Category: Poetry

The rich young man – Mark 10:17-31

This was the subject of a poetry writing workshop at a diocesan training day. Here is my effort:

For years I carried deep within my soul
An aching void I never would admit
But filled the space with empty piety
Applauded by the professional elite.

Yet though I bore a name the hunger grew
– And empty rites quenched not my appetite –
And so I gave myself to worldly wealth
Yet searched with anxious heart to find the light.

That’s why one day I knelt down in the dirt
Before the one some claimed to be the Christ.
What did I want? I cannot rightly tell:
Approval? Challenge? Not sacrifice,

Of that I could be sure. My money was
My shield against the emptiness within,
So when He said to give it all away
I found myself confronted by my sin,

And yet too proud to yield it up to Him.
With muddied knees, therefore, I rose and passed,
While on the breeze I heard Him clearly preach:
“The last shall be the first, the first the last.”

What if back then I followed His command?
Would I be now content? I cannot know.
To others I am wise and richly blessed
And yet how much I hate this hollow show.

Abbotsbury
24 Feb 24



The day before

Tomorrow, so we’re told, another storm
Will sweep in from the sea and once again
The muddy pastureland and quaggy moor
Will both be soaked by slate-grey pounding rain,

Which will enlarge and swell the upland stream
And turn its gentle flow to angry spate,
While in the shelter of the patchy scrub,
A flock of sparrows will hunker down and wait,

Until this gale abates. But not today.
Today, beneath the icy, azure sky,
We spy a busy goldcrest just above,
And as we stop to listen, by and by,

We hear the nuthatch and the long-tailed tit
A little further on amid the strands
Of tangled ivy, singing of the spring,
Despite the frost that in the hollow stands.

Now we would stop and linger more.
And yet The unrelenting city calls us home,
And so we great reluctance we return,
To our constant stream of email, text and phone.

But wait! A stranger bids us stop, be still
For in the fading sunlight, up beyond,
A kingfisher sits, all peach and neon blue,
Quite undisturbed, it seems, by the surging throng

Emerging from the school. And though the crowd
Ignores or cannot see this wondrous sight,
It is for us a sign of grace and calm,
Before the storm sweeps in this troubled night.

Tavistock
19 Jan 24