Peter Walker is a retired Anglican priest (though he will tell us that priests never retire!), a teacher and linguist. He has a deep and open-minded interest in spirituality in its widest sense, a great love of the natural world and an acute awareness of human nature. He has published several acclaimed collections of verse, one of which, The House of Being, won a national Spiritual Writing Competition. His work shows us the mind, body and soul of what it is to be human in this extraordinary world, seeing far beneath the surface of life with sensitivity, compassion and wit.
RUNNING
However early I may rise
to greet the sun
there’s always someone running, running, running
around this wild-seed meadow
of yarrow and red campion,
hoping to complete some dubious algorithm.
How many steps to keep a body trim
and waste this magic hour with emptiness?
Ah, I should have been a monk,
taking pleasure in my solitary hermitage
of myosotis and Lethe’s poppy,
forgetting nothing and oblivion,
with nothing but the cares of the whole world in my prayers
and the weight of suffering millions in clasped hands,
lighter than the weight of one sad soul
whose troubles keep on running, running, running.
Continued…
LOOSESTRIFE
Beside the stream,
the tall spikes of the loosestrife
ward off torments
with its rare duality,
the dusky musk of rose
and subtle honeysuckle.
Seed heads in the dew-dipped dawn
ebb and flow, a pale purple tide
in the cool breeze of a new day.
Beauty is in the fragility of blossom
and the oily Toledo sheen of the magpie wing
as it rises to take flight
above the water.
There are seventeen million colours,
so they say,
and we can see them all.
Continued…
HORUS
I wake at three-fifteen
again
as every morning in these light-polluted days
and wonder
will this be the hour at which I pass?
Fear says “Yes” whilst
reason says “No” so
who can know?
I step out into the blue, blue silence
and see a hawk
who watches me from his high throne.
Hooked like Horus,
son of sky gods,
still save for whirring wings,
his maniple tail fanned like a hand of cards
offering me a game of chance
whilst in his left eye
the ripped lace of a half-moon
offers healing and protection of my soul.
Horus dips and rises
up, up and away
leaving the moon to say
“Go on, then, ask your question.”
Fear says “Yes” whilst
reason says “No” so
who can know?
