I.
Feline doings provide our daily sustenance.
Yesterday he spread the lawn with pigeon guts and feathers,
fought off the kite that swooped to claim his prize,
went arse up in the bucket holding raked up feathers
garnered in a bucket for subsequent disposal.
He leaps, he growls, he purrs, he sleeps for Iceland.
He entertains us harmlessly with vicious leaps
and manic rages round imaginary courses.
II.
The pricks of spring are forcing through
the grumpy soil. Here come the illusory burst
of vital juice - I'll cobweb-purge the shed! Get
on my bike! Rationalise cupboards, herding all
the pulses into pens, clear labelled. Make a new list
for March, ultimate act of faith that stuff
will actually get done, and not log-jam behind
the stop and start of relatively joyless jaunts.
III.
Counter-intuitively, the past three months
of sitting, talking, reading,
eating and drinking, talking some more,
in retrospect have been a rest-cure
both literally and not. Life has been different,
will never be the same. It is a marker,
a before and after space. How am I changed?
The restlessness, the dread, the disappointment
are dropping tendrils, like pseudopanax ferox,
emblem of forlorn hope, now dying piecemeal,
one spine at a time.
IV.
Lord, may I never take
sunlight for granted. Sun of righteousness,
scatter the darkness, oh, fair glory
of the holy angels, light up the staircase
leading to heaven. I may only make
it to the bottom step, but let me see
the heavenward heading flight.
At least I'll know, though I fall
there is a pathway dimly within sight
worth climbing after all.
V.
This hymn-like versifying is much harder that it looks.
Each time we sing a hymn that rhymes and scans
and isn't theologically dubious, or absurd,
we should be grateful. But we blithely take
Charles Wesley, Herbert, Newman, Neale
for granted, as if they were the norm
not the divine exception to the dross
of worship songs and doggerel.
A friend in Kiwi Christchurch, Marnie, got a gong
for services to hymn-writing, no less.
A culture, mostly godless,
getting its values right. Father Jonathan today
dwelt on the stirring beauty of the hymn
Christ, whose glory. Then he pointedly
forewent the chance to urge the Lord to Shine,
or the river (who is he, or she?) to Flow.
Now there's a priest who knows
just where his towel is.
VI.
The spring burst channels into clear and clean
and throw things out. Which may sound like routine
but buoyancy results. I am not stuck
in a relentless downward to the rut.
It's possible to change, do different,
learn how to rhyme. A forlorn hope.