Touching Heaven

I bent and touched the ground and fallen leaves
That lay and curled and crisply browned the earth.
It doesn't matter what a man believes,
Whether of dying or of springtime birth.
What matters is the touch, the grasp, the feel;
These are the things which truly are the real.

I  smelt the autumn leaves, the moulding soil,
And closed my eyes and felt the touch of mist:
I heard the sounds of countrymen who toil,
The sounds and sights I never can resist.
My mind and soul succumb to nature's spell;
I've touched the earth, and sense here Heaven as well.

God stays and looks at me and I at Him;
We pause together and we share the day.
The sun begins to sink, the light grows dim
And God has said what He has got to say.
It matters not if you believe or no,
Faith is the landscape where we all can go.

And when the baby cries or smiles at me,
Or when the child turns and grasps my hand,
Or when a tear in lovers' eyes I see,
I recognise they somehow understand.
They know that Heaven awaits us all nearby,
Where God will smile and sing His lullaby.

Absent muse

Whatever happened to my muse?
Has she gone off to warmer climes
Now that the gloom of winter's here?
Has she got tired of my mutterings
Deciding it is time to disappear?

I don't mind that for after all
She kept me much awake at night
And nagged me in the middle of the day
And dragged me from the lingering sight
Of beauty on a summer's day.

Oh yes she was a mistress hard,
Keeping me always to my task
With no respite.   She said if bard
You wish to be then heed when asked
And take your pen and write.
And so I did for many a day and night!

Now year on writing year has passed
And she, my muse, has fled at last.
I said I do not mind, and it is so.
I bade her many times to go.
But now I sometimes question why
She took my pen when off she went?
Yet asking gets me no reply:
She's gone and she will not relent!

Painters

HITCHENS

Wash -

Slabs of colour representing

Streams of light and shade imaging

Each splash.

BACON

Straining people from now

In pictures from the past;

Flesh cum flesh cum bloody meat,

And how!

NASH

War speaks to us all:

Hatchets of shapes staggering the skies,

And fields of blood - death asking why

We have to remember.

HOCKNEY

Bradford in Los Angeles.

The light of colours,

Bright to the point of brash,

Splashing the warehouse walls.

VAN GOGH

Pays Bas in Paris,

Sans ear and health and mind,

Attacked by the waiting rooks

At the Reaper's harvest time.

Jacob's well

I come here everyday and sit awhile,
Thinking of my life and what has passed;
My lonely life - it really makes you smile
When you see what has gone, and, oh, how fast!

This well we've used for centuries of years,
Left by our father, Jacob, so they say,
A place to sit and gossip with our peers
And draw the water that we'll use today.

A place to drink and quench the sun-caused thirst,
Damp dryness from the dust of rocky ways;
A place to ponder things, the best, the worst,
The glories and the tragedies of days.

Today I came as I have always done,
And here a stranger came and spoke to me,
Sought water as we chattered in the sun.
Although He was a man from Galilee.

Judaeans and Samarians never speak,
The enmity between us lies too deep.
And yet He asked directly, not oblique,
As though He was my kin. Was I asleep?

And did I dream the many things He said
About my life? How could this man have known?
Was He a prophet and a man of God,
Or even the Messiah? Had I known,

He said I would have asked Him for a drink
And He would living water give to me.
Waters that live? What was a girl to think?
And no more thirst? How could that come to be?

And then He talked to me of God and man,
And of Messiah too, now here with me.
He was Messiah, I, Samaritan,
Had met with Him, this man from Galilee.

I rushed into the town to tell them all
And back they came to see Him, hear His word.
This Son of God would lift us from the fall
And from all evil. Now it has occurred

To me to think about the matters of my life;
The things I've done, and said, that I ought not;
The things omitted, left unloved, the untrue wife,
Things that I'd left and thought I'd long forgot.

Messiah has told all and I, at peace,
Can turn to God and live a newborn way;
For now my spirit, in this new release,
Will sing to God in praise till Judgement Day.

