wings are flickering, a single motion

like a school of fish that are as one.

To empathize is built within. We know

that dogs are not our kin yet they will often

yawn in harmony with us, and geese

in straight formation fly, each knowing when

to flap their wings together in the breeze.

How is it then that men deny this gene

that carries us like rivers to the sea –

a single mind, an effortless regime

of common purpose? May we come to be

united, as when cockatoos in flight,

in sympathy, as one, are drenched in light.

29.

A tree marks life, its circles within circles

are memorials of time, internal

orbits of the sun, a chronicle

of storms and heat, the passions of external

things, recorded in its living being.

The night is marked by rings of fire, signs

of ancient times, whose history is seen

long after stars have passed to dust. My

past is written in my genes, a spiral

history of my family and of man.

The circles within circles of the tides

of time were written before time began –

the prophet saw them in the sky, the tree

rings of the world the universe will be.

34.

Three thousand years between your birth and mine.

I stand here in the place where you began,

and see the moon that measures all that time

has measured here as well, Jerusalem.

Men’s lives have passed you in its ancient stream,

the kingdoms of this world have come and gone,

yet like the moon that wanes, as in a dream,

you are reborn and wax again. The sun

is ruler of the day and night – men’s chance

of life that never can return. The moon,

however, constantly renews, a dance

of mystery – the one whose open tomb

is witness. Rocks may hold your ancient dead,

beneath the moon they rise from stony beds.

36.

How beautiful you were the day I saw you,

sitting on a table, swinging your long

legs. You didn’t know what lay before you

as the world swung round the sun. The song

of birds that welcomes day and without sorrow

greets the night was yours to sing; and like

the bells refract the ocean’s call of sorrow,

formed anew in sounds of joy and light,

you heard the music of the heart and sought

to make it bright. How beautiful you are

to me – the song of birds at dawn I sought,

the cry of gulls that seek the sea. The star

at night, the sun by day, accompany

the life that you and I together see.

46.

Onions are amazing things – rings

enclosed by rings within a sphere, and so

it is – the day rings night and even death,

enclosing life, is ringed again with light.

You ask from where do onions spring? Where they

begin is in the dark, beneath the surface

of the world. And there they grow, while high

above their tall leaves reach into the blue.

Each journey to the sky creates a ring

that circles round the ring that was before.

My history is rings enclosing rings,

and yours, and the whole universe, where sun

and stars and light and dark all circle round

the flaming heart that reaches into all.

47.

They ring on special days, on marriages

and deaths, and weekly for the resurrection.

They ring in cycles of the mind, in slow

unfolding patterns, where each bell, a number

in a chain, is moved in shifting sequence

till it finds its place again, to settle

at the end where it began. At times

our life is like a cork that bobs upon

the sea, and days appear as numbered strokes

of nameless destiny. But in the music

of the bells we hear another sound –

of numbers settling into ceaseless praise,

and sweetness rising up to fill our days.

54.

One gum tree on a hill next to a road,

it’s mostly dead although some leaves are there.

It measured time, its shadow always showed

the passing of the light through the pure air.

The tree has stood there for a hundred years,

a second hand of an eternal clock.

It soon will fall to mark what we should fear,

the passing of the light upon a rock.

Is time alone the measurement it keeps,

lonely on a hill accept for sky?

A hundred epic cycles in it sleep,

written in a soul that unseen flies

to reach towards a meaning yet untold,

the measurement of things beyond this world.

56.

A stone falls in a pond, the ripples carry

echoes of that moment to the rim

in circle after circle, marrying

origin to end. At the beginning

of the universe, when time and space

were one, a moment birthed the multitude

of things, expanding in concentric arcs

of power. So the world has been renewed,

the face of time pierced by the One. His sign –

a cross, an empty tomb, a hurricane

within a room – we feel it realign

our inner being. What was, ever the same

shall be, the centre of eternity,

has reached our shore like ripples on the sea.

65.

Is life a mirror of itself? Beginning

in simplicity it rises like a

bird in flight, surveys the world, and turning,

flies into simplicity of night.

Before we were the world was as it is,

the sea and clouds and stars and hills where there,

and when we go they will be still. I listen

to the wind, invisible as air

to all who see. It blows from here to there

and there to here. It drops and then it lifts

again, so unpredictable. But here

my life a mirror is, I once exist,

I once did not, and so my life returns,

I once exist and then I don’t, I learn.

71.

In a humble piece of wood a sculptor

around both night and day and maybe sees

with tiny eyes the great expanse they call

the sky how can it know what it will be

when like a seed beneath a tree that sends

its roots into the soil and finds a tiny

shoot uncurls mysteriously from deep

within it also finds its body grows

to be what tadpoles ought to be but

knew not as they swam around both night

and day beneath the sun and stars that came

across the pond in which they came one day

to be and grew as seeds beneath a tree

to be a frog as we become as he.