the work of R.S.Thomas. No apologies - only gratitude.

NOT PROSAIC

And God said: sing me
a song. Talk of me only
in poetry, so that your mind
is not bound. Do not confine
me in your prose, for you will
lose me in the thicket
of your language. Rather
let your words ring with the
resonance of my love,
sounding deep in the hearts
of all who hear the visions
of their transparent ambiguity.

©C.M.M. 12/07

North West

See – on the globe’s curve
where the land ends in darkness
and mankind’s small flame-light
meets the black of the ocean
where the long dusk of summer
is the dream of a heartache
and the warmth of the sun’s light
is lost in the wind blast –
this is where hearts turn
eastward in longing
cry for the Christ-light
to illumine their bleakness
wait for the journey
to lead them to growing
once more believing
the sun will return.

©C.M.M.

Cafe in Cromer

I wrote this poem after seeing a small b&w photo of an old lady drinking tea in a cafe in Cromer, in the guardian's excellent Guide to Photography. In a way, I suppose I'm imitating Edwin Morgan's Instamatic Poems, but at the time I didn't think about that. Rather, I was overcome by memories and a sense of pathos - and those memories were in colour. I deliberately refrained from reproducing the photo - the poem should after all be able to stand alone.
Anyone who remembers my previous struggles with line layouts in html will note that I seem to have solved the problem!

CAFÉ IN CROMER

On a bleak sea promenade
where the seagulls soar and scream
lights behind a steamed window
promise warmth and refuge from the
grey wind that carries rain.
People hunch among the dark tables
and smeared vinyl of the floor.
Pleasure? Do we visit
such places for pleasure or
need? A thick white cup
half-full of pale brown
- the tint of which says tea, tea
babied by over-milking –
and that nameless lump
yellow on the plate, a thin
line of red promising sweetness:
will these items sustain
or please?
               The grim posture, the
downturn of an old woman’s mouth
defy speculation. Who can know
what need brings her here,
what loneliness in a tidy flat
over a dust-flecked hearth?

©C.M.M.

Amtrak: Williamsburg - New York

Train arriving
Originally uploaded by goforchris

A tall train, necessitating
two small steps for us
to board. The announcements
begin with the first
halt: We will be continuing
momentarily. We do
Thank you for your patience.
We flash past Quantico –
a marine base on a river –
where the Presidential helicopters
crouch beside the track.
Potomac river is frozen over
before the Washington icons
glimpsed through gaps
in nondescript structures.
An iceberg forms beneath
a tap left running
on the platform where
the workers wear
padded red tartan shirts.
The temperature is
significantly lower than
when you boarded – and
we feel tended, somehow,
as we glide past
Baltimore slums towards
the wolf-howl sirens
and crawling yellow cabs
like beetles in the snow
and the brown-sugar slush
and the tireless heroisms
of the men who clear the streets day and night in
New York City.

© C.M.M.

Mobile Bay

Sunset 1
Originally uploaded by goforchris

Ice falls in the freezer with a
sound of distant guns.
A pelican sits hunched above
the private fishing pier
and the pampas grass is rustling
in the wind across the bay.
The towers on the blue line
where water meets the sky
give two fingers to the wind’s threat
of destruction held at bay
and the duskless shadows lengthen
as the sun drops to the sea
in the amber of the evening
and the log-fired cocktail hour.

© C.M.M. 11/07

Conflict

In the dust-laden ochre
Where our fear is embodied
Storms death sent from heaven, and
Here on our quiet hills
Rain falls, gently.

In the wind a wild keening
Binds victim to victim through
Stone-broken desert while
Quiet in my garden a
Bird sings, alone.

High above a grey shadow,
Its long wings extended,
Brings the end of all loving as
Over our altars the
Spirit drifts, weeping.

C.M.M.

Catriona

Beautiful, no?
Originally uploaded by goforchris

What do they see, such
Dark eyes, liquid and huge
In this small face?
Eyes that have looked on heaven
In the close darkness
Of a long growing and
Emerged, calm and unblinking
To this sudden daylight wakening,
Untroubled by the world’s grief,
Yet carrying an innocent knowledge of all things.
I cannot look away, as this
Small sorceress holds my gaze
In hers. The invisible thread
Tightens, reformed again,
Tying me to this new life.

©C.M.M. 08/07