Winter Solstice Blessing
I am out salting the steps
My breath pluming in the frozen darkness
This frosted earth all still,
All waiting.
I am salting the steps so we may light the path
For Lord Rama,
For the miracle lamps of Hannukah
For the Yule log to burn bright so we can bravely say
We have enough wood to keep the darkness at bay.
At bay,
And all along each shore and out over stirring seas all rolling
Our lightship is still burning
Signalling like a firefly
We are here, are you there ? We are here, are you there ?
Our little nodes of connection glimmering with care,
Fairy lights strung along our mycelial bonds of affection
Multiplying incandescence against abjection.
So as we light a candle or build a fire we might hold hands and say
Praise to the sun and the moon and stars for lighting us this day
For our orbits and attractions, the energy of our earth,
For bringing another new year to blossom and to birth.
The Pills
Mum’s back in hospital again,
She thinks she’s been kidnapped by the IRA,
But it’s only another UTI,
Sending her temporarily demented.
She knows where she is by the time I arrive
Small and pale as the pillow
In her pink wincyette.
Needing to pee she swings her legs
Slowly out of the bed,
Sitting like a kid on the edge,
Her feet not touching the floor,
Looking up at my offered hands
Her brown eyes just as searching, and as soft, as ever.
But there on the sudden expanse of white bed revealed,
A startling slew of pills,
Red pills, yellow pills, green pills and blue.
Mum I say, you’ve been stashing your pills again.
O, don't tell them Jon, she says,
Don't tell them.
They make me feel awful.
And she wisps away to the loo,
Leaving me looking
At the dot painted rainbow of her resistance,
My love wrong footed
Stranded between
Complicity and betrayal.
Flight of the dragonfly 