Sing out the praise of Him from Galilee,
Who has sat here and turned to us His face;
Praise God and praise His Son with me,
All you who come to shelter in this place.

The Kingdom of Heaven

Can you not see?   Have you not heard?   I thought

That all the world knew of this thing.

The grain of mustard seed is surely sought

By those who know, just so that they can bring

The story to a world which lies asleep,

In darkness where the light cannot yet touch,

And distant thoughts of grace are all that keep

The last abyss at bay.   We know that such

Seed beds will soon receive the Gospel truth

To take it as their own that they might grow

And they and we reach to the Cross.   We both

Will be a mustard tree, which all will know.

So spreads the Word, and so God's Kingdom here

Will come again and darkness disappear.

Winter walk

white

and cold

crisp

ice blast

and crunchy 

blow

hands

burning and

red

  sparkling 

crystals of

snow

Tell me the truth

Tell me the truth.
Do not hide it;
Do not conceal, or reveal
It in a different form.
Tell me as it is.
Do not disguise,
Nor, feeling wise,
And anxious to protect,
Tell it in some other way;
But just the truth
In its reality.
Tell me now
That I might know its form,
Its shape and its totality.
Tell me the truth.
Do not protect me.
Do not tell me something else.
Tell me the truth!

Wallpaper

I see thee from the corner of my eye

Standing stiff and proud; and now enrolled

Thou threateneth me.   I understand not why.

I know that soon thy challenge will unfold

Though I give thee a pasting.   I’m not skilled,

And thou may paste me more ere all’s fulfilled.

I’ll take thy measure and I’ll cut thy face

Before I stretch thee out and slip and slap;

But as I pick thee up I’ll feel th’embrace

Of all thy limbs and thou wilt stick me back!

Because of this I’ll warrant thou’lt be hung

For all to see; for that’s where thou belong.

Fossils

Fossils

How the wind blows to make the waves play

On Mappleton Beach on a fierce winter’s day.

How the surf crashes and, breaking, it roars,

Grabbing the cliff in its spray-spitting jaws.

How the cliff falls to the waves’ fierce embrace;

How the clay crumbles all over the place,

Shedding its burden of thousands of years

So that many-formed, aeons-old, life reappears.

Metamorphed stones from some unknown seabed,

How still lies the life that the dying cliffs shed:

Belemnites, ammonites, crinoids and more

Litter the living and dying seashore.

And you and I wander and wonder and look

Trying to read more of this palaeo-book.

Chapter on chapter is opened.   Then more

Is given to us as we walk through the door

Of the past brought to present, the exposing of years

Of vanished creation.   Once more it appears.

Collect where you can, for soon the new tide

Will reach out again and brush all here aside.

So brave the waves’ retching and all the spray tears

And stroll once again in this garden of years;

Relish these times as we walk the beach shelves:

We’ll all soon be gone to this earth home ourselves.

Lament for a dead hedgehog

The staring eyes of night in fast succession 
Reach through the threads of heaven, where they fall, 
Pearling the glass and darkly metalled road.   
How can my soul lament?   How can I feel 
For this life crushed beneath my careless wheel.   

Now in the dry, the dawn, the day's new light,
He lies where he was slain – who grieves his plight?

The faerie wood

There's a faerie wood on a mountainside
By a darkland glen with a stream beside;
And into the wood the fay folk ride,
As the moon hides behind the clouds.

I heard the sound of the elfinhorn,
As the first light's glow announced the dawn,
And the wood grew still as the day was born,
To banish the faerie crowd.

"Don't enter the wood, my bonny young bride,
Stay in our bed, stay here at my side."
But my love had fled for her heart had lied,
As to the faerie she rode.

There's a faerie prince on a faerie horse
Who rides in the wood as the faerie hunts course,
Chasing the hare through bracken and gorse
In the depths of the faerie wood.

