I lie in a cooling bath on New Year’s Day
thinking about redemption,
unresolved

Outside the streets are empty,
reluctant to make a start:
the sky is gallows grey, and
a half-read novel slumps on the mat

Downstairs scraps of food
wait to be cast out,
but it is too early:
my head is unprepared

The future strolls past,
glances in
and ambles onwards

It is time to wash my thinning hair:
I persuade the last shampoo
into my right hand,
knowing and forgetting
last year’s bottle is now empty

I shrug, and the water ripples:
I take the bottle in my weak left fingers
and throw it across the room
towards the bin:
an impossible shot

It goes in
without
touching
the sides

It is a new year:
there is nothing I cannot do

On the dark hills at first
shepherds watch
the dance of the stars

In the dark shelter
a fragile child,
bare arms outstretched

Outside, angels deliver
the glory of God:
heaven’s light comes down,
flows like a river

into the dark tower
where lambs
are wrapped for slaughter

Swaddling cloths
are borrowed:
like a lamb,
the child
is covered

ready for sacrifice
full of glory
full of light

Shepherds rush in
out of the darkness:
and the night dissolves

During the tenth day
under a single-minded sun
the thickening air conjures
shapes out of nothing:
dazed rabbits, uncertain insects
and something unclear,
beyond the trees

The mountain shifts uneasily
afraid of faith that comes by heat, not light,
on this quiet Sunday
where stillness broods
on the face of the earth

Those who would climb
turn back, unseasonably scarred,
finding nowhere to hide
in the scorched and holy rocks

Those who can fly do so,
while those who remain touch nothing,
create no miracles:
time itself fades,
and colour drains from the tree
clinging to a fragile cliff

Sometimes I step out of the wood
on to a straw-covered path:
a warm wind brushes the hill

Sometimes the woodland ways are too steep,
and the square, unbedded stones
bite into my sole

Sometimes I go on and
sometimes I go back
looking for a place so thin that
even I cannot mistake it

Always there is
the witching wood, and
I am knot-lost,

confronted by an angel who knows
the time and the place
and will uncover me

Feeling not despair but desire,
I recognise boneland,
the place of transition

where the turbulence of time
ebbs like a lackadaisical tide

and leaves me stretched
helplessly on the bare beach
holding on to godliness
but surrounded by demons

and the fishes of galilee:
trodden on,
transformed

I wrote this poem after walking  a footpath near Holt and visiting a bookshop

Injecting ice
into the crack of dawn,
the east wind knocks twice
on my eyelids,
but no-one is in

This short poem was commended in the Norwich Writers’ Circle open competition this year and appears in their anthology

When you reach that place
you are translated
and I can no longer read you

A tightrope walker has been at work,
running the risk of getting the balance wrong
and falling

or a ferryman,
bringing you across rough seas
for whatever price is right

maybe an alchemist,
changing you from clay to gold
in little more than an instant

Now I am left with a commentary
that tries to unravel you
in my own language

tries to describe the unknowable journey
and the place you reached

I can no longer read you for myself
you are somewhere else
somewhere full of ecstasy
and empty of explanation

It is good to see you there