Cindarella

The slipper hits the flagstones hard

Shatters, glass skids in a star of shards,

A gleam alights one greed-glazed eye

Another winks, and then is dry.

He stutters, sadness, sorry, worry,

Blames himself for hopeful hurry.

But from the dark beneath the stair

She lifts the other of the pair.

The crystal shoe fits on her foot

With apron, drabs and kitchen soot.

Silence

Unwounded by words, the body of quiet swells,

Absorbs my breathed-out thought and inwardly tells

Me to ‘Recall that past promise.’  Distance

From what I once said begets a silence.

 

Now I am stilled by the weight of rest,

My free spirit mentions matters unconfessed

And in clarity born of sore conscience,

See how sorrow always begets a silence.

 

But with no clamour, remedy speaks next,

That offered hand, to give me when perplexed

A release from the curse of self-reliance

And thankfulness too begets a silence.

 

Take me into this quiet, where heart touches heart

And my words and my working all fall apart

And I know the true truth of the Spirit’s alliance

And awe, rediscovered, begets a silence.