That prince has stolen my own dark bride,
The girl who I took to stay by my side
Forever. The sad night owls cried
To see her enter the wood.

She was my bride for so few hours,
Dressed in lace and bedecked with flowers.
She held me, we kissed in our nuptial bower,
But now she is gone to the wood.

"Macushla, I weep for your raven hair.
My sweetheart I grieve for your feet so bare.
My love come back to our cottage fair
And forget the faerie wood."

My voice sounds hollow and echoes the while,
I hear far laughter, the kind to beguile.
I weep to myself to remember her smile.
Now she's left me and gone for good.

"What would you want with a bride of mine?
Where will you take her to be with your kind?
Where can I look?" I know I'll not find
My love in the depths of that wood.

I have hunted and searched for many a year.
I have looked in the sunlight and when stars appear.
I have wearily searched for my own darling dear
Through the depths of that dark, dark wood.

Creation's song

Creation’s song

The mountains rise in glory whilst the forests rest below,

They make a verdant contrast to the peaks dressed white with snow;

The oceans roar their greeting and the clouds respond with storm,

The wind roars out its orders just to make the waves conform;

Till they rise in spume-topped fury and race towards the shore,

Where they smash upon the rock falls, shake the cliffs right to the core.

And I heard this distant thunder and the way all nature sings

Of the spiritual beauty of such fine material things.

For the splendour and the greatness, the gentle and the strong,

Are the individual stanzas of the great Creator’s song.

We raced across the wave tops with our sails filled by the wind,

Like the seagulls soaring freely, knowing not where they will land.

Then we dived beneath the breakers to survey the coral scene,

Watching multicoloured fishes in their thousands past us stream.

We sat upon the beaches and we looked out from the shore

Whence we seemed to see a picture that we’d never seen before.

Where did the ocean come from? From where its myriad life?

Its quietness and its calmness, its storming and its strife?

It came from out of chaos, from the great Creator’s hand;

He poured out the mighty ocean before He made the land.

Then He raised the mountains skywards with a mighty wrenching reach,

So we’d recognise the lessons that He alone can teach;

And the tempests, rains and snowstorms still wear down the jagged peaks

As they wind and whistle past them – it’s as though creation speaks

Not in a voice of softness, but with a fearful scream,

Until there comes the silence and the peace which will redeem.

So we stand and look in wonder: now there sounds a softer song,

Sung by a gentler singer to wipe out all that’s wrong.

Now there’s peace lies on the snow face and gentle is the slope,

For the world of storm and violence has become a world of hope

Where a mother holds her baby as it suckles at her breast,

Newborn nature’s miracle lying quietly at rest.

The bonding of its parents, the statement of their love

Is the trinity of family like the Trinity above.

This fragile human being demanding human care,

From its parents finding peace and love and tenderness to share –

All these are part of nature, each has its part to play

In the statement of creation; their lives have much to say.

Whether mighty beating ocean, or jagged mountain peaks,

Or trees or flowers or people, through them all creation speaks

Of the mighty hand of Goodness, of the power of the Lord,

Of the judgement and destruction, the sentence and the sword;

Of the gently caring mercy and the all embracing peace,

And the care of our Creator Whose Love will never cease.

Beneath a cross

Beneath a cross

I stand beneath a cross upon a hill,

And looking up into the eyes of God,

I feel the pain and hurt as time stands still.

The anguish of the Christ here suffering will

Succeed in making us the friends of God

Now hung upon this cross upon a hill.

Can we believe in Him who hangs until

We feel the cleansing of His pouring blood

And share His pain and hurt as time stands still;

Or will we yet again reject God’s will,

Ignoring what He’s promised, what He did,

And hang Him on this cross upon a hill?

Man lies and cheats and steals and has His fill

Of all dark things, rejecting what is good,

Ignoring pain and hurt as time stands still.

