THREE NEW POEMS BY PHILIP QUIRKE

OLD  HANDS                    

The back of my hands are mottled,

the skin looks its age, wrinkled and tired;

prominent veins, three fingers gone arthritic,

but I still can hold a pen, and type, and text.

I thought of my Dad, electrician,

despite hands with knuckles knobbled

grew old graciously, pleased to be able

to wire a plug, fix a fuse, light a cigarette.

And Mother’s, when she held mine towards the end,

was still soft, with a deep life-line,

thumbing her mother-of-pearl rosary, as she voiced

her resilience before the imminent return.

HOLLY SLIP

Christmas holly slip forgotten

behind the Dried Pippins watercolour,

discovered mid-April  withered, crinkle dry.

Tossed on the embers it flashed into life:

a defiant wave to the season long passed,

a flame to promise an Easter spring.

NAMED and KNOWN

- Psalm 147 –

‘God names each one of the stars’.

Each one of trillions - beyond our counting.                         

God is busy about cosmic business.

God sustains with abundance all creatures plus

8 billion humans on the blue pearl of the earth.

We are specks of dust in the cosmic immensity,

Yet God is busy about planetary business,

suffuses our animal-vegetable-mineral home,

extravagant in blessings for each one of us.

God embraces the whole planet

in its solar system, with the sun moving

in our Milky Way among the myriad galaxies.

We are recipients of God’s largesse,

numbered among the stars, named by God.

Great is God’s Name throughout the Universe.