Poems by Tom McFerran

HOME

(This, for my wife, another victim to cancer)

Twilight on a summer day,
a flock of white birds
on their way . . . going, home.

Night, draws its blanket over
all,an owl, the abbey ruins,
a distant call . . . calling, home.

An empty room, a vacant bed,
a wisp of smokeabove her head . . . drifting, home.

Gone, to the aether, into the
empty core,a whisper, calling her
back, to the mother-lore . . . gone, home.

AT THE BEACH

I watched the waves today,
I saw them come,
then folding back into the ocean.
I watched them rise today,
surging, heaving, roaring, calmly sinking back into
the ocean.

I saw you at the beach today
inside the sunlight,
in the reflection flickering bright
upon the ocean,
I saw you, never ending you, ever always you,
the ocean.

I walked along the beach today,
looked around and saw you
in the salt white driftwood, in every grain of sand,
in the ribboned seaweed out there upon the strand,
in bleached beached sea shells cast up from out
the ocean.

You filled my eyes today, your chaste perfection,
where’re I cast my eye I saw you,
the source of wonder and of awe,
the deepest deep of all I saw
today and every other day, so beautiful,
the ocean.

THE GOLDEN GLOW

Born without a knowing,
emerging from the void
they told me, taught me everything
I’ve come since to avoid.

They gave me single gender,
they chose for me a name
they said that I was born in sin,
and guilt, and blame and shame.

They said that I should marry,
produce clones just like me
bound up in creeds and dogma,
no sense of being free.

And then it struck me forcibly
that all I had believed
were lies, deceits, the building blocks
of that wrongly perceived.

I changed my way of looking,
I altered how I thought,
I gazed into another’s eyes
and saw myself there caught.

In everything I caught it,
in dust motes on the breeze,
everything was what I am,
and nothing ever leaves.

This present fleeting moment
is all there is to know,
no past, no future, body, mind
inside the Golden Glow.

PAULINE, LOOK

It is so strange this lingering lasting presence,
returning,
this feeling you are here,
yesterday I walked along the beach
gathering driftwood, and sea shells
for your Ikebana arrangements,
and then I remembered . . .
you are not home to show them to,
and when I saw the great heron fishing in the shallows
I again forgot that you aren’t here,
I cried aloud,
"Pauline, Pauline look!"
and then, somehow I knew
that you were here and that you’d looked.

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Sorry Comments Closed

Comment left by Emma Goodman on 24th August, 2012 at 11:39
In love with this page Grandad! It's beautiful :))))

Comment left by julie wyatt on 2nd September, 2012 at 20:07
Brought me to tears!