So does mankind forever tend to kill,

Rather than protect the things he should,

Whilst standing by a cross upon a hill,

Ignoring pain and hurt as time stands still.

Crucifixion

Good Friday

A wooden cross leads on to death.

There is no height, nor depth

Past which it will not reach;

For it will breach the very doors of death

Itself, and lead on to eternal life.

The eternal God cries out Himself

In manhood’s self gained agony.

There is no loss of life in death –

Not in this agonising final breath

Which He is breathing out for me.

This cross will bring us in the end

To a moment of eternity

Wherein the world, and all it is, will die.

Die? Yes! But then He’ll rise again

And reach divine hands out to me.

God grant that as I stand and watch

I’ll feel the hurt and know the pain.

Grant, in this moment, I might catch

A glimpse of where His suffering leads:

May I, through His death, new life gain.

Crucifixion

Crucifixion.

The day is dark and darker grows the night,

For night has come before the day has passed;

A mother dares to look on such a sight,

Her hanging, nailed son has breathed His last.

In front of her the tree is lonely, flanked

By others of the same, where they are ranked

Bearing the bodies of two condemned thieves.

They rant against their fate and taunt the Son.

One speaks in torment but there’s one believes

An innocent hangs here. What has He done?

[Into a timeless warp of space there hangs

Eternity and all eternal Love.

Of sorrow gone the solid silence sings

Casting torn veils to the heavens above.

He bleeds and dies, we weep and hopeless wait,

And wonder if this cross can be the gate?]

The soldiers wile away the weary wait

Beneath the cross by casting careless dice.

Their pay they risk but what about His fate?

They care not; let the judgement passed suffice.

Divide His clothes to augment their meagre pay,

But not the seamless robe – they let that stay.

To speed their death (for day soon breathes its last)

One checks and breaks the legs of the two thieves

But the blessed spirit now has sighed and passed;

Spear pierces flesh; the observing guard believes!

Reach down this battered body from the cross;

Reach down the bruised and rough torn flesh of God;

Reach down the Christ and, Mother, hold your loss:

And yet she knows this moment is for good.

Now all mankind breathless awaits first light,

The Easter sunrise banishing death’s dark night!

[Buried is the moment and the death

Of this expression of eternal love;

The sorrowing mother holds her final breath

And weeps her doloured tears to heaven above.

Now all must wait and waiting, all endure –

To wait and hope Love’s resurrection’s sure!]

None so blind

None so blind

When you were lying, bleeding, dying

Did I walk by in pride?

Did I avert my shameful eyes

And pass on the other side?

When you were hanged on a cross for me

Did I at the time deny?

Through blood filled eyes that could hardly see

You looked your question: Why?

And when at last they laid your head

In a tomb hid from earthly light,

Did I help roll the stone to bury the dead

Lest my conscience quake at the sight?

Then how can I ask you now to forgive

Whilst my guilt is a weight of shame?

Yet I know no more how I might live

Save in your holy name.

Via Crucis

Via Crucis

Weep now, my soul, for shortly comes the hour

When earth and heaven meet and die,

When creation’s blood is giv’n to pour

In answer to our last despairing cry.

Judge not, lest you are judged; but judged he is

And sentenced to a cruel death on wood,

Wood he must carry to a bitter hill

On which he’s nailed and fastened for our good.

Who greets him on his way or shares his grief?

Simon, Veronica, his mother, all are there.

Women mourn as it is their belief,

“Weep for yourselves,” he says, “your own despair.”

He falls but dragged upright he stays his course –

The soldiers will not let him die too soon.

Simon bears the wood, as soldiers force

Strong shoulders on this Friday afternoon.

He hangs three hours and sometimes speaks a word:

“Take this my mother, John and be her son.”

“Join me in paradise,” the good thief heard;

“I thirst,” he breathes then gasps and cries, “It’s done!”

His body hangs on this foul gibbet cross

Until it is allowed it shall be taken

To Mary, who, mourning her bitter loss

Yet knows the tortured world is not forsaken.

