This journey ends.
Many others begin.
Poetry has been a central part of the Proost lent journey, so it seems entirely appropriate to end this one with a final glorious burst. To this end, we offer this Proost Poetry Podcast recording…
We are so grateful to Hannah Caroe and Tim Watson for their contribution to this podcast.
For those who avoid Spotify—we are working on alternative hosting, but in the meantime, I uploaded this chat to YouTube as well.
Here are the poems featured in this chat..
HANNAH’S POEMS
Loss
Careless, perhaps
to lose a mummy
and a daddy.
It was complicated, but
I loved them so.
Grief is a funny thing
(with feathers?)
Are they true,
the prophet’s words?
‘The deeper your cup
is carved with pain
the more joy you can contain’.
I’d like to think so.
Certainly
the work of grief
connects us
with hidden life inside.
So we can know
‘life in all
its fullness’.
We all love
so we all know grief
We’re all, it seems
losing our
bright and brimming
beautiful
Earth.
Grieve with us,
Lord.
May we together
weep new rivers
(rushing, clear
and filled with salmon)
new seas
(with icebergs
and teeming reefs)
and a new world.
.
A vase of bluebells on Good Friday
Plucked minutes ago
bowing
at Your head hung low.
Gathered
in my parents’ milk jug
each flower bashful almost
amongst so many.
Beyond the window
a leaden sky hangs:
today’s daytime darkness.
In three days You rise –
we are the blessed ones
knowing this. But
for now
in that hellish hinge
of history and place
hope is eviscerated.
And it is night.
.
Cornwall: sea haar 16.10.24
Tamarisk leaves
(fragile, sea-green)
lined with mist’s dampness.
Waves breathe in attendant air.
Piskies, Bessy’s, Kenneggy.
The end of Cudden Point
(ponies’ home). A creased-map
landmark
we know is there
but cannot now see.
Rooks. Seagulls
wing the morning.
Here, nigh at Land’s
End, have we come to
the end of all we know?
Beware!
beyond lie: dragons
dolphins?
dreams…
TIM’S POEMS
Weeds (part of the Storm Rage Fire Burn poetry project)
The weeds will overtake us
as we run and there will be
no place left to hide
no place left to us
for we have sold our treasure
for the spoils of a moment
and the memory of the ear
this longer than even
our greatest dreams
.
On Discernment
It is a process of becoming
Of patiently unearthing
Timeless etchings and markings
Hidden deep withinTracing fine lines
Streams of living water
Seeping through clay and dust and skin
It is a following of sorts
Quieter than we are used to
With no assurance
Of where it will one day lead
CHRIS’S POEMS
Christus
Not Messiah, but memory –
You are what we once forgot.
Woodsmoke.
A curve of earth
Towards completeness.
Not God, but goodness –
You are what we left behind.
Compost.
A fecundity of light
Awakes this forest floor.
Not Risen, but wide open –
We are not just the sum of skin.
Mycelium.
An animal whom, despite of evolution
Finds value most in kindness.
Not Saviour but revelator –
We search the stars in vain.
Insemination.
A pulse pounds insistently when
There should by rights be silence
.
Golgotha
It was not the end you’d want
But (as it turned out) it was no end at all
Instead, flowers still grew,
Birds still sang
Children still laughed
The still-moon dipped it’s still rim
Into the still-blue sea of Galilee.
It was a terrible place to die
But (as it turned out) we did not die at all
Instead, we stood waist-deep
Reeking from the worst of what
Old Golgotha was, and
We were not consumed
We were not doomed.
It was a place of no return
But (as it turned out) return indeed we did
To the garden that grew us
To the mother that made us
To the brother who broke us
To the spirit that woke us
In our Golgotha
