Your Heart

Your heart is your most precious thing

It is beyond mere value

It is value

For it is your essence

No one can own it

Only you may choose to ignore it

Only you can give it away

Sometimes, events will play their part

People too, though heart is not love or lust

It is what comes after

When no one is there

When the world has disappeared

And only the truth remains

There your heart beats

For all eternity

You may be wrong in how you act

But your heart is never wrong

It always knows

Ensure your heart beats to a rhythm

You Play Upon My Mind

You play upon my mind

A distant melody of sense

As soundings of a far off land

Remembered, revered, intense

That once did live and breathe

The mystery of its holy presence

Yet you are denied to me

I see you now but hard

A face that comes and goes

Both in and out

Found and unfound

Resisted from within

While yet untouched

Inching its tremulous way

Unblinking to the light

You are within me and without

An echo for a new unchartered life

I hardly know but for the smile

That played upon your face

As light upon on the settled sea

So must love be

That seeks to leave its monument.

You May Break My Rainbow

You may break my rainbow if you like

Take my dreams, my hopes, my breath

And lay each one upon a bed of nails

Of bitter scorned contempt

You may wipe the stains of sin

And make a mother’s garden bloom

But I’ll not forget

Those blows in youth

Or teeth red ripped from innocence

You may make the world believe

The power you wield has good intent

Yet forever shall I know and feel

The tone you used to those we loved

To beat defiance, to bend their will

While never asking how it went

In life, in joy, their own magnificence

No value there for pools of wealth

We did but try and fail, we know that much

Who never stopped to think

That while you prosper others sink

Each passing breath upon the human tale

The outcome of mere measured chance

Two worlds of you and me

Soon lost, still less forgotten

A testament to an underling's ignored lament.

White Cliffs

White cliffs recede

Beyond the wash

And calling of the gulls

That mark your leaving

To another land

Now you are gone

The air sounds heavy laden

With your voice, your scent

Yet your kiss

Still lingers on my lips

To speak again for us

That yearn to see an end

To hearts that beat alone

For I have heard the morning mass

I have seen that French terrace

Where lovers come to meet

And touch and say again

Those words made holy

By the passing of the years

For you are my equal,

Not my shadow

You are my friend

And not some sequel still to come

You are my confidant

That hopes that age is only made of time

More finite than the vast expanse divine

Where we shall be as one

Then shall the cormorant fly

Then shall the ferry come

And I in peace can die.

An Old Poet's Love Song

If we seek a yearning to be free

And wish an essence that we alone can be

Then let go the past

Set loose your mind upon a wider, open sea

And leave behind the Larkins of this world

And all his fretted kind

Who argue over structure and the metre

Their lives beset by index cards and stamp

In airless rooms of pallid oak, formica tops and tweed

Where are all the other voices

That called their souls

To voice a truth upon that grey benighted era

Was he the only one

To write of cunts and lifeless sex

A self absorbed and dedicated wanker

Whose fame was left unchallenged

To run and run as ants do crave

A little moment in the sun

Go back you clever man

And learn again the truth of life

That fiddling with your words and rhymes

Make you not a man of high regard

But a peddler of the second hand

No spirit there, or soul’s lament

Just worked up tears

For lies of platitude and gnomic utterance

In four slim tomes of poetry misspent.

A Walk in Normandy

She walks alone these paths of old

Each one a skein of dew

New borders for a forgotten land

Steep mossy banks adieu

Here thoughts are playthings

Of a troubled heart

Each stride new worries bring

And all around these sodden parts

Lie memories of fallen youth

Who died because we told them so

Who fought for why we soon forgot

As buzzards circle for their kill

The moles beneath are still

For rotten corpses enrich this earth

A talus made from empty promise

A tyrant’s or a lover’s word

This ancient soil

This earth, this sacred ground

Is where the truth be found.

Can You Imagine

Can you imagine

A time

When we are no longer one

The sea breeze silent

The river slowed

The linden frozen along the Hauptstrasse

The wheat no longer whispers in their field

Not the times when we have not spoken

Or you have other things

That must be done

Or you have found love

Lost it

Then loved again

These things pass and come again

But here where the snow lies caked to stone

Upon the unrich earth

The crows ascendant

No memory but the last

Your laugh, your smile, your gentle hand

Upon these tears that wet and sting

Oh that I could sing and dance

Cry pity to the wind and rain

For I have seen this other land

And felt the touch of a stranger’s hand

Leading I know not where

But darkness sure

If you’re not there.

A Time

There will come a time

When we will choose

To turn to face the first few rays of sun

That creep upon a headland

Broad cut upon an ocean

Strong shadows on a beach

Where we are known to walk

Through shallow foam and sinking sand

Here shall we find

An easy rhythm unfixed by others

Sufficient to ourselves

Here shall we breathe

And taste dried salt upon our lips

Not from tears and sweat

Or fear, or guilt, or obligation

Such things must pass

And cede their place

To grass reeded dunes

Where your taste can linger long

And we are watched by seabirds

Calling witness to our love

Stretched out upon the strand

Dead to that passing world

Yet born again alive

To us as one

A lovers hand, a light caress

The only traces left

Upon the windswept land.

John Rawlinson Poetry