Of all of us, she lives and trusts in God,

Your father; she knows not quite how or when

But only that his hand fulfils the deed;

And that you’ll live and love and heal again.

The Apostles

The Apostles

Twelve men; an odd bunch all.

Who’d pick them to start a revolution?

Twelve men, not much to look at,

A motley crew – could be taken

For the lager louts of their time!

Twelve men of working class origins,

Not to be trusted – but trust was theirs.

Twelve men to shape a world or catch a fish,

Betrayers, traitors and doubters, they.

Yet they could leap from the boat

And tread their way across the deep,

Braving storms because of who He was.

They could step into the cauldron

Of middle-eastern politics

Trodden down by a despot’s heels;

Swallowed in a mighty empire’s grasp;

Forgotten outpost of a seething, plotting nation;

Despite which they stood out in the street

And preached the good (the glorious) news

That all men are free (and women too.)

There is no more domination;

No nation can control the hand of God,

Reaching from a rough hewn cross

His bloody hand to mother and to son.

A mighty wind blows them across the world.

A spirit lights their lives with tongues of flame.

They cry in love and peace the name

Above all names; cried to a hungry world.

And then they die, killed to live forever.

Your kingdom comes apace through these,

Your chosen few, who have become an army

Crying out for justice in a bitter paining world.

Maranatha is their call, the cross their banner,

And the song of angels is their battle cry.

Victory and Empire have been won

By our God who will rule forever.

A loved one's eyes

A loved one’s eyes.

It is, I think, a lovely thing, and wise

When holding hands or strolling side by side

To smile and gaze into your loved one’s eyes.

And I will tell you something more besides

Those things which only fools have yet defined:

Love is indeed a lovely thing, and wise.

And when you hear a baby’s gentle cries,

Responding to your reassuring chide:

Then smile and gaze into your loved one’s eyes.

The sadness in our hearts, a smile belies,

But by a loved one will not be decried –

Love is indeed a lovely thing, and wise.

Though all the world will wallow in its lies

And laugh at love, or even more, deride:

Still, smile and gaze into your loved one’s eyes.

For in the end we all must recognise

What things to grasp and what to cast aside:

Then know it is a lovely thing and wise,

To smile and gaze into your loved one’s eyes.

Feast of Love

The feast of Love

The cross weeps freely with Love’s holy blood;

Extended arms in violent agonies

Writhe in the anguished pains of death,

Their gift of Love.

A stone stands rolled, unsealing death;

For death is dead and Love at last lives on

To share across the ages God’s new gift,

The gift of Love.

“This is my body, given now in Love;

My blood which wept in death in Love;

My spirit, risen for my Father’s Love,

My shared Love.”

“So share with me, serving each one in Love;

Receive me and I’ll live in you in Love;

Creation will sing out with you and Me

My song of Love.”

Oh would I were a little child

Oh would I were a little child.

Oh, would I were a little child

To see the splendour of the field

And wonder at the flowers wild.

Oh, would I had a simple view

Of every tiny thing that grew

And gathered in the morning dew.

Oh, would I had the greatest trust

In God’s provision from the dust

Of all I need – such things I must.

I must respond in prayer to Him

Who lights my darkest corners, dim

With all my fears. My heart would brim

With greater love and joy and peace.

I’d walk with Him and never cease

To thank my God for my release.

Please, Lord, make me a little child

In heart and soul. Thus may I yield

A greater harvest from life’s field!

Peter J Ainscough

Journeys

Journeys

For days the sun keeps pouring out it’s unrepentant heat

On yellow sands and hard baked earth, too burning hot for feet

To tread their cindery journey, or to progress on their way,

Until the night-time’s tempering has redeemed the cooler day.

I watched the night-time schooner regain the harbour wall,

Protected from the sea’s storms and the unforgiving squall;

The sails once set out proudly now tattered, hanging down,

Displaying hard fought victory to the ignorance of the town.

