Month: July 2020

He stamped his feet and looked down
At the unlaced familiar boots
And their soil. How he welcomed
Its clinging, its living, its smell
Of earth and its companionship
On this journey of dying.
Like that year in its autumnal grace
Of harvesting and planting, he was
Harvesting his loving kindness from
His midsummer field – and planting
Pale tulips of hope
To stand like sentinels at the door and
To gaze upon the silence of
This coming Infinity and
This long goodbye. I say hello.

Leigh Cook, Sliema, Malta, 8.11.2013

Let this, then, be my object of obsession
my indiscreet fetish
my own Privy Counsel
my recurrent peccadillo:

lay out the leather
for the naked workers
to skilfully put together
by patched moonlight;

and trim and thimble-stitch their clothes,
lit by eyesight and attentive candle,
in return for the grace
of a mid-life insight:

to do the deeds done
for those who can never repay them
and admit the singing of the rule:
the rule of the love of the doing.

Dominic Mathews