Across the painted sky and acknowledging the clouds

Flies a spitfire spouting victory for the benefit of crowds,

Whose necks are craning upwards to dare to see the sight

Of this sleek machine of slaughter, screaming loudly at the light.

And here are daring children on step stones ‘cross the beck,

Leaping lightly, skipping, (like sailors on the deck

Dancing their crazy hornpipe), no fear of storms to come,

When, mud marked, they return to their parents back at home.

The world rolls on its journey, as morning turns to day,

Day becoming evening, then night’s new roundelay;

And season runs to season, and year declines to year,

The sun shines and the moon too, God’s sign that He holds dear

The universe created by His own almighty hand

The skies, the clouds, the heavens, the oceans and the land.

They carry on their journey to that last omega point

When he claims it back forever, all that He did anoint.

For life goes on its journey, as it has always done,

From seas to land, to heavens, from earth warmed by the sun;

Journeyings that can vary from the simpler to the greater -

But the greatest of our journeys is back home to our Creator.

Peter J Ainscough

ANNUNCIATION

ANNUNCIATION

Angel gloried light in sunset sky;

Though now you doubt, yet do not question why

Or how. Accept His word in gentle innocence,

Knowing pain will be your recompense.

But feel the God-filled Joy as you accept,

And sense the future that you will create:

The death-made joy that then will emanate,

When wine from water will be our precept.

The baby leaps within the mother’s womb

Then rises from the rocky stone-blocked tomb.

Precursed by angels and by skin clad John,

We’ll light the world with this your given gift,

To lift from shadows all this demi-mond

And crown Him in His crucifixion lift.

The universe rests in your questioning face;

In answering “Yes” you speak a joyous grace.

Rising of the day

The rising of the day

Each day rises to itself, the same,

Yet different than the one that rose before

And passed, now set in stone for evermore.

The day that rises is the gift of God

For us to use in any way we would.

God grant we only use it for the good.

The beauty of the day we can behold:

The birds, the flowers, the heat, and cold,

Create a glorious story to be told.

We rise and work and play and rest, then sleep,

As night bedecked by stars curtains the deep

Of space. May God our sleeping spirits keep.

\

Peter J Ainscough

Gull's flight

Gull’s flight

Spread, spread your wings across the sky,
Across the wind, the breath of God, and fly,
Fly where I cannot go. Where no soul waits,
Nor can they recognise your God and mine.
Sing your prayer, praise on the wind’s clear song,
Unknowing and uncaring of a world gone wrong,
A world awry, a world intent on nothing more
Than it’s own self. Yet you know so much more:
The wind’s aria, the wave’s praise, the sun’s ‘Gloria.’
You know and feel the nature of the universe.
Fly on, away, uncaring; your prayer is greater
Than mine can ever be, buried in my doubts and fears.
I find it hard to pray, to reach into eternity
As you so freely do. Go, spread your wings in prayer
For me, my friend – and for the universe we share.

Warrior's memories

A warrior’s memories

I wept for hell, I wept for guns, I wept for men,
For mud and sweat, for pain and blood I wept.
I ran and shot and fell and died again;
But never slept.

I hacked the enemy’s flesh with bayonet spear,
I cut his flesh and spilled his bowels and blood;
My warrior’s assegai surmounting fear,
Death’s mighty flood!

I screamed with anger, rage and so much pain;
I wept with anguish and with broken heart
As I shall never in my life repeat again;
While men depart.

How many now are left, how many gone
In useless cause, for everything’s the same
As ‘twas before this fiercest fight began.
What was his name?

The man whom once I killed and now lies here
Forgotten; though we say we’ll not forget,
His name’s unknown since in that fateful year
His fate was set!

This useless war was called futility.
Maybe the real victims are the ones live on,
Considering what has past, the dead hostility
Of battle done!










Peter J Ainscough 28th